I haven’t written a blog since my father died at the end of
September. I tried, but every time I came to the computer, the blank page
reigned, the silence inside me reigned.
A couple of weeks ago, while making yet another futile and
feeble attempt at returning to my regular blogging schedule, my girlfriend gently
took the keyboard from my hands and said, “It’s okay. I’ll do it.” Now
if that isn’t love in action, I don’t know what is. You can check out her Love-in-Action
blog here: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/11/everything-is-medicine.html
To say the least, I’m blog backlogged. There’s a pending
blog on the sweetest of dates; one on the Salton Sea; another one on writing
workshops in the Imperial Valley ; there’s Linda
Hogan and several contemporary Mexican women writers. These are all blogs wanting
to be born.
And then, there’s ire’ne lara silva’s new collection of stories, flesh to bone. I was fortunate enough to get an early electronic copy of silva’s book, and it’s been waiting patiently on my desktop. I wasn’t ready to read it last month (the title was a little too close to home), but this past week I grew curious about its contents and delved in. I'm glad I did.
"The words were honey
in her throat, her body trembled almost as if the words falling into her were
rain and she a leaf."
What I love most about ire’ne lara silva is that she is a true lover of words. She grapples
with them in the darkness. She dances with them in the light. Sometimes she
turns them into honey on the page. Other times they’re thorns. silva feeds
words. She explores them ceaselessly. She digs deep beneath their skins to find
their hunger, their heartbeats, their inner oceans, their magic.
"She liked the unknown
shapes in words. Liked to open them to the eye. Liked words that sparked with
one meaning when they were held up to the light and another meaning when she
took them to the shadows. A tree that was a cloud that was a silver fin that
was a drop of water that was the aching curve of the moon."
In her new collection of short stories, flesh to bone, ire’ne lara silva delivers 9 lyrical stories that
delve into the shadows of loss and grief, into hiding places, into straight and
queer love, into mother-daughter/sister-brother/daughter-father relationships, into
folklore, into deserts and death, into an ocean as omnipotent healer. Ever
present in silva’s collection is an echoing hunger, a hunger that is not
rendered a curse, but rather a blessing, almost a calling.
"Her eyes were hungry
in the dark. Her skin was hungry in the sudden coolness. Swallowing her own
blood, she heard the rumbling of her empty stomach. The word singing singing
inside her— what she was and what made her alive. She hungered to be, she
hungered to live, to feel, to speak, to run. She hungered to be free…
—Mayantli—she cried to
the night wind, laughing and free —My name is Mayantli—"
In flesh to bone,
silva opens windows to other worlds, where divisions between the here and the
más allá collapse. The dead are everywhere and very alive in this collection. Los
vivos se enamoran con los muertos. Las mujeres de Juarez speak. The unborn are
remembered and honored. La Llorona—misunderstood and misnamed—gets
reconstructed.
"The people who
remembered her, remembered her by the wrong name. But the ones who saw her, the
ones she saved, the ones whose pain she ended, the ones for whom she was
death’s face, the ones her own hands put to rest, they recognized the rage and
tenderness in her eyes and called her Mother. She watched over everyone,
listening for their cries. The ones who’d forgotten heard only the echoes of
her wailing and thought it was the wind."
The stories in this collection are testimonios of survival
and that survival many times is strengthened by or made possible by nature. In “Tecolotl,”
a heartbroken woman metamorphosizes into an owl. In “Thorn Forest
"How not to love those
stubborn trees that clung to life, that lived off of sunlight and infrequent
rain and hard earth. That refused to die. That would come back to life and
re-create the forest as long as one limb survived. They survived everything."
Among the strengths of silva’s collection is her lyrical
language that never ceases its ebb and flow, its retreats and returns, its
constant undertow that pulls at the gut and the heart, evoking emotions and
images.
"The curve of your
sheltering arms straightened away from me. The air dimmed around you. At night,
we were only bodies. I clung to you but woke further from you every time. Your
skin lost its harvest-taste. No seeds tumbled from your hair."
The prose is poetry, really, and the book’s multiple
characters and voices are wise truth tellers.
"What strange creatures grief makes of us. At once, hollow and brimming over. All things rendered precious, rendered useless."
flesh to bone is an important literary work that highlights
silva’s continual evolution as a writer, a critical-and-emotional thinker, and a shape shifter.
"My wings unfurled, tips
alight. I tore myself from Tía’s grasp, and I was gone—in the air, hollow and
hungry.
I’d found my wings.
I flew."
Felicidades, ire’ne. Your book is a testament to transforming loss into strength. May you continue to stretch your alas and soar, hermana. Gracias.
To purchase flesh to bone: http://store.auntlute.com/flesh-to-bone-p240.html
Visit ire'ne lara silva's website: http://irenelarasilva.webs.com/
Follow ire'ne lara silva's blog: http://irenelarasilva.wordpress.com/
ire'ne lara silva genre finalist in AROHO's 6th Gift of Freedom http://www.aroomofherownfoundation.org/Irene-Lara-Silva.php
A bloga on ire'ne's previous poetry collection, Furia: http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/10/irene-lara-silvas-furia-la-mujer-que-se.html
ire'ne lara silva is the author of two chapbooks: ani’mal and INDíGENA. Her first collection of poetry, furia, was published by Mouthfeel Press in October 2010 and received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award in Poetry. She is the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award, a Macondo member, a 2010 Cantomundo Inaugural Fellow, and the 2013 Fiction Finalist for A Room of Her Own Foundation's Gift of Freedom.
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