Author: Sue Hall Pyke

A ‘pure experience,’ reading this theoretically insightful book of practice (64). Puns as insights, as gentle and sharp as an acupuncturist’s needle that makes knowledge ‘on the spot’ (71). I meet this book ‘in the middle’, a playful ‘co-mingle’ of joy (86).

Just when you think it’s gone too far, this story turns and bites into you again, with that sweet all-in of kid-love, the stink, the joy, the earthiness, the isolation, the no-hands eating and the packs that help with the getting through.

Languish, language, l’anguish in this anger-quivering response to the hard stomping world, this hard-muscled rattlesnake of a book brewed tight with intoxicating ‘venom’ shots (77). Melt in the dare of this take, fall prostrate to the truths in its ‘black ooze’ (74).

Like a child’s ‘why’ the dance of flipped coins. A yes or no that triggers more, then more of a self-interrogative prose: ‘mining my own heart’ to understand the world. ‘Life involves making a decision so the spirits can rush in’ (186).

Heavy in weight with 800 works and heavy with 350 years plus of history and heavy with generations of wrong. Yet beautiful food, loved gardens and strong blood memory reaching back to healing. Black story power repelling the cesspool of white privilege.

Read in one sitting, exquisite observation, careful thought, the emplaced body thinking through place and time with an eye on knowing the self through motherways, lit up by ‘instances’ of intensity: ‘the world opening up as if through a great funnel’ (63).

To read of a friend like Jesse is to revel in the friends you have and mourn for those who are no longer with you. This book sticks. Gentle incisions, brutal descriptions, prose veering to Hazzard ‘on a hot ticking day’ (5).