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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
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      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
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      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
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      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
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      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
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      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
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Book Review: Lessons on Expulsion by Erika L. Sánchez

Erika L. Sánchez
Lessons on Expulsion
Graywolf Press, 2017
ISBN: 978-1555977788
96 Pages
$16.00


Erika L. Sánchez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. A poet, novelist, and essayist, her debut poetry collection, Lessons on Expulsion, was published by Graywolf in July 2017, and was a finalist for the PEN America Open Book Award. Her debut young adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, published in October 2017 by Knopf Books for Young Readers, is a New York Times Bestseller and a National Book Awards finalist. Her memoir Crying in the Bathroom is forthcoming from Viking.

Erika was a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellow, and a recent recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. She has recently been appointed the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Chair in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at DePaul University and is part of the inaugural core faculty of the Randolph College Low Residency MFA Program.


​

Review


























A Review of Erika L. Sánchez's Lessons on Expulsion
 

 At first glance readers might ask themselves, “What is the meaning of ‘Lessons on Expulsion?” Poet, novelist, and essayist, Erika L. Sánchez answers that question by starting with an epigraph from Larry Levis’ “Elegy in the Sound of a Skipping Rope”: “Love’s an immigrant, it shows itself in its work. / It works for almost nothing.” Sectioned into three untitled parts, Sánchez invites readers into this award-winning poetry collection that teeters on the edge of the border when dealing with the expectations of cultural norms in a male-dominated society.

Whether it’s through vignettes of her own life and experiences or scenes of the daily struggles of Mexico, Sánchez weaves together poetry that veers from lovely eloquence to stark reality, guiding readers to engage with poems like “Amá” that is reflective of failure and expectations in the face of motherhood. She then stuns them with the visceral imagery of the narco-world in “Kingdom of Debt,” before delving into concepts regarding sexuality and identity in her poem "Girl" as well as her "Self-Portrait" pieces. Throughout the book, Sánchez plays on the themes of sex and violence faced by women around the world, from being catcalled at the age of thirteen to later being yelled at by their mothers for being home too late at night, to being seen and treated like sale merchandise in “Orchid”:
            On Calle Montera, Madrid—the center of the city
            near the exact center of the country—women
            from Africa, Latin America, and dissolved
            European countries are in of McDonald’s,
            pulling on sleeves and listing prices. A teenage boy wants
            to know if they offer student discounts. A graying man
            approaches a black transvestite with golden hair
            and asks, how much to have sex with the dog?
“Orchid” tells of how women, in many cases, are treated like objects. The poem delves into the nature of objectification, highlighting a range of experiences and examples from a woman’s desperation in front of a motel in Cicero, to Édouard Manet’s Olympia, to women of different ancestries in front of a McDonald’s, and finally, to the cruelties of human trafficking in Europe. Sánchez gives pause to readers on the theme of sexuality and its relationship to oppression that is omnipresent throughout this collection, and she greets it with a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. Sánchez depicts the duality of women’s oppression and sexuality in much of her poems in this collection including, “Hija de la Chingada,” where “men whistle from their trucks / though you’re only 13 and your breasts / are still tucked / meekly inside you.” Young girls getting catcalled at the age of thirteen, and, in some cases, even as young as eleven, is not uncommon in Latinx communities, and Sánchez clearly writes this from experience.

While a large portion of this collection focuses on women’s roles in a machismo society, Sánchez also interweaves the question of identity with the subversion of a cultural norm like the Quinceanera, a coming-of-age practice that has its roots in Mesoamerica:
           You dance in the frenetic
            lights, the untz untz vibrating
            your face and skull until
            morning. But everywhere,
            the pain suckles you. Everywhere,
            you hold its lumpy head to your breast
            like a saint.
The Quinceanera marks a girl’s transition into womanhood. Many adolescent Latina girls, once they reach fifteen, undergo the ceremony. Sánchez changes the narrative and offers a viewpoint that differs from the fairytale image that many familiar with the practice identify. Rather than a princess on the cusp of adulthood, Sánchez’s “Quinceanera” depicts the point of lost innocence: a girl becomes a woman and tries to meet the expectations placed on her shoulders; yet, wishes to forge her own name, understanding the pain it will bring, but does it anyway.

Sánchez continues this question of identity in “Crossing,” one of the collection’s longest poems, which retells the journey her parents took from their homes in Mexico to entering the United States as she tries to reconcile with them, and herself, on her own self: “When asked where I am from, / what can I possibly say? / I am you, in part, I suppose, / I want to say, but I don’t.” Identity, especially cultural identity is a loaded question for Latinx people. An ancestry distilled from a million strands, it is almost impossible for many to understand their origins and reconcile with the history that comes with it. Sánchez goes further and juxtaposes the year the Europeans first landed with the year her parents “crossed the border / in the trunk of a Cadillac.” “Crossing” also delivers a sense of irony, as there are those who think they know their origins only to discover that what they thought is not the case, leaving them to “scour landscapes” perpetuating an endless migration.

With evocative language and significant, universal themes that draw on experience and cultural norms, Erika L. Sánchez has created an exquisite collection that is extremely relatable to Latinx readers while still able to tether others into its moving pages. Ever wandering through a world that continues to astound, her poetry provides a tangent feeling that expands on the meaning of what it is to walk within Latinidad and its ongoing exodus of self-discovery.

​

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Salvador Martinez is an undergraduate studying Political Science and English (Creative Writing Track) at Lewis University and is a poetry editor for Jet Fuel Review. He enjoys reading poetry, fantasy fiction, science fiction, classical works, and political theory while listening to music on his phonograph, playing one of his guitars, or simply writing prose or poetry.

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
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      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022