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littlerah's review
5.0
It's hard to review personal experience. Harder again to not imbue the review with your own experiences. But chances are, I will do this regardless.
"I didn't lose anything personal except perhaps the myth that blonde princesses live, well, happily ever after" (9).
Yellow City follows Ellena's 2017 return to Lisbon, to uncover the results of a crime committed against her eleven years prior. The chapbook explores the ebbs and errs of memory, of self-hood and freedom. Sexual assault. Where perpetrators are innocent. Children. Where trauma regardless, lingers in nooks we still try to understand.
I'm all too familiar with the parental secrecy, with the urgency to know myself again after the experiences of my youth. This echoes in Ellena's words, "Do you know me?" Do I even know me? Ellena and I alike have begun sculpting our new lives, as well as our new selves, shedding perspectives and thoughts like snakeskin. We continue to be the same, but different.
"I didn't think about the word trauma until years later, when I noticed that my nerves could not hold still, not even in a minor crisis" (22).
What Ellena writes is powerful. Exploratory, and truth. Empowered by asides, by the back and forth reassuring and questioning of our own minds, Ellena offers readers an insight into her life, and into crimes with no witnesses. She is careful, poetic and just. I am chilled and stuck, not everything in yellow is warming. Listen to all the tones. Listen to this incredible written voice.
"I didn't lose anything personal except perhaps the myth that blonde princesses live, well, happily ever after" (9).
Yellow City follows Ellena's 2017 return to Lisbon, to uncover the results of a crime committed against her eleven years prior. The chapbook explores the ebbs and errs of memory, of self-hood and freedom. Sexual assault. Where perpetrators are innocent. Children. Where trauma regardless, lingers in nooks we still try to understand.
I'm all too familiar with the parental secrecy, with the urgency to know myself again after the experiences of my youth. This echoes in Ellena's words, "Do you know me?" Do I even know me? Ellena and I alike have begun sculpting our new lives, as well as our new selves, shedding perspectives and thoughts like snakeskin. We continue to be the same, but different.
"I didn't think about the word trauma until years later, when I noticed that my nerves could not hold still, not even in a minor crisis" (22).
What Ellena writes is powerful. Exploratory, and truth. Empowered by asides, by the back and forth reassuring and questioning of our own minds, Ellena offers readers an insight into her life, and into crimes with no witnesses. She is careful, poetic and just. I am chilled and stuck, not everything in yellow is warming. Listen to all the tones. Listen to this incredible written voice.
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