Dantiel W. Moniz

This book contains wonderfully jarring and alarming prose
“We excused ourselves. Anyway, we might have thought, haven’t we always eaten the young?”
(p. 148), from “Exotics.”
“Pastor pulled him aside last Sunday and told him the devil came in many forms, but most shaped like women.” (p. 36) from “Tongues.”

Moniz presents a remarkable set of short stories. Her characters are engaging and memorable. She depicts intense friendships, some with blurry boundaries and paradoxical show more aspects of love and hate. Additionally, she explores women’s issues, politics, and religion through her characters’ thoughts and dialog. Each story is told through the eyes of a first-person narrator. The characters use potent words that sometimes set me on edge but convey themes and messages pointedly.

Grief is a central theme with the loss of babies, friends, spouses, and parents. The loss of innocence, childhood and security also causes grief. Characters refuse to be victims. The stories provoke readers to question social norms and challenge assumptions. The author attempts to excise stigmas about sensitive topics. She emphasized transparency in expressing feelings and thoughts. Additionally, the characters’ issues are portrayed alongside world issues.

The discussion of mother-and-daughter relationships is heartfelt and painful in several stories. The author seems wiser than her years in recognizing the difficulties of accepting one’s parent as a human with flaws and vulnerabilities. Likewise, the husband and wife dynamics are front and center in stories such as “Loss of Heaven” and “Feast.”

She expresses painfully specific descriptions of bodily experiences and how the senses perceive the world. Each story touches a bit on darkness and light that humans recognize in each other. There are 54 uses of the word dark in the book, and light is used 71 times. But these are literal citations. The marvels of these short stories are the deep and unique depictions of the duality of human existence. I couldn’t help but wonder about the darkness and light each person emanates.

None of the stories in this collection has a clear resolution. In an interview with the author, she said she purposely wrote stories with ambiguous endings because “it allows you to think of the characters as living off the page. They will continue to make choices when the story ends.”

This writing is amazing!

See my reviews at https://quipsandquotes.net/ show less

Moniz wrote an excellent debut short story collection, especially if you are a Florida native (and particularly a woman or a black woman, you can really relate to these stories!). These stories are mostly set in good ol' Jacksonville, but a few are ambiguously somewhere in Florida. Brilliantly, each story somehow mentions "milk," "blood," and "heat," often in very creative and differing ways.

Moniz captured so many feelings and dormant memories I had as a young girl in Florida; she conjured show more up memories of beach waves towering over my head in "Outside the Raft," a shocking remembrance of childhood wonder and darkness in "Milk Blood Heat," the titular story, wrestling with religion as a child in "Tongues," and a young woman's struggle to determine if she wants a child in "Necessary Bodies."

However, in spite of those favorite short stories, I ultimately gave this anthology a 3 star review because several stories felt incomplete. Not incomplete in a cool, cliff-hanging way, but incomplete as in the story felt unfinished, like a rough draft. Particularly, "Thicker than Water" left me frustrated with its abrupt ending and unfinished feel.

Some stories also felt out-of-place: "Exotics" was a great 2 page commentary on the exotic animal meat industry, but it did not seem to fit with the anthologies overall messages on Florida and black women. "An Almanac of Bones" was excellent, but it was the least relatable for me (it tells the story of gypsy women having a full moon festival) and also did not feel as if it fit the anthologies' overarching messages about black Floridian women.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this collection, and I cannot wait to see what other works Moniz creates! show less

This was an absolutely riveting collection of short stories all centered on women, for the most part, and mortality. Beautifully written, Moniz set all of the stories in her home state of Florida and hot steaminess clung to every page. Eleven stories and yet I can't find a single dud among them. A wonderful debut for a very talented writer. I'll be looking forward to her next book.

Some of these stories hit for me and some missed, but overall a solid collection. I like reading Florida stories set in northern Florida for a change, and I like the way Moniz portrays the rich and conflicted inner lives of her characters, how self and culture and family intersect and sometimes conflict. I started with the audio, which had hardly a pause between stories, and I was glad to have the print to clear up the boundaries.