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Cruel Fiction
Cruel Fiction brings together new material with celebrated work published here for the first time in book form, including the provocative and charged “Brazilian Is Not a Race,” a sonnet sequence meditating on race, nation, and history seen from the author’s native Rio Grande Valley. This is a spectacular debut trying to puzzle though the insurgencies, context, and kinesis of our present, from the workplace to the pop charts but most of all to the politics of struggle.
Copies for purchase now available: https://communeeditions.com/cruel-fic...
Copies for purchase now available: https://communeeditions.com/cruel-fic...
128 pages, Paperback
Published September 11, 2018
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481 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
March 29, 2020
Warrior beauty.
I loved this. It goes directly into my favourites, it kind o f makes you want to start a revolution, which is great considering it´s poetry.
I hope to find more poetry by Wendy Treviño.
She really really wakes you up, the senses, her pop references, her cultural references, her way of dealing with identity. She´s pretty amazing.
I loved this. It goes directly into my favourites, it kind o f makes you want to start a revolution, which is great considering it´s poetry.
I hope to find more poetry by Wendy Treviño.
She really really wakes you up, the senses, her pop references, her cultural references, her way of dealing with identity. She´s pretty amazing.
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October 1, 2018If you'd like a copy of CRUEL FICTION, you can now get one here: http://communeeditions.com/cruel-fict...
Reviews of Cruel Fiction can be found:
1. At Frieze (a contemporary art magazine): https://frieze.com/article/wendy-trev...
2. At Publishers Weekly as a starred review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/r...
Reviews of Cruel Fiction can be found:
1. At Frieze (a contemporary art magazine): https://frieze.com/article/wendy-trev...
2. At Publishers Weekly as a starred review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/r...
December 10, 2018
Brazilian is Not a Race, the second sonnet-sequence in this collection of three chapbooks, practices a DiPriman-type Revolutionary Letters form, rebarbative primarily in relation to myths of the "mestizaje" redolent in the Mexican-American belle lettres of Richard Rodriguez's Brown and the auto-ethnographic scholarship of Gloria Anzaldua, for whom the mestizo constitutes a donee of race amalgamation teleologically trimmed toward the so-called [Americanized, whitened] Hispanic, that precisely erases racial and class hierarchies within immiserated borderland communities. The sequence culminates in the sonnet that gives its reader the collection's title: "A border, like race, is a cruel fiction | Maintained by constant policing, violence | Always threatening a new map." These state-forces monopolizing the police, the incarceral complex, the rules bounding bodies and curbing their flow, are seen clearly by Trevino in her own rebarbative acts of helpless personalism. So simple a purpose in resistance must seek stem in so agonized a context of the coming community.
April 17, 2023
As usual, mean then nice.
She is very pre-occupied with the poetics of race. I agree with her politics, but I confess I don't find the problem as interesting as she does. Mixing is good. Duh. She's a metaphysical deflationist. I think that's laughable. What do you think will happen if you think about Being, Wendy? What are you afraid of? Metaphysics is not homogenizing or flat. You can say meaningful stuff about the causa sui and have decent racial politics. This should be obvious. Monism was always diverse and progressive. She thinks you can share a culture with people that want another holocaust. I think that's naive and deranged. Go read Mao's liberalism pamphlet Wendy.
Ok. From what I just said, the situation seems pretty dire. I claim that in reality things are fine. These alarming pseudo-Nazi racial assertions are fictions. You still remember how to tell the difference between fiction and reality, right? I claim Wendy does.
We have been cruel. Let's be kind now. Wendy's writing is stunningly beautiful. I thought it was funny when she said her dad passes for white until he opens his mouth. I agree with her suggestion that we admit that we don't grow out of good music. Most importantly, she's right that the point of all this quasi-fascist racial trickery is to make room for un-American modes of life. "There has to/ Be room for that." Yes.
She is very pre-occupied with the poetics of race. I agree with her politics, but I confess I don't find the problem as interesting as she does. Mixing is good. Duh. She's a metaphysical deflationist. I think that's laughable. What do you think will happen if you think about Being, Wendy? What are you afraid of? Metaphysics is not homogenizing or flat. You can say meaningful stuff about the causa sui and have decent racial politics. This should be obvious. Monism was always diverse and progressive. She thinks you can share a culture with people that want another holocaust. I think that's naive and deranged. Go read Mao's liberalism pamphlet Wendy.
Ok. From what I just said, the situation seems pretty dire. I claim that in reality things are fine. These alarming pseudo-Nazi racial assertions are fictions. You still remember how to tell the difference between fiction and reality, right? I claim Wendy does.
We have been cruel. Let's be kind now. Wendy's writing is stunningly beautiful. I thought it was funny when she said her dad passes for white until he opens his mouth. I agree with her suggestion that we admit that we don't grow out of good music. Most importantly, she's right that the point of all this quasi-fascist racial trickery is to make room for un-American modes of life. "There has to/ Be room for that." Yes.
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October 16, 2018loved this book! you can read my review here: https://entropymag.org/fighting-back-...
January 3, 2021
This poetry collection was stunning. Trevino has a way of voicing what many people want to say, but she says it with clarity and with importance.
The collection focuses on identity and race in Mexico and the US, the importance of intersectional feminism, the issues with capitalism, and the ideas behind protests and riots. This is poetry that really makes you stop to decipher and think.
I will need to re-read this collection just to experience again the feeling that makes you want to go out and shout about something, and to use the words that will make someone listen with intent because there is a weight behind them. This collection just goes to show that poety really can ignite and animate a passion for action.
"A border, like race, is a cruel fiction maintained by constant policing, violence always threatening a new map."
The collection focuses on identity and race in Mexico and the US, the importance of intersectional feminism, the issues with capitalism, and the ideas behind protests and riots. This is poetry that really makes you stop to decipher and think.
I will need to re-read this collection just to experience again the feeling that makes you want to go out and shout about something, and to use the words that will make someone listen with intent because there is a weight behind them. This collection just goes to show that poety really can ignite and animate a passion for action.
"A border, like race, is a cruel fiction maintained by constant policing, violence always threatening a new map."
May 18, 2019
absolutely great! my favorite parts are still mostly from brazilian is not a race which i already wrote a lil baby review of. but of course i have the softest of spots for poems about marches and riots and the going back to work, and theres some really good ones of those too.
September 15, 2024
I saw this book described as unflinching and that is about all I think readers need to know. This is a complicated and powerful collection of poems broken up into three powerful sections.
March 12, 2019
siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick
May 6, 2019
I read this book twice, more to bear witness to the powerful belief unfolding in the pages, than to pick up what I’d missed in the first reading. Each poem shows what’s essential, and important, and more importantly what’s not important and never should be. Why those things should never be essential is what the poems make us think about at length, and that’s something which is why you should read this book, right now.
As an immigrant, I know how borders are hideous(and how CBP and ICE under the garb of “securing the borders” harass children and women at the borders among others) and capitalism in itself is based on fleecing money off of poor workers, while at the same time ensuring to keep the system running. This book resonated with me in so many ways, and I’ll keep coming back to it. I’ll ask people close to me to read it as well. Thank you!
As an immigrant, I know how borders are hideous(and how CBP and ICE under the garb of “securing the borders” harass children and women at the borders among others) and capitalism in itself is based on fleecing money off of poor workers, while at the same time ensuring to keep the system running. This book resonated with me in so many ways, and I’ll keep coming back to it. I’ll ask people close to me to read it as well. Thank you!
November 2, 2018
One of the top poetry books of the year...of ever. &I can't wait for her next volume.
November 8, 2018
Stop reading this review; now go read this stunning collection.
March 10, 2021
This book houses three collections of poetry... the first two are witty caustic political fun, the last (Brazilian is Not a Race) is brilliant!!! I read it very quickly and easily, and it confronts some of the deepest taboos in Mexican/Latinx culture. It pulls the rug out from under Anzaldúa/La Raza rhetoric and demands a reckoning with anti-Blackness and the way we view ourselves.
February 7, 2019
Not having this in my staff pick slot at the bookstore was the only sad thing about quitting the bookstore. This book.
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February 23, 2021Incredible book. Created a lot of thoughtful conversations with friends. I keep coming back to it.
August 21, 2022
Glad I read this after reading Borderlands. Definitely a must for those of us who have always wrestled with those concepts surrounding identity.
February 22, 2021
This collection of poetry has an urgency and rhythm to it that completely took me in. The poet shares her perspective on race relations and historical movements as seen from the lens of her Mexican heritage. Her sonnets in the second and third part of the book are especially poignant—I couldn’t put them down.
Perhaps what I will remember most was the way she used the form of poetry to become something active, something awake and allow it to carry on beyond the confines of its ending and limits.
“...We are who we are
To them, even when we don’t know who we
Are to each other & culture is a
Record of us figuring it out.”
Perhaps what I will remember most was the way she used the form of poetry to become something active, something awake and allow it to carry on beyond the confines of its ending and limits.
“...We are who we are
To them, even when we don’t know who we
Are to each other & culture is a
Record of us figuring it out.”
November 18, 2019
As someone who has spent time in Mexico and has friends and family from there, I've always found it strange that Mexican is cast as a race in the US political imagination - as if American (as in Estadounidense) was a race -- clearly it is not (and what is, I would -- alongside of this collection -- ask). I really appreciate the grounded exploration of this territory, alongside of an exploration of national (and other) borders, and the role of all of these institutions -- these Cruel Fictions -- in Capitalism, Colonialism, and the history and methodologies of control -- and all as POETRY! Wow.
October 8, 2019
Shout out to Faye in Penn Book Center for pulling this off the shelf and telling me to at the very least read the last poem in the book. After flipping through and seeing critiques of Gloria Anzaldúa, POC identity, anti-Blackness, a poem for Jamie Berrout, and some other things I wonder about but rarely say aloud, I was like yeah ok here is a poetry collection I will definitely read. I am not one to read poetry. I will go to a poetry reading many times more than buy a book of it. So that is to say I enjoyed this one, as a time capsule of many topics floating about in personal conversations and private/socially monitored online spaces. I will save my deeper criticisms for conversations with friends but in general I'm trying to read more of this anti-capitalist cohort’s poetry.
July 21, 2020
a dazzling, messy, vulnerable performance on every page that churns over the world’s pain, artifice, mania, and magic. offering two hands palms up to share hope like water. we must struggle for a better world. it is not simply our rent for our time on this planet but our strength & joy & love.
March 10, 2019
Very dense, thought provoking poetry/lit book. Definitely planning on rereading it. Definitely recommend it.
July 23, 2019
READ IT. Probably the best book I’ve read all year.
April 28, 2020
joder <3
March 14, 2022
Trevino manages a poetic investigation into race, into the efficacy of using poetry to investigate anything, into the concept of nationality, into the fact of nationality and histories revolving around that, into the culture of music and how the culture of anything could possibly influence the present. And, I mean, what DOESN'T Trevino get into. Or what does it feel like she couldn't get into might be the real moment for this book. What I admire in Cruel Fiction is the author's authority accumulated over a series of observations, interrogations, and general understanding that these observations and interrogations are part of a life lived through poetry.
Want to read
October 18, 2023I just ordered this after seeing one of her poems published in the Academy of American Poets "Poem a Day" feed. I'll write a proper review once I read it, but for now, I wanted to note the short bio from the feed:
"Originally from the Rio Grande Valley, she works as a grant writer in the San Francisco Bay Area."
And what Trevino says about her poem titled "Poem"
“I often think about how everything exists in relation to everything else. This poem is one of my attempts to write from that space about that space.”
"Originally from the Rio Grande Valley, she works as a grant writer in the San Francisco Bay Area."
And what Trevino says about her poem titled "Poem"
“I often think about how everything exists in relation to everything else. This poem is one of my attempts to write from that space about that space.”
February 6, 2019
5.
At most, I can see a painting being like a bluff, a view
Of the back of your opponent's cards when you're playing
For money & you've already lost more than you planned.
But your relationship with it isn't the most important
Or interesting one. Your love won't change what a painting
Is, which is someone's time spent working for someone else.
- from "5 Out of 13 Ways of Looking at Poetry Not Being Enough"
April 16, 2019
The best work in this book, in my opinion, are the poems where Wendy gets personal. While much of the political slant in the book I heartily disagree with, there are some poignant moments of struggling with the fact that humans invade and conquer other humans' spaces.
April 25, 2019
Sharp, witty, funny poems about the author's experiences growing up in Brownsville, protesting in Oakland, and surviving in capitalism. These poems are frank, direct, and provocative in the best ways.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews