Book Review: The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf
The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf
Harper, 2020
ISBN-13 : 978-0062940957
Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )
When a dark witch who is the master of a pelesit dies, the pelesit must go in search of a new master.
A pelesit is a Malaysian ghost in the shape of a grasshopper that has been bound to a master, created through dark magic and used to give the master power and protection. The master uses it for monetary gain, directing the pelesit to create trouble, so its victims will pay for solutions. It must feed regularly on the blood of its master and is bound to its master and the following generations. Without a binding, it causes chaos that can’t be controlled. This pelesit knows he needs to be controlled to keep darkness from completely taking him over.
When the pelesit finds the witch’s closest relatives, he discovers the witch’s daughter has shut herself off completely from the supernatural world. Her young daughter, Suraya, is another story. Unlike her grandmother, she makes the world a brighter place, and he binds her to him with three drops of blood in her sleep. Once the pelesit is bound to her, she changes: trouble seems to follow her, but nothing bad ever happens to her, and people start to avoid her. She names the pelesit Pink, and he becomes her only friend. But he is a dark spirit of chaos and it is a struggle for him to hold it back, especially when he perceives a threat to Suraya, and later when she does make her own friends, out of jealousy.
As time passes, struggle between Suraya’s brightness, widening world, and increasing independence and Pink’s darkness, and possessiveness can only lead to more and more terrible things, and also many, many Star Wars references. If insects and maggots bother you, be warned.
According to the author, this is a retelling of a Malaysian folktale, but she has very much made it her own. This story about family, friendship, grief, and the supernatural is compelling, unusual, occasionally funny, and sometimes disturbing, Seeing events from Pink’s point of view provides a more nuanced look than if we only witnessed events from the outside, and the author’s careful description of Malaysian ghosts, spirits, and exorcisms, contributes significantly to world-building. Highly recommended for grades 4-8.
Contains: child death, mutilation, insects and maggots, blood
Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski
Book Review: Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken. by Lee Murray, Geneve Flynn, Christina Sng, and Angela Yuriko Smith
Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken. by Lee Murray, Geneve Flynn, Christina Sng, and Angela Yuriko Smith
Yuriko Publishing, 2021
ISBN: 9781737208
Available: Paperback (Amazon.com)
A striking, heart-wrenching masterpiece, comprised of four vital voices in verse.
This four-poet compilation of works extends on themes addressed in the multiple award winning anthology, Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn, editors). The individual poems are highly accessible and strike fiercely, each bringing to life “a story on skin” (Angela Yuriko Smith, “Her Hajichi”), and each written with unyielding voice and unique strength.
At once painful and powerful, the collection as a whole exemplifies the best of speculative poetry and is a collection that will be re-read again and again: first all at once because the poems bring you quickly into their vivid images and worlds, and then returned to over time for their courageous meanings and profound insights.
Highlights includes Murray’s “Defining Character,” which explores language itself and the associations inherent to female life; Flynn’s remarkable blackout poem “Abridge,” unearthing hidden realities and hopes for an end to gendered violence”; the harsh cruelties imposed by the wealthy on a young immigrant girl employed in the home in Sng’s “Phoenix.”
Alongside a combination of traditional forms and free verse work, the poets also offer short commentaries. This addition invites readers into deeper reflection on and conversation with the authors’ processes and purposes, an engaging and inspired aspect of the collection. Filled with diverse poems that explore complex themes like ancestral obligations, cultural appropriation and violence, intimate exotification and misogyny, the impact of the work also moves in intriguing, new directions toward empowering, reimagined histories and myths.
Beautifully arranged by individual author, each set of poems works on its own and contributes to the overall themes. The resulting range of voices and styles is merged into a magnificently cohesive set addressing intersecting issues of culture and gender. Potent truths, rich details, and dynamic verse, these poems bloom with taut images that slice away preconceptions and deepen attention to appropriations of heritage and impositions of restricting expectations.
Fans of Black Cranes looking for more work by the authors, as well as fans of modern speculative verse and horror poetry will revel in this impressive collection. From goddesses and teenagers to angry ghosts, these poems will haunt and inspire. Highly Recommend.
Reviewed by E.F. Schraeder
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