![]() ![]() If this book does not represent one of the first instances in recent literary memory where work of the mainstream Anglo-American tradition reaches to align itself with the richly evocative, distinctly immigrant aesthetic that has characterized many of the most notable books of the last few decades, then it is certainly among the best of those attempts. It suits her, and the rest of us, so beautifully. ![]() It’s been rare to hear such words from a mouth like Russell’s. In Swamplandia!, an Anglo-American girl from Florida churns out brilliant, brutal passages like this one, in which narrator Ava waxes historical: “Prejudice…was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic…It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery on Cypress point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water.” ![]() It’s of note that the kind of unflinching look Swamplandia! takes at the devastation wrought on the Americas and their people from 1492 until the present has, until now, been largely the realm of immigrant writers and writers of color. ![]()
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