Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Poet Holly is propelled by a 'lifelong near-diabolical desire to make all things right." It's the mid-1970s, when such good intentions are often undermined by naive politics and hubris, but this blonde from the Twin Cities puts her beliefs to the test by teaching a poetry class in the women's prison on Rikers Island. As Holly tries to win the trust of her seen-it-all students, she realizes that they have plenty to teach her. Conversations with a famous Russian poet-in-exile (a thinly veiled Joseph Brodsky) also prove revelatory. While he was imprisoned for the crime of being a poet, her students are locked up, basically, for being female, black, and poor. Ribald and outspoken, funny and resilient, they have endured horrific if all too common abuse. Two possess unusual powers. Akilah Malik is an Angela Davis-like radical, and mystic Polly Lyle Clement claims to be channeling her great-granddaddy Mark Twain. A compassionate poet as well as a mythically inclined novelist, Muske-Dukes is spellbinding in her precision and invention as she pays haunting tribute to women who hold fast to their humanity under the most barbaric of circumstances, while celebrating poetry as a liberating force.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Occupying a seat on a Riker's Island-bound bus crowded with menacing, diamond-studded pimps is just another day in the life of Holly Mattox, the self-consciously attractive newlywed protagonist of Muske-Dukes's fourth novel. Set in 1970s New York City, the novel follows Holly as she becomes increasingly, and perhaps dangerously, involved with the female inmates who attend her jailhouse poetry workshops. Undeterred by the catty disapproval of her literary contemporaries, Holly forges on, leading a class of bickering inmates, including mentally disturbed Billie Dee, transgendered Gene/Jean, God-fearing Darlene and fragile, heavily sedated Polly Lyle Clement, who claims to be the great-granddaughter of Mark Twain. (Twain also, Polly claims, speaks through her.) An affair with fellow scribe Sam Glass threatens Holly's young marriage as Polly gets thrown into solitary for her possible involvement in another inmate's jailbreak. The jail administration wants Holly to extract information from a delusional Polly, but Polly could be crumbling too fast for Holly to save her. Prisoners' poems appear throughout and afford a sometimes hilarious, sometimes stark look beneath the inmates' grizzled exteriors. Fiction with a political conscience often sacrifices craft in favor of driving home a message, but Muske-Dukes pulls it off. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Poet/novelist Muske-Dukes's latest work of fiction (after Dear Digby) follows a young, left-wing poet as she strives for social justice in the volatile atmosphere of New York City during the mid-1970s. Holly's life is complicated by entanglements with two very different men, by confusion about her political position, and most of all by the poetry workshop she teaches at the women's detention center on Rikers Island. Holly's consciousness about society and culture is raised by the diverse class population, particularly the amazing (and possibly insane) Polly Lyle Clement. Claiming descent from Mark Twain via his liaison with an African American beauty, Polly asserts that her famous ancestor communicates with her, which she demonstrates by falling into eerie trances and speaking in a male voice with a Southern accent. Holly's determination to help her disturbed student sends her into the dark and frightening worlds of prisoner abuse and racial discrimination, testing her ideals to the utmost. Based on the author's personal experience, this is an offbeat and stimulating story, marked by painterly images evoked through precise, energetic language. Recommended for most fiction collections.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An elegant piece featuring a psychic descendant of Mark Twain. Muske-Dukes draws on her own experience with the penal system (she founded a creative writing program--the very first for prisoners--on Riker's Island) to fashion a novel rich in both ideas and prose. Holly Mattox is a young Midwesterner in New York, secretly married to K.B. (marriage seems so embarrassingly establishment in the early '70s), and trying to prove herself as a poet, a teacher and a thoroughly independent woman. She has a mentor of sorts in Sam Glass, a young editor with connections to all that's literary in the city (the identity of real writers are thinly, amusingly veiled) and quite a bit beyond. He invites her to important events, tries seducing her and gets her a job lecturing smug grad students at Columbia. But that world is a far cry from her volunteer work--teaching a poetry workshop at the Women's House of Detention on Riker's Island. Most of the women are in for prostitution, but a few are there on murder charges, including Akilah Malik, a notorious radical charged with killing a cop. And then there's Polly Lyle Clement, seemingly charged with nothing more than mistakenly landing her raft on the island. They all produce fairly heartbreaking poetry--what you would expect from the defeated lives they describe, except for Polly, who claims to be the descendant of Mark Twain and is channeling his spirit in class. Polly indeed has a way with words and half convinces everyone that something vaguely supernatural is going on, as she seems to see the "truth" of everyone's crimes. Holly becomes emotionally involved with the women, and when Akilah breaks out of prison, it becomes Holly's mission to save Polly, now slowly dying in solitary, and suspected of arranging Akilah's escape. Though well-plotted, Muske-Dukes triumph lies in building a discourse on the nature of language, of poetry, of its small successes and inevitable limitations in the midst of ruinous lives. Lovely, original writing on the unlikely romance between prisoners and poetry. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
