asakiyume | Reading Wednesday

I've been reading Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo because it was our book group book. Usually I can take or leave (or prefer to leave) our book group books, but this one I expected I'd like, because I loved Acevedo's The Poet X (ended up teaching that one in the jail). And I am liking it! So much that although the book group date came and went, I've kept on reading it because I want to finish it.

It's about two generations of Dominican women, whose life stories we get in bits and pieces around the occasion of a living wake that one of them is throwing for herself. The characters, their lives, the language--it's all so vivid. I marked this, one woman (older generation) talking about her older sister:

The person I've hugged most in the world, beside my own offspring, has been Flor. It was she who carried me on her hip. As a child, hers was the first body I remember vining around, the way climbing plants claim homes.

Also, the women all have gifts. One has dreams that foretell when someone will die. Another can tell if someone is lying. Another can salsa like nobody's business. And one has an alpha vagina ;-)

"I think Yadi said, but I must have misunderstood, that your popola has magic?" Tía Camila brushed my sweaty curls from my neck.

"Yup. That's a good way to put it."

"How so, querida?"

I shrugged, speaking around bites of espagueti. "My chocha does what I want, when I want. If I want it to get wet, I can will it to do so instantaneously. If I want its funk to penetrate a room, I turn the smell up. When I have bad cramps and I know my period is coming, I can tell my vagina to raise the moat and hold the blood in a day or two longer, or I can say let's get this shit over with, and vroom, within minutes, the floodgates open."

I've been surprised and delighted by how much I'm enjoying this character's thoughts and experiences with her gift. The book is overall super sensual and VERY sex positive.

I'm also still reading and enjoying Breath, Warmth, and Dream, by Zig Zag Claybourne, but I had to put it aside to read this one. But this one is nearly done, and Breath, Warmth, and Dream is very easy to fall back into.