By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Feb 28th, 2023
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1629 Views
by Jesmyn Ward review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE Ward’s heartbreaking and achingly poignant memoir explores her upbringing in DeLisle, Mississippi, a town that would eventually be wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. Raised primarily by her mother, with a father who was in and out of the house, Ward endures finan...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2023
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929 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “The family is like the forest: if you are outside it is dense; if you are inside you see that each tree has its own position.” In this sweeping epic that spans almost three centuries, Yaa Gyasi delivers a powerful punch to colonial history and the transatlantic slave trad...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 30th, 2023
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1076 Views
review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE “A story might help you get through your life, but it doesn’t literally keep you alive — if anything, most often people who have power turn their story into a brick wall keeping out somebody else’s truth, so that they can continue the life they believe themselves to ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Jan 6th, 2023
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1085 Views
Review by Meredith Mckinnie This contemporary romance novel by Sally Rooney centers on two meandering couples and the primary friendship between the women. Alice, an independently wealthy novelist fresh off a mental breakdown, and Eileen, an editor for a literary magazine, converse via letters/emails...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Dec 1st, 2022
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783 Views
by Natasha Trethewey Natasha Trethewey’s love affair with language is so palpable that as a reader, I sometimes feel I’m witnessing something I’m not supposed to see. Her command of words and their implications and sentence structure and composition, not to mention the lyrical cadence of phrasing, re...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Nov 7th, 2022
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980 Views
by Jesmyn Ward Christophe and Joshua, fraternal twins, have just graduated high school. Raised by their maternal grandmother Ma-mee, the boys have never known life not by each other’s side. Faced with meager job opportunities and low-wage realities, the twins’ dynamic is complicated by one receiving ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Nov 7th, 2022
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1650 Views
by Robert Olen Butler B utler’s collection of short stories recounts the experiences of Vietnamese Americans living in Louisiana. Each of the twelve stories is told from one character’s perspective with the topics centered on cultural differences between Vietnam and the United States. As an American ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Oct 4th, 2022
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819 Views
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin Review by Meredith McKinnie The debut novel by Maurice Carlos Ruffin casts a blistering light on the shadowed future of race relations in America. While many authors are concerned with looking backward in search of warning signs of racial regression, Ruffin dares to cast his ...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Oct 4th, 2022
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813 Views
by Sandra Cisneros Review by Meredith McKinnie Chicana poet Sandra Cisneros writes lyrically about the dreams, lives, and limitations of Mexican American women in this collection of short stories, ultimately vignettes, ranging from a few paragraphs to almost 30 pages. In each encapsulated plot, littl...
By Nathan Coker
In Bayou Pages
Sep 7th, 2022
0 Comments
1306 Views
by Sherman Alexie “I can’t blame my parents for our poverty because my mother and father are the twin suns around which I orbit. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.” Alexie’s semi-autobiographical young ...
