Guest Review: Carmen and Grace by Melissa Coss Aquino

Beam me over to Octavia's Bookshelf, Scottie. 
Scottie? Scottie?

It was just one of those times when I could not be in two places at once, and I could not, camera in hand, be at Melissa Coss Aquino's reading in Pasadena on Sunday, October 8. 

To my good fortune, Gerda Govine Ituarte and Thelma T. Reyna attended. They recounted for me a wondrous reading by an author generous with her time and back story to the novel, Carmen and Grace. The two poets expressed enthusiasm, not only for the novel, but how Octavia's Bookshelf (link) brings literary events to Pasadena's fast-growing East Washington Blvd neighborhood.

If you're coming, to Pasadena, be sure to head toward Altadena on Hill Street and find a warm, indie bookseller's welcome. "We are an independent bookstore in Pasadena. Readers of all ages and backgrounds will have a wonderful time exploring our store of books written by BIPOC writers."

Govine and Reyna's enthusiasm for the event finds a clear echo in today's Guest Review by Angelique Imani Rodriguez. See Angelique's bio following her review.

Book Review: Carmen and Grace
By Angelique Imani Rodriguez

I had to put this book down as I read it. A few times. 

I am talking about Dr. Melissa Coss Aquino’s debut novel, “Carmen and Grace,” released in April 2023. Melissa Coss Aquino, a Puerto Rican writer hailing from the Bronx and an Associate Professor at Bronx Community College, CUNY, has written a book that speaks to the very core of me. 

Carmen and Grace follows the intertwined lives of Carmen and Grace, cousins whose bond is forged through shared adversity and later cemented by the influence of Doña Durka, an enigmatic benefactor with a dual life as the leader of an underground drug empire.

The plot, centered around the sudden death of Doña Durka, is thick with tension and suspense. As Grace aims to step into the shoes of her mentor, Carmen contemplates leaving the only life she has ever known and one of the last true links to her blood family. 

Alternating between the perspectives of Carmen and Grace adds a layer of complexity that often floored me with how voice and intention can be so vivid in the way each character tells their story. The author’s navigation of time and perspective added to the overall depth of the novel, peels back of the layers of Carmen and Grace’s lives and worlds, and the evolution of their relationship. 

What strikes me most, though, about this book is the author’s ability to create characters who feel incredibly real and genuine to me. As a reader who grew up in the same neighborhoods of those in the book, I feel a clear connection to the energy of these characters, their speech, their spirit, the way they function in the world. 

I knew girls like these girls, I walked the same streets, and I talked with the same cadence. I loved these women, celebrated in their spiritual moments with them, was frustrated with them and sad for them. These were my primas, play cousins, sisters, even. To write characters who feel like home is a feat not many can accomplish. Dr. Melissa Coss Aquino makes it look effortless. 

In the novel, Carmen and Grace are more than just protagonists; they are vessels for exploring the complexities of friendship, community, and the families we create for ourselves, all told in voices that I am wholly familiar with and completely akin to. The author’s Puerto Rican heritage is also evident in these nuances. As a Puerto Rican woman who came of age in the times referenced in the book, how could I not see myself in the hearts of these young women, their emotionality and vibrant relationships? How could I not connect with the ways that Bronx Puerto Rican culture was described and honored and made its very own character as it is in my own life and experience? 

Dr. Melissa Coss Aquino's Carmen and Grace is a triumph, a debut novel, a feminist text, and a narrative that explores the consequences of choices made, the impact on relationships, and the fragility of the world they inhabit.  Carmen and Grace is a Nuyorican classic. I eagerly anticipate Dr. Coss Aquino’s future works and recommend Carmen and Grace to anyone seeking a story that explores what it means to choose your family, what it means to grow into your own power, and what it means to break free from the destinies you were told you were bound to.

Now, about those moments when I had to put the book down. 

It wasn't due to any lack of enjoyment; quite the opposite. Carmen and Grace compelled me to pause, to savor the emotional depth, and to reflect on the profound themes the novel explores. Carmen and Grace has earned a spot on my coveted list of books I'll never lend out, a testament to its lasting impact on me as a reader.

Meet Angelique Imani Rodriguez: 

Angelique Imani Rodriguez is a Bronx born and bred Boricua writer, bibliophile, and editor. A graduate of the CUNY BA program with a BA in Multi-Ethnic Literature and Multi-Ethnic Women & Gender Studies, Angelique is a three-time alum of the VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts) Foundation’s workshops, a two-time alum of the Writing Our Lives workshops and the creator of the Boricongo Book Gang, a growing and on-going book list of works written by writers of color. Angelique's non-fiction work has been published in the James Franco Review and in Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, edited by Annie Finch. Angelique was also the first fiction editor of the Raising Mothers online literary journal. Her flash fiction appears in the inaugural issue of Malposition Magazine. She is currently editing Fried Eggs & Rice: An Anthology by Writers of Color on Food and is completing her first manuscript, Where We’re From, a collection of flash fiction detailing stories about residents of Ventana Court, a West Bronx tenement building. You can find more on www.penhittingpaper.com 

Points about spec lit written for all peoples

NPR's list of Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books had one USican Spanish-surname, Diana Gabaldon. I left a comment that there really were zero, since Gabaldon, to my knowledge, doesn't call herself anything but "American" and doesn't write about any Latinos. At public readings, she insisted her name be pronounced as an English word. So, 0--zero--USican Latinos on another best-of list. [Actually, not even Octavia Butler was included!]

Kids and adults reading this may not realize the message NPR is sending. It's the message of same-ole exclusionary, white-privilege, not only that Latinos don't write spec-lit, but that none of it compares to The 100. To use a kid-expression, it made me want to throw up in my mouth and deliberately swallow it.

Pero, ya basta. Times are changing. The old White Guy Hero Saves the World is being chipped away.

No matter what you read or write, pumping out the classic tropes, classic plots, cardboard characters and stereotyped fiction is the receding wave of the past. The ivory tower of USican literature has been spray-painted with the graffiti art of people of color. The cornerstones crumble.

To glimpse the promise of the future, here's excerpts from articles that are worth reading in their entirety. Again, no matter which genres interest you, nearly all these articles can serve your art. Most of them are by women--some white--which possibly says something about who's carrying the good fight. Hint: Not enough old white guys have found their huevos and jumped in.

10 ways white people are more racist than they realize by Kali Holloway

Here's links to the science, the studies, the books, the facts that'll convince everybody but racists and right-wingers. Demographics that can be used in any fiction.

Set Truth on Stun: Reimagining an Anti-Oppressive SF/F by Daniel José Older

A great roundtable discussion of spec-lit authors, led by DanielJosé.

Putting the I in Speculative: Looking at U.S. Latino/a Writers and Stories by Sabrina Vourvoulias

"The U.S. Latino/a speculative fiction writer is largely invisible to the speculative mainstream editor, publisher, reviewer and anthologist. U.S. Latin@s are writing anyway. Fictions haunted by mestizo, Afro-Latino/a and indigenous ghosts, legends and magic. Fictions of future cities built on the foundations poured by Latino/a immigrants and Mexicans whose roots in the United States go back more than 400 years. Fictions populated by sinuous and spiky sentences in English mixed with Spanish, with Spanglish and Nahuatl and Chicano Caló."

They are not ghosts: On the representation of the indigenous peoples of North America in science fiction and fantasy by Maureen Kincaid Speller

Read this before you stick a Native American character in your next story. Or if you want to know what those Indians are doing in that novel. 

"In the same way that Hollywood relegates Native Americans to the Old West, so the Ghosts [novel] exist mainly in the Empire’s past. They have no present, and apparently no future either."

Boys Read Girls by Ana S.

Enough with the excuses about why you didn't put girls in your YA or children's book.

"The problem that needs to be fixed is not kick all the girls out of YA, it’s teach boys that stories featuring female protagonists or written by female authors also apply to them. Boys fall in love. Boys want to be important. Boys have hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. What boys also have is a sexist society in which they are belittled for 'liking girl stuff.' Male is neutral, female is specific.

On sniping, women and SF by Brenda Cooper

"Most of the men who are part of the problem in written science fiction simply don’t know it. They don’t mean women writers harm, they aren’t meeting in back rooms plotting against us, and they aren’t dreaming about misogynistic ways to express themselves. So when someone twitter-slams them over a clueless phrase, they’re either embarrassed, or more likely, defensive. When they’re defensive, they bite. I do too.

"We don’t want them to bite. We want them to change."

Writing Women Characters as Human Beings by Kate Elliott

"I get asked if I have any advice for writers on how to create believable female characters while avoiding clichés, especially in fantasy novels where the expectations and settings may be seen to be different from our modern world. There is an 'easy' answer to this. Write all characters as human beings in all their glorious complexity and contradiction…. Three Basic Pieces of Advice: 1. Have enough women in the story that they can talk to each other….

Writing Strong Female Characters? That's A Great Goal, But I'd Rather Write Strong Kick-Heart Characters by Catherynne M. Valente

Kick-ass females are not the ultimate.

"I have never once been asked how I write male characters, nor how to write strong, kickass male characters, nor whether I’m concerned about making the men in my books vulnerable as well as tough. Yet our culture at large seems to peer into novels (and movies and television) as through the bars of a cage at the zoo: Here we see the endangered strong female protagonist in her natural habitat! What strange markings she has! What goes through the head of such a bizarre creature?"

Rewriting the Future: Using Science Fiction to Re-envision Justice by Walida Himarisha

This article doesn't just shred the envelope; it throws it away to develop new packaging.  "We started an anthology with the belief that all organizing is science fiction. When we talk about a world without prisons; a world without police violence; a world where everyone has food, clothing, shelter, quality education; a world free of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, heterosexism, we are talking about a world that doesn’t currently exist. But collectively dreaming up one that does means we can begin building it into existence."

Es todo, hoy, but not for el futuro

RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano spec-lit author Rudy Ch. Garcia