You Own The Ground You Walk On ....

Jimmy Santigo Baca is better known for his Poetry, but in his non-fiction book, "A Place to Stand", he invites you experience the life that molded him into a poet. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom in order to appreciate life.

Jimmy was born into rock bottom, with an alcoholic father who left his family, and a mother who left because she thought she deserved a better one. Jimmy was left to be raised with his grandparents, who would punish him physically and mentally. As soon a he was old enough, he ran away with a girl that intoxicated him more than the drugs he would get addicted to. Which led to jail, where he would see the harsher side of humanity, that at times was animalistic. You will read his experience but not want to believe. You wont believe that a man could come to better himself under such conditions. His talent as a poet comes out in the descriptions and imagery that will make you go read. Truly a great piece of work. That which breaks a man into a jigsaw puzzle and puts him back together again.

Deserving 4 out of 5 garlics.

The Road Less Traveled

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a novel that should be made into a movie. I've heard it will be, and it makes sense, as it includes the stuff that Hollywood loves to put into cinema. Violence. Gunfights. One man against the odds. The end of the world. Cheap thrills usually, but I hope the movie doesn't make the mistake of leaving out what makes this novel achieve the status of greatness.

Because McCarthy takes the novel and makes it ask the kind of questions that all great novels ask. The importance of living at all costs against the quality of that life, the struggle to find faith in a world that seems to harbor nothing but malice, and more.

McCarthy's writing is as usual beautiful, even though he writes a story that is often horrible in the events that transpire in it. The Road is a meditation on what it means to be human in the face of inhumanity, and it never takes the easy route in supplying an answer. Hollywood doesn't usually like that kind of dilemma, but McCarthy has enough guts tell his story so that the theme haunts you. Let's hope the movie doesn't resolve it in a way that cheapens what resonates even after you come to The Road's end.

I give The Road four out of five garlics.

El Camino Real

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Read it before the movie comes out. A great way to impress a date is to let them know that you can read. It what separates you from a low wage job. Anyways back to the book.

The books starts with the end of the world, well more the end of civilized society as we know it. What you know at the beginning is that a man and his son survive. What they have do is simply figure out how to stay alive. So they hit the road, pardon the bad pun, and begin a journey. Interesting questions arise from the book: Is there a God? What is right or wrong when your trying to stay alive? Who can you really trust? Can you even trust yourself? But the most important question is what is humanity? McCarthy makes an attempt to answer them as simply as possible. What you have to figure out while reading the book is, whether the road leads to new beginnings or toward the end. A great summer book.

It gets 4 out 5 garlics .

The Arrival of Brilliance

The first book review here at the GCR will be Edward Brathwaite's, (now known as Kamau Brathwaite), The Arrivants. The book is a book of poetry, and it includes three previously published works of Brathwaite's, Rights of Passage, Islands, and Masks.

The works center around the colonial history and identity of the Caribbean diaspora. The Arrivants is incredibly inventive in its use of language, creating from the English language new words, utilizing the Caribbean dialect and accent, and including words from African languages. The work is definitely one that lends itself to reading aloud, as Brathwaite deftly employs different rhythms and jazz influences to bring the work to another level of brilliance that one can hear in the reading. Overall The Arrivants is a work that takes us on a journey who's length is measured in sections, full of gaps and fragments, and out of this he creates a true work of art.

Brathwaite writes a new history for the Caribbean, one that contains a progression from colonial beginnings to a future of possibility. I cannot recommend this book enough,. Read it, read alone and think about it, read it aloud with friends and talk about it.

I give The Arrivants four and a half out of five garlics.
(and a half garlic)