"Electric Arches" by Eve Ewing is a mesmerizing collection of poetry and prose that brilliantly blends the personal and the speculative. Ewing's words dance off the pages, weaving a tapestry of vivid imagery, cultural commentary, and social insight. The collection explores themes of identity, race, and the intersection of the ordinary and the extraordinary with grace and power.

Through her evocative writing, Ewing creates a space where the fantastical and the everyday coexist, inviting readers to contemplate the complexities of the world and the self. "Electric Arches" stands as a testament to Ewing's talent in crafting narratives that are both impactful and imaginative, making it a must-read for those who appreciate the beauty of language and the exploration of diverse experiences.

Like her contemporary Danez Smith, Eve Ewing's innovative take on the African American experience post-Trump makes for harrowing, beautiful reading. Hers is a distinctly Chicagoan voice; recounting details of a childhood both marred by poverty and stabilized by the grounding influences of family and culture.
What differentiates Ewing's work is that, unlike Smith and her older contemporary Claudia Rankine (who made possible much of the mixed media approach employed in 'Electric Arches'), there is a unapologetic sense of femininity woven throughout.
Pride in Ewing's blackness is as much in celebration of hair braiding as it is a call for overarching social change. By mining her personal life, in other words, Ewing has achieved something which few poets get to after a lifetime of writing. The perfect balance between social commentary and memoir.

3.5/5

"The work of the poet is not unlike the work of being black. Some days it is no work at all: only ease, cascading victory, the plentitude of joy and questions and delights and curiosities. Other days, you wonder if exile would be too lonely and figure it can't be worse than thinking you won't make it home, the fear of your own teeth skidding across the ice."

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I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. It didn't quite live up to 1919 for me, only because I felt a constant desire for more connection between each poem. Regardless of this, the poems were truly amazing individually. They were so rich and vibrant with culture, full of happiness and anger and craving for more. Eve Ewing has such a way with words, she's absolutely in the right industry. I mean...

love is like a comic book. it's fragile
and the best we can do is protect it
in whatever clumsy ways we can:
plastic and cardboard, dark rooms
and boxes. in this way, something
never meant to last
might find its way to another decade,
another home, an attic, a basement, intact.
love is paper.

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Ewing strikes me with awe with her surrealism. The afro-futurist aspects were some of my favourites, along with the moments of pure imagination which made me laugh out loud and smile with desire for a different world. I do wish these aspects had been explored a little more, or even that Ewing will release a new collection with more focus on them.

Electric Arches tackles so many different issues, both social and personal, with such raw eloquence and beauty. I'll give you one last excerpt to really emphasise just how much heart and soul Ewing put into this collection, to show how much spirit is exuded by these poems:

Put a finger to my wrist or my temple and feel it: I am magic. Life
and all its good and bad and ugly things, scary things which I would like to forget, beautiful things which I would like to remember
- the whole messy lovely true story of myself pulses within me.

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I implore you to read this. Eve Ewing is undoubtedly an auto-buy author for me.

Thank you to Eve Ewing, Netgalley, and Penguin General for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

In this collection of poems, essays and short stories, Ewing puts to paper her experiences coming of age as a black girl in the US.

Ewing speaks to some weighty issues in the African American community particularly those that affect black women. She looks at how black women's hair carries both an enigma and a stigma and how African Americans often have limited access and information about their own history, struggling to find anything concrete before the part where their ancestors were kidnapped and stripped of their names.

She tackles these topics with a creativity and freshness that injects new energy into much-debated topics. At times, she confers magical powers on to her characters so that when they are met with microaggressions in their day-to-day lives , they find themselves able to fly or to send their detractors into a manic spin. In doing this, she re-imagines familiar scenes, scenes we know in real life have nothing close to a magical or happy ending.

I particularly enjoyed Ewing's prose pieces such as the short story 'The Device' and the essay 'Thursday Morning, Newbury Street' where she provides insight into the subjects of ancestry and use of therapy in the black community respectively, never preaching to her audience as she does so. I think this is the type of collection you could return to multiple times and take new things away from each time and I think it would be of particular value to black young women growing up in the US.

My review has featured as part of my What I Read in July video https://youtu.be/ylUnrAUV1qA

It has also featured in a Book Haul video https://youtu.be/qfHiiOeGHwQ

This book was another Netgalley-proof-so-unreadable-I-ordered-the-American-print-edition situation. The UK edition is released at the end of the month and I would really recommend checking it out.
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I think it would be most accurate to call this collection a scrapbook. Eve L. Ewing collages poetry, prose, photographs, artwork, handwriting, black pages, different fonts and illustrations to create a really wondrous book of poetry, prose and art. I loved it from beginning to end, it feels completely original. The (retelling) poems are some of the most poignant pieces in there and I particularly admired the long poems towards the end of the book. When this book comes out at the end of the month, make sure you get a copy. This edition is the Haymarket, but the UK edition will be with Penguin.

An eclectic collection of poetry and prose, Ewing's writings are accessible and beautiful explorations of black womanhood in Chicago. I really loved the whole collection, her writing was so diverse, exploring the past, present and possible futures with brilliance and truthfulness.

I enjoyed reading this poem and will love to purchase it, Saying that i adored her style of writing as she was addressing to the black community and she did it very well.

The only reason as to why i said i would want to buy this book because the arc font was super tiny for me to zoom on my ereader.

This was my favourite line!
I mean if he don't buy your fantastic tales, calls them nonsense,
then he's gotta go.”

Thank you for the arc, really appreciate it.

Magical realism is a genre borne straight out of oppression, a way to break reality in unrealistic ways in order to create something magical. Optimistic by its nature because it provides trapped people modes of escape in the ugly of contemporary times. Not all the poems in Ewing's collection utilize it, but the ones that do are grand.

Eve Ewing's writing is transcendent.
Brianna McCarthy's cover art is divine.

I read this soundtracked to Solange's 'A Seat At The Table' and it sits so well alonside this body of work. Ewing's poetry is lyrical and powerful. Here, shas written an ode to Blackness and Black womanhood. Even as a UK reader without the specific US context, this poetry collection is our thoughts and dreams, our rage and passion, our laughter and love.

'four boys on Ellis [a retelling]' is the standout piece for me, at once a cry of protest that still encompasses at the hopes and love we have for our Black boys, and the joy we see in them.