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So We Can Glow by Leesa Cross-Smith (A Book Review)

This is a great collection of stories covering the nuances and idiosyncrasies of womanhood. It explores their emotions, loves, memories, and reasons of why some women choose some things that govern their lives. Below are some of the stories that I liked most.

We Moons: I loved the sheer honesty of womanhood. It was beautifully written. It reached deeply into intricate parts of being a woman.

Pink Bubblegum and Flowers: Is about the awareness of the harshness of life’s circumstances layered right beneath the innocence of youth. The sweet smell of bubblegum and flowers provided a calming balm for the less than ideal situation at hand. It cemented the mutual love in the midst of chaos.

Knock Out The Heart So We Can Glow: This story represented the deep longing of a woman wanting love in her very specific way.

Some lines that were poignant were: “She was drawn to the dusty items no one else seemed to love.”

“She asked her husband if he remembered when she was eating pineapple and started to cry because she was alive and some people weren’t. Reminded him of that morning after church when her hair was baptism-wet. How she sat at the kitchen table, born again, drowning in the sunlight.”

“Her husband was a good man and she loved him, but he didn’t know how to be special, how to glow. She said it was pretty simple and she’d teach him. There was no big secret. You just had to let the things in your heart get real dark first.”

Two Cherries Under A Lavender Moon: This was about the sweetness of fantasy love and the heady, fast, and swelling feeling of which that love provides.

Boy Smoke: This story was about a wife discovering her husband’s affair and kicking him out of the house, while his students were driving pass their home. Some memorable lines from this story were: “Her face looks like a country song: smudged black eyeliner, red wine teeth.” “He’s Max and I’m Nina,” Coach’s wife says, snapping to normal in the way that only women can when they’re holding up the Earth. Nina says thanks to us and smokes at the front of the car, standing there like a crownless queen in streetlamp light.”

Dandelion Light: This is a sweet account of acquaintances slow dancing towards reconnection.

I absolutely loved the lyrical and poetic flow of how these stories were written. It captured the essence of each subject of each story. It was a beautiful collection of stories. This is the second body of work I read from this author and it was another great reading experience.

Rating: 9/10

Author:

I was always fascinated by books as a child. The beauty of how words flow is phenomenal to me. The way a story envelops the reader and transports them is a joy. As an adult, I kept my love of all things literary by remaining an avid reader, blogging, self-publishing a poetry book, and editing several children's books.

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