Book Review: When My Brother Was an Aztec

When My Brother Was an Aztec, by Natalie Diaz (2012)

This is a rich poetry collection that I loved spending time with to savor the language. Diaz is both a wonderful storyteller and an imaginative wordsmith. Her poems can be painful, passionate, and funny. Many in this volume focus on her brother--a troubled, meth-addicted war vet--whom she tries to understand as she attempts to conjure--with her words--some meaning for his life, the chaos he causes in hers and, even more, in their parents':

"He thought he was Huitzilopochtli, a god, half-man half-hummingbird. My parents/at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his swordlike mouth,/gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened. . . . Neighbors were amazed my parents' hearts kept/growing back--It said a lot about my parents, or parents' hearts" ("When My Brother Was an Aztec").

Other poems focus on the poverty of their childhoods on an Indian reservation, on the sensuous joy and vulnerability of her time with lovers, and on cultural appropriation. Throughout, she incorporates characters from Catholicism and various mythologies, sprinkling Spanish words and phrases (some of which I could translate; others I looked up and learned something) and some that I think are Mojave, as she is Mojave, and her bio says that she works on her home reservation "with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language":

"What if Eve was an Indian/& Adam was never kneaded/from the earth, Eve was Earth/& ribs were her idea all along?/What if Mary was an Indian/& when Gabriel visited her wigwam/she was away at a monthly WIC clinic/receiving eggs, boxed cheese/& peanut butter instead of Jesus?"

This volume moved me, got me thinking, and sometimes made me laugh. I highly recommend it.