{"id":1266,"date":"2010-03-25T10:51:30","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T15:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2010-04-21T00:19:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T05:19:18","slug":"review-sasha-pimental-chacons-insides-she-swallowed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/25\/review-sasha-pimental-chacons-insides-she-swallowed\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sasha Pimental Chac\u00f3n’s INSIDES SHE SWALLOWED"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/em>
INSIDES SHE SWALLOWED<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Insides She Swallowed<\/span> by<\/em> Sasha Pimental Chac\u00f3n<\/em> | West End Press 2010 | $13.95<\/em><\/p>\n

Sasha Pimental Chac\u00f3n\u2019s debut collection, Insides She Swallowed<\/em><\/a>, brims with ripe, unusual images that linger long after each poem.\u00a0 She explains that the collection is based \u201con what we consume in order not be consumed ourselves\u201d, and powerfully portrays these ideas with vivid, tangible examples of both physical and metaphorical consumption \u2013 recurrent images of life, of seeds and ripe fruit and blooming plants, of animals and the natural world, of the human body as both intimate and gross, in a constant celebration of beauty and biology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chac\u00f3n frequently uses present-tense verbs to evoke a sense of action, creating a quick pace that makes her pieces perfect to read aloud.\u00a0 Her sharp and precise language propels her poems forward. The first poem, \u201cLearning to Eat\u201d, opens with \u201cA pomegranate \/ is opened like this: \/ gutted like a fish, \/ its entrails glow.\u201d She doesn\u2019t gloss over her images. The reader is presented with both the picturesque and the grotesque exactly as they are. The images may not always be beautiful, but they are always apt.<\/span><\/p>\n

What stands out is her ability to capture these images just at the moment at which they burst from their own confines and blossom into something beyond themselves. Her poems call to the senses: they feel like they can be touched, smelled, tasted. She uses a lot of color,\u00a0especially brown skin that reminds the reader whose stories she tells and grounds the pieces in the reality of the Filipino American experience. The history and connection to working the land can be seen by frequent references to slaughtering animals at home, and in the third section of “Childhood Parts” she writes, “Seeing the brownness of our joints, did she \/ think of a wet chicken’s leg, how to pull \/ the limb from the socket, how easily.” Chac\u00f3n carefully and intentionally selects images that are rooted in the very identities they portray.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the pieces in Insides She Swallowed <\/em>meditate on the roles of family\/community and of shared memories, taking advantage of the child\u2019s perspective and childlike wonder to make observations that might otherwise remain unsaid. In \u201cBamboo\u201d the speaker is able to share her mother\u2019s grief over her dying grandfather and the way it brings them together to \u201cignore the twenty-one years we have held our emotions \/ like women, like bamboo cupping rainwater in a storm.\u201d She captures the ways in which women often deny and suppress their own feelings as well as the ways in which those feelings may eventually spill over. But most of the poem is spent imagining what her mother might be thinking without talking about it, with lines such as “She counts the memories \/ she will never have because she moved West” and “My mother thinks of her father’s changing body, \/ how it breaks like a chicken’s wishbone \/ in the dampened handkerchief of his bed.” In this way, she shows the ways emotions are hidden and revealed within families.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Chac\u00f3n possesses a keen insight for the observed but unstated, unafraid to tackle any issue from the personal to the political. \u201cBlood, Sister\u201d is one of her boldest pieces, a social commentary on the state of impoverished women in Manila. In the first section, the speaker observes women on the streets and\u00a0 addresses them as “Blood Sister” even as she observes how they differ: “often, you are outside of them, and they are inside the car, \/ bus, or pedicab: they \/ are going somewhere \/ \u2013you are not, and they refuse your drink\u00a0 because \/ you are not clean.” As the sections progress, the speaker seeks commonality with these women and acknowledges the slim luck that separates her from them with, “Had you my father with his passports […] would you be \/ very different from me?” Throughout this piece, the speaker confronts the status and privilege that now separate her from the women of her motherland. In the end, she loses as much as she gains. Her ending lines resonate:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

and I am eating you<\/span><\/p>\n

because you take my place<\/span><\/p>\n

in the streets.<\/span><\/p>\n

You fill my mouth<\/span><\/p>\n

because I am empty<\/span><\/p>\n

of memory, birthright,<\/span><\/p>\n

the bruise of begging,<\/span><\/p>\n

empty<\/span><\/p>\n

and this is hunger, this is hunger.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Chac\u00f3n has a powerful ability to convey meaning with little explication. Her poems are often personal, exploring the relationships within one\u2019s family and community as well as how the Filipino American identity may be at odds with the traditional Filipino or American ones.\u00a0 She fearlessly paints the truth in its raw form,\u00a0 inundating the senses with a rapidity, grittiness and sensuality that, ultimately, leaves the reader satiated.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Insides She Swallowed by Sasha Pimental Chac\u00f3n | West End Press 2010 | $13.95 Sasha Pimental Chac\u00f3n\u2019s debut collection, Insides She Swallowed, brims with ripe, unusual images that linger long after each poem.\u00a0 She explains that the collection is based \u201con what we consume in order not be consumed ourselves\u201d, and powerfully portrays these ideas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[260,259],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1438,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}