Please check out my debut memoir The Borderland Between Worlds which explores issues of immigration, belonging, bullying and mental health. “Not fully belonging anywhere or with anyone is a great burden to bear…but it can be a place of incomparable strength.” The Borderland Between Worlds is available on Amazon https://amzn.to/38RanP5 and Barnes and Nobles: https://bit.ly/2G09M0
Family means different things to different people, and Tori Bond explores what family means in her debut, flash-fiction collection, Familyism. Whether her stories consist of children spending time in nature and performing plays or townspeople, sitting in a bar and dreaming of a way out, Bond is able to create entire worlds with a sparsity of words. Bond captures the essence of the mundane as well as the extraordinary; she immerses us in the surreal and magical but keeps us rooted through her skillful exploration of human emotion. The author has the unique ability to make the reader feel deeply; her stories are crafted with care and are guaranteed to fill the reader with wonder. The powerful endings of each story will leave readers mesmerized.
Bond uses her ability to make the reader laugh, but Familyism goes beyond simply being funny; Familyism is equally sad and profound and joyful. While reading, I found the veins of isolation, loneliness, and the yearning for escape crashing over me like a wave. Characters experience the loneliness of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the settings of the stories don’t offer characters an escape. Again, the reader is drawn into a world of powerful emotion. Regardless of the intensity of feeling Familyism elicits, Bond masterfully balances emotion through her well-timed use of narration and humor.
I highly recommend Familyism; It is not just a book, it is an experience! The book is a quick read, and the stories flow easily. You will ponder, question, and reminisce. This book could make you laugh out loud, so I don’t recommend reading it in public.
Of tears, exclusion, pain
among the darkness
sometimes comes a ray
from lives of tumult
the turning of pages
pen to paper to survive memory
with this, books are made
Yes, death does come for all
for every summer,
there must be a fall
but we always leave
a part of us in the world
and the part of the world
which was loved
always stays
in the immortal heart.
Nothing’s perfect
just what appears to be
but even those things
one day must fade
every bit taken away
– the only power within those
seemingly perfect things is
that for one brief moment,
they really had been.
She welcomed the end of summer’s oppression,
the pressure under, over, everywhere
having cooked her from within.
In summer, the sun weighed down
disheartening dreams,
while the wandering, distracted mind meandered
wished to be someplace else,
wished to be free
somewhere else
where she was listened to, was esteemed,
someplace else where she never had to fear
being suspect for being something less than ideal
a place she wanted to welcome on hot skin
like a perfectly cool breeze.
When you think it can’t,
that it won’t come
with nothing in sight,
just night in front of you,
it does comes through
the smallest strand of
light among darkness
just barely enough
to see you through.
Fairies, fireflies
neon garden in flight
a spinning vortex
circling till the end of time.
In the battlefield of right and wrong,
matters not whose weak, whose strong.
Truth has its own strength,
tougher than ignominy, harder than steel.
AYESHA F. HAMID 