ANGELINE KEK WRITES — One of the scariest moments of a child’s life takes shape with the realization that our parents are mortal beings no further from death than a wilting flower or a gray-whiskered cat. They have no friendly contract with the grim reaper. With the fleeting time, we…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: LIKE A SOLID TO A SHADOW (2022) BY JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO — GETTING TO KNOW THE DEAD
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — Within Time is a Mother (2022), Ocean Vuong fashions a world so rich with polarities. No stone is left unturned. Vuong explores relationships in all their capacities: a person and their chosen loves, a person and society, and loving oneself. Following the successes of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) and On Earth…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: TIME IS A MOTHER (2022) BY OCEAN VUONG – LEARNING TO LIVE WITH DEATH AND ONESELF
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — When do we learn to live for ourselves and not others? How do we unlearn the adjustments we have been instructed to make to be deserving of genuine love, as if we are not deserving by default? After all, we are the experiences that we have…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: COME CLEAN (2021) BY JOSHUA NGUYEN — RECLAIMING PURITY
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — Hauntings, secrets, graveyards — Violet Kupersmith’s debut novel, Build Your House Around My Body (2021) — is an ash-charred sky splattered with these ghastly hues. Winnie is a twenty-two-year-old Vietnamese American (or Việt Kiều in Vietnamese) woman who sets out for Saigon with nothing but “a passport,…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: BUILD YOUR HOUSE AROUND MY BODY (2021) BY VIOLET KUPERSMITH — WHEN GHOSTS CEASE TO HAUNT THE PAST
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — There is a truth about the human experience that helps those of us who have embraced its lessons to walk around with an easier spring in our steps — the understanding that we are products of our pasts. Every thought, every choice, every path chosen big…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: LIES WE BURY (2021) BY ELLE MARR
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — Time — the blanket that softly but entirely enshrouds all sensations, memories, and beings. It is pointless to write about time, that’s the intellectual equivalent of shouting into an endless void. Undeniably, to be aware of one’s existence is to learn to be comfortable with time…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: THE BEGINNING OF WATER (2021) BY TRAN LE KHANH
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — Cemented as one of the more influential novels in literary culture, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been, if anything, overly explored by critics and readers worldwide. Nghi Vo boldly disagrees — in fact, this exclusive social circle, novelist Nghi Vo insists, is missing someone…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL (2021) BY NGHI VO
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — How would you feel living in an 80-year-old’s body as a teenager? What would you do if you knew your days were numbered? How would you like to be remembered? My Brilliant Life (2021) by Korean author Ae-ran Kim follows a 16-year-old boy named Areum with…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: MY BRILLIANT LIFE (2021) BY AE-RAN KIM
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — Motherhood — perhaps the most intimate and universal experience to exist in the universe. Nothing organic can start without it, nothing is left untouched by it. Motherhood transcends all differences. Yet, no singular being’s journey with it is ever quite the same as the next. At…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: A THOUSAND TIMES YOU LOSE YOUR TREASURE (2021) BY HOA NGUYEN
ANGELINE KEK WRITES — To read The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void by Jackie Wang is to return to familiarity delivered through mystifying means. Within the surreal landscapes that are conjured up by the speaker, we are shown a world largely fabricated by an unhinged…
Full Article BOOK REVIEW: THE SUNFLOWER CAST A SPELL TO SAVE US FROM THE VOID (2021) BY JACKIE WANG