Book Review: The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door

“Call me a planet, orbiting a revenge-colored sun
Or a seed growing in the gray soil of settling the score,
I am a cold drink, retribution for ice cubes,
A meal spicy with payback,
Call me a film reel, Watch to see what I do,” writes Celia Door, who just after her 14th birthday turns ‘dark’. And that is how Karen Finneyfrock’s first novel, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door begins. It’s juicy from page one. Set in Hershey, Pennsylvania, this novel chronicles the story of 14 year-old poet and outcast Celia Door. Celia with her poetry and her darkness and her thick black boots- haven’t we all been that girl, justifiable angsty, trapped in the misery of high school and just itching for something good to happen (or was that just me, minus the boots)?

Side note: For those of you who don’t know, I have been officially obsessed with Young Adult fiction since 2004 when I succumbed to the over-priced self-administered beat down otherwise known as grad school on the green mountain. There, trapped on campus with 200 other do-gooders and insane amounts of homework, I found relief in books I could read in a day. I started with Tamora Pierce and worked my way through John Green, Rachel Cohn, Justine Chin Headley, David Levithan, Justine Larbalestier, and those few “adult fiction" authors who dared to cross over like Madeline L’Engle, Sherman Alexi, Walter Mosley, and Isabel Allende. What makes YA so engrossing? Well for one thing, it’s accessible. You are not going to be stuck in some deep and meaningful metaphor about a rose for 90 pages, not to say that it’s always easy. God knows I cried my ass off reading Looking for Alaska. Just because the books are written for a younger audience doesn’t make them any less brutally honest, rich, or beautiful…if anything I find YA as a genre far more honest than adult fiction in that there is less posturing and writerliness and more getting to the point and kick ass stories.

And I am not surprised to report that Finneyfrock’s book fits this bill. For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Finneyfrock, she has been a staple at the Seattle Poetry Slam for years where she has represented my fair city on the mic at several National Slams. She was granted the great honor of being Writer in Residence at the Richard Hugo House where she became mentor to many writers of all ages. She also teaches writing to youth, which shows in the novel by the way her characters' voices ring true.

Celia is going through that rough time we often casually refer to as adolescence…ahh adolescence, the catch-all phrase for what can be the most awkward, icky phase of life, the proverbial soupy goop that takes place in the cocoon before the butterfly can emerge sometime in our mid twenties. Celia is definitely in the goop and like typical high school students, her classmates, particularly one Ms. Sandy Firestone, can’t wait to point out to her how weird and completely unacceptable she is. Enter the boy…there is often a boy…Drake, who is from NY and cool and miraculously drawn to Celia despite the weird and ‘dark’ she is labeled with. Don’t worry I’m not giving out spoilers, let’s just say this story didn’t go where I thought it was going and that is always a good thing.

I plowed through this book in two days enjoying every poetic cadence and really rooting for a happy ending (oh God, did I just out myself as a perpetual optimist). It was rich, at times funny, at times poignant, and completely worth it to pick up a copy and fall in love with it for yourself.

For Quvenzhane Wallis: On Being Black and a Butterfly

Even our cocoons must be Kevlar.

No spindly feelers breech the bud,
no filmy wings, slick and paper thin
greet this dawn.
We emerge fully present to our
enduring capacity to remain unbroken.
Our wings are boned in titanium
framed with panes of
shatterproof stained glass.
No wild summer breeze
nor gale force hurricane
will set us to flit and flutter.
Us with wings of leaden gold,
Us with wings like eternity
improbably heavy,
must create our own currents,
raise ourselves sturdy and skyward
to take flight by surprise.

We must fall in love
with our own industrial beauty,
never expect to be recognized
for the glorious celestial beings we are,
learn to swat daggers with every wing flap,
learn to embrace wholeness
the way Vampires learn to love
the curse of immortality.
Those cuts will never kill us,
might sting, might bleed,
but we will remain unbroken.
Understand the gift of our
impenetrable vulnerability.
We must learn to be held
and to hold others,
but know it is only
in the cradle of our own arms
that freedom is really free,
only in the understanding and sweet embrace
of our own souls
that love is fully expressed.

It is up to us to be:
Be the butterfly,
Be you, be me.
Be the night sky,
Be the stars,
Be the Universe,
Be the traveler unafraid of new adventures
Be the road that wraps back around on itself,
Be the song sung by a child when no one is awake to hear her,
Be the humming wings of quick moving birds,
Be the steady pulse of the mountain,
Be the river arching out to ride the wind across the desert sands,
Be the rain that makes love to each grain of rice in the fields,
Be whatever and whoever we dare to be,
Be the fulfillment of a universal promise,
Be the butterfly,
Be the little black girl, arms and smile outstretched with no fear of
poison daggers,
Be the little black girl with nothing to lose and the whole world on a
yo-yo string already in her back pocket,
Be the Kevlar butterfly, bulletproof and daggerproof and wordproof and
poisonproof.
Be the proof that black girls can fly.

Write Something: A Message From the Universe

Forgive this Kid President moment, but I woke up this moment and felt seriously compelled to tell you to get off your ass and be awesome already. If I were a carebear I would be Writerbear...with a keyboard on my stomach and it would light up when we did that stare thing and I would shout "Write Bitches! Infect the world with your awesomeness!" Well I am not a carebear (thank God), but I do have a steadfast belief in your weirdness and talent. Share it with the world! This is not a time for shyness.

So here is the plan in 12 easy to follow steps:
Step 1 Write something.
Step 2 Finish writing something.
Step 3 Read what you wrote.
Step 4 Appreciate the good parts about what you wrote.
Step 5 Edit out what doesn't work.
Step 6 Stop editing.
Step 7 Let someone else read your work.
Step 8 Contemplate other people's opinion.
Step 9 Contemplate your own opinion.
Step 10 Decide your shit is finished.
Step 11 Really finish...actually let it go.
Step 12 Put it out there.

Black Girl Nerds: BOOK REVIEW: God, Hair, Love and America

Black Girl Nerds: BOOK REVIEW: God, Hair, Love and America: I’ve never been a huge fan of poetry.   Throughout high school and college I had to challenge myself to read various works of poetry...

A Lesson In Boundaries- © rejj original poem

I hold this paper between us
like a saber
because we are already
standing too close.
I open my mouth
and there you are beneath me,
baby bird,
waiting to be fed
this regurgitated nutrients.
There is a need in you,
naked and primal,
a longing for what is mine
and I don't trust you
not to take too much.

So I hold this paper between us
like a barbed wire fence,
hoping as you press
your face against it,
the tang of metal,
the piercing of iron and electricity
will guard against
your wayward curiosity,
will poke your eyes shut
when they have seen enough.

I hold this paper between us
like an old lady opens the door
to her apartment,
never removing the chain,
locks still in place,
only cracking it a sliver
long enough to see who
is on the other side,
and shit it's you again,
like a bill collector,
no, like a loan shark.
You are asking for payment,
but willing to take limbs,
blood, pain.
You would just as easily
see me stretched and broken.
It would be equally as beautiful to you.

So I hold this page between us
as a reminder
that what I am willing to give you
is finite,
is not the never ending story,
all access Disney pass
to my soul,
is 9 x 11 with 1 inch margins,
a beginning, a middle, and
an end.

And as I whisper my words to you,
do not mistake me for soft spoken.
Feel the sledge hammers wrapped in velvet,
at the core of every stanza,
feel the bite of me,
the gilded ginzu knives
I juggle with a grin
and know
if I were to speak any louder
I might deafen you,
if I were to share much more,
the rain of falling knives
would slit you into ribbons,
so I hold this paper between us
as much for your safety
as for mine.

Putting It Out There...

Words on paper. There is something about taking your thoughts and putting them down in a place where you can actually see them, read them, edit and rearrange them until they are what you really want to say. Last week, I hosted the first of five meetings for the Soul Writers. The idea came about because I have so many friends who are writers that never write. They love writing, they are amazing at it, but somehow moment by moment life has made other plans for them, shown up with stuff that demands attention, like jobs, kids, spouses, and etc.

Top 3 reasons these awesome writers aren't writing:
1)Time
2) Busy Lives
3) Self Criticism

Through our free write we discovered dozens of ways to express those three things, but really that's what it came down to...we're busy, we don't take the time to write and when we do we don't think it's good enough to share.

So here is the secret I want to share with you today. All of that is bullshit. Of course we're busy, so what. Time exists as a vehicle to decompress every experience, so that not everything is happening all at once. Past, present, future...it's not all one line moving only in one direction and I can get all woo woo and philisophical about it, but the point is we do have one thing that we have control over...we have this time called NOW. We can make time, even if it's 5 minutes a day. That's 5 minutes when we could be writing. And the most difficult piece...being afraid of being judged or worse the judgement you pass on yourself...well if it's keeping you from doing something you love, then I question your need to commit to it. I'll admit it. I have been that closeted perfectionist, that person who missed a million chances to share my work because it wasn't just right. Then a few years ago, I got over it. How? Why?

Well it was kind of an accident. I wrote and published a book. It was a Christmas gift for my mom, but then once I saw it, once I held it in my hands and thumbed through it and it looked so much like a "real" book...that's when I realized that it was. Yup, the book I wrote turned out to be a real book. Then I read it and well...it was actually good. So then I threw myself a party and to my surprise lots of people came and suddenly I had sold 200 copies of my book, mostly out of my purse (I have a big purse). And then I put it on facebook and my friends in Chile, Japan, Guatemala and Spain ordered it online...then suddenly I had this book that was being sold internationally. Can you belive it? Well, believe it. It happened. It's still happening. I sold three books this morning!

Now what if I had just kept re-commiting to never being good enough? Where would that have gotten me? Nowhere...so I shifted my focus to just taking everything step by step, writing a poem, helping someone else write a poem. And now here I am again having just published a poetry anthology with about 80 teenagers I took to Guatemala, and I am just a few weeks away from releasing my second solo collection of poetry: Love and Guatemala.

I'm not bragging...okay I am a little bit :). But more than bragging, I'm trying to make the a point. Here it is: If I can do it you can do it. Who you are makes a difference. What you write makes a difference. So even if you can't join us for the next Soul Writers, please don't let that deter you from grabbing a pen and some paper and sitting down to let it flow. It is so worth it! And that is my long-winded diatribe for today.