Fruit Punch

February 1, 2022

Recipient of the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet and author of the widely reviewed The Collection Plate: Poems, Allen offers a memoir explaining how she overcame the suffocating expectations of a young Black woman growing up in the South in the 1990s and early 2000s. There's real in-house excitement for this work as special in language and content; witness the 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 2, 2022
In this wholly original and unsparing work, essayist Allen (When You Learn the Alphabet) recounts her experience coming of age as a young Black woman in Texas in the 1990s and 2000s. Full of intense relationships that cycled through love, violence, possession, and avoidance, Allen’s childhood was deeply impacted by her codependent relationship with her mother and her strained relationship with her distant father. While she lightly trots through familiar events like first boyfriends and first-day-of-high-school anxiety (“I become a cliché and have a panic attack”), Allen’s prowess comes through in her blunt rendering of the powerlessness she struggled against as a Black woman navigating race and sexuality in the South. By age 16, she writes, “sex and shame with myself has become a lifeline I’ve conditioned to be good at.” That guilt was compounded by the confines of religion and the commands (“No bare legs”; “No questions”; “No sex”) of her great-great-uncle’s Southern Baptist church, where she grew up. Throughout, Allen’s voice is distinct and brash—recalling a car wreck she survived in high school, she writes, “I got the guts from cuts spilling out every second.” Indeed, the narrative rarely lets up in its frank or discomfiting depictions, but it yields a refreshingly authentic look at what it means to create oneself in a contradictory world.

May 1, 2022
A Black woman's unflinching look at her childhood and adolescence in Texas in the 1990s. Allen, the author of the acclaimed essay collection, When You Learn the Alphabet, grew up in the Dallas area with her father, Doll, and her mother, L.A., who broke up and got back together several times throughout her childhood and adolescence. "Men are jealous" is one of the first lessons her mother taught her, although her parents' split was catalyzed by Doll's infidelity. One night, long after her father moved to Houston, Allen woke up to L.A. and Doll having sex in the bed where she was sleeping. Most children, she writes, "don't expect to see their married parents who live in two different cities and in two different residences having sex in the middle of a school night in the bed the child shares with their single mother." However, the reconciliation didn't last. As Allen and her mother felt increasingly alone, the author tried to "help L.A. raise me by growing up and entering into some typa sister-wives union." Later, she asked L.A. if they could attend therapy sessions because they were "too codependent." Throughout, the author uses prose inventively, employing vernacular language, nontraditional line breaks, nonlinear chronology, and deliberate obfuscation about her age. In a key moment in the book, Allen writes about how she was sexually assaulted by a family member and describes herself as "nine, but probably seven." Later, the author describes relating memories of her childhood to an unnamed male therapist, who prompted her to share her childhood trauma with her mother (whose response was underwhelming). Allen's rendering of the material is visceral and unique, and her insights are powerful. Sometimes, however, the framing device of the therapy sessions has the unintended effect of highlighting how certain passages are more confessional than narratively compelling. A piercing coming-of-age narrative from an original voice.

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June 1, 2022
Allen (When You Learn the Alphabet, 2019) bestows a fresh literary voice on this memoir filled with humor, honesty, and thought-provoking truth. She recalls the details of her parents' rocky relationship and how she eventually sees them in her own relationships. With a therapist's gentle nudge, Allen comes to terms with being molested as a child and acknowledges its long-lasting effects throughout her life. As an adolescent, she learns to reclaim ownership of her body and life with strict boundaries for toxic relationships. She also understands how she wants to be respected by witnessing her mother's relationship with her siblings. As she analyzes the interactions around her, Allen develops feminist values that are concrete and drenched with meaning. Allen's fellow millennials especially will appreciate her nostalgic references; all readers will enjoy Allen's intimate writing and the wit she weaves in between epiphanies. With admirable and inspiring vulnerability, Allen brings readers along in her journey to understand her very makeup. Life doesn't grant happy endings, she reminds us; but rather a revolving door of growth and self-reflection.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2022

Allen, a millennial author of essays and poetry, is making a space in the literary conversation (When You Learn the Alphabet). Here she offers a memoir of her Dallas childhood and its adult repercussions. It reads like a stream of consciousness work of her child-self, grasping at concepts just beyond her understanding but processing them as best she can as she grows. She reacts to the adults around her and describes traumatic events from her childhood in ways that a child would, making the reader not quite recognize what has happened until the realization drops suddenly. The point-blank observations of her younger self cut to the core with their honesty. The memoir is not told chronologically but builds circularly, revealing more of the writer and her background from different angles. It's a penetrating look at life with divorce, sexual assault, crushes, family strife, and school drama all factoring in. The conversational tone, with poetic cadences, help the reader quickly engage and understand the writer's background and culture. VERDICT This memoir is troubling and difficult at times, but also candid and familiar. Recommended for general collections.--Amanda Ray

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.