Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Reviews
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Hope Amidst Uncertainty: Subduction by Kristen Millares Young, reviewed by Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot

Subduction by Kristen Millares Young / Red Hen Press / 978-1-59709-892-2 / 240 pages / April 14, 2020

Subduction by Kristen Millares YoungWhat happens when the world as you know it changes course? When your seemingly rock-solid life suddenly becomes thin and porous? Such is the case for Claudia, a Latinx anthropologist based in Seattle, who is the complex protagonist of Subduction, a debut novel by Kristen Millares Young. Committed to a long-term research project documenting song and story sharing of the Makah people, the book begins with an image of Claudia on a ferry pulling away from Seattle, a city that holds her personal and professional struggles. She is heading for Neah Bay, the most northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, and Young offers luminous descriptions of this distinct passage to the coast. “Eagles and vultures wheeled through the gloaming over razed forests and colossal silvered stumps that sprouted frail versions of themselves.”

While Claudia dutifully continues her work, interviewing elders and reviewing past field notes and transcripts, she encounters Peter, an estranged son who recently returned home. His mother, Maggie, who suffers from intermittent memory loss, is a primary and vital source for Claudia’s work. She admits that, “Maggie would give her what she wanted, would tell her things about spirit animals and songs that she wasn’t supposed to reveal to anyone outside of her family.” Peter’s presence, however, forever alters the course of her research and her reasons for working within this sovereign nation in this remote corner of Washington.

Organized in twenty-four chapters, Subduction invites the reader into the daily life and ecology of this community with astounding accuracy and respect. From the store in town, to Hobuck Beach, Young’s delicate yet commanding grasp of place paints a believable landscape with a handful of real-to-life characters—none sensationalized nor trivialized. While questions remain about Claudia’s family history and core motives, the book as a whole, does the work of developing each main character honestly, and with real heft.

The story of Subduction oscillates between Claudia and Peter’s point of view. Both riddled with regrets, their initial meeting seems fated. Claudia transgresses over the line between near-distant researcher and kin, dredging up some of her deepest fears. The murky confluence of Claudia and Peter, including Claudia’s reflections on her failed marriage and abandonment issues and Peter’s grief over his father’s death and guilt over leaving his mother to fend for herself for so many years, is palpable. Throughout the book, Young does a brilliant job of foraging into the minds of her main characters without telling too much. She trusts her readers to refuse traditional and gendered assumptions through these imperfect, yet brave, characters.

Subduction is embedded in the ecosystems of the Olympic Peninsula, as evidenced by Young’s profound descriptions of present-day habitat and past geological events. Describing the first overlook at Cape Flattery, she writes “Dark water broke over mussels and rocks, draining white foam, rising through green curls of kelp. Waves boomed through sea caves that riddled the sandstone cliffs shuddering the earth beneath their feet.” We are changed by these enduring characters as the forces of nature and family, history and colonization transform them.

At the heart of this narrative is a question of belonging. Young writes, “The stories we tell each other matter, but the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves matter the most.” It is also an homage to the resiliency of place-based people. Transcending the cultural facets of this unique story, one can’t help but share in a collective feeling of hope after reading this novel. Not blind, ecstatic, hope, but real confidence that as one life fades away another, possibly better, version of ourselves is possible. We are also reminded, in this remote and mystical corner, that the living, breathing world around may hold all the answers we need.

TwitterFacebook

Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, teacher, and musician. She has a small farm in Bow, WA called Harmony Fields that makes artisan sheep cheese and grows organic herbs. Jessica has lived in the Skagit Valley for over fifteen years and is deeply connected to the artistic and agricultural communities that coexist in this region. Her first book of poems, Flood Patterns, was published by Antrim House Books in 2015 and her writing appears in several publications, including Orion, Taproot, Gastronomica, The Hopper, Pilgrimage, About Place Journal, and Poetry Northwest.

Author: Jessica Gigot Tags: fiction reviews Category: Book Reviews May 1, 2020

You might also like:

Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang review
Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart, reviewed by Ryan Kim
Mayhem and Death by Helen McClory, reviewed by Laura Morgan
Shiny Dark Mind Candy: Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory, reviewed by Laura Morgan
Vacant Lot by Oliver Rohe
Book Review – Vacant Lot by Oliver Rohe (trans. Laird Hunt)
Dime Bag: Stories by Vincent Zangrillo
Marc Olmsted reviews Dime Bag: Stories 1978–1986 by Vincent Zangrillo

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy

 

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!

R.I.P. Michael McClure 1932-2020

Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2021 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures