Book Review: Shades of Positively Pandemic
Shades of Positively Pandemic. G. T. Naya, Write Volumes, 26 June 2022, Paperback and eBook, 206 pages.
Reviewed by marssie Mencotti.
Shades of Positively Pandemic is an anthology of fictional and possibly non-fictional accounts of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are seventeen separate stories and poems that reflect the mood and tenor of a trying time. Some survivors find joy, some do not, and some must re-align their priorities. It views the impact upon a wonderful cross-section of life, from retirees to recent grads, as they adjust to the quasi-normal rhythms of sequestering-in-place. Some have deferred their personal desires and philosophy for the days' instant pleasures and are forced to stop and drop all pretense as they reevaluate and cope with a new lifestyle that has no end in sight and sometimes little daily reward.
The author, GT Naya, is a Chicago resident and a member of CWA. The Editor, Randall Van Vynckt, has been Write Volumes editor since the first anthology in 2019. He has over 28 years of editing and producing experience as well as membership in CWA, Chicago Publishing Network, and Publishing and Editing Professionals. He brings great editing and insight to this volume.
Shades of Positively Pandemic is an intense examination of individuals living in those universally experienced months of seclusion, separation, love, loss, fear, and challenge. We as individuals are chronicled for posterity, so when future generations ask about what happens to people in a pandemic, they can find some answers here. It is important that this anthology treats the events we lived through as separate and not globally experienced. Each one of these stories is allowed to open a window to individual choices and not present some cookbook psychology of the entire Covid experience. Our individual strength, our strength together, our roaming and questioning spirits, our love of others and our animal companions, our desire for love and continuity, and our search for meaning and light are individually presented without advice or admonishment.
Confining the anthology's theme to the current pandemic is like the French Oulipo form. In constraining the topic, it allows the artist to expand creatively. Each story looks at the pandemic a little differently. Karen Brailsford's opening poem ends with a rather telling sentiment, "I prefer to embrace your soul and caress your heart . . . I am no different today or yesterday or tomorrow." All who pass through the pandemic portal remain in themselves intact but stretched in some way in understanding how self-imposed constriction, the needs of humanity, and personal self-discipline elucidate their self-actualization.
Some offerings impart how dependent we can be on support from others to make it through. As a person whose cat is responsible, at least in part, for some sanity during COVID-19, "Cat Naps in the Time of Corona Virus" is a charming interlude as experienced through a prescient cat, named Mimosa, forced to co-habit with her hoomans in a very confining and confounding way. Humor in this story shows that although we may dangerously discount our furred companions, they continue to make a difference in our lives.
In "Soul to Soul," Margot McMahon corrals her daughters into a safe home space to protect them from the ensuing pandemonium. While there, a connection between long-deceased grandparents and the youngest daughter emerges. "Contagious" by Nasrin Menalagha relates how the shocking cancellation of a retirement cruise marks stopping real life to begin a violent anti-germ campaign. Both "Housebound," by Randall Jon Van Vynckt, and "Contract," by GT Naya, are about unexpected connections that can make a person's outlook change in unexpected ways.
Many more stories in this amazing anthology tell of individual experiences or triumphs. There's a lot to be learned from "The Year Everyone Joined My World" by Sharon V. Agar. The frightening daily pandemic life of a person who is immuno-challenged and shares the truth of the danger brought to bear on a person with a transplanted organ.
And love stories abound, although the time span considered in this anthology is shorter than Garcia-Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," are no less painful, sweet, and beautiful. Cameron Vanderwerf gently and with great simplicity tells of the ebb and flow of love in her bittersweet short story "Rained Out." The delicately written short story is about one of those affairs that can only happen when two people share such an intimate time. Stunning color imagery pops into "The Yellow Memory," by Elizabeth Cate, about a broken relationship and a box of an ex's things that need to be thrown away. Little things that seem to have been there all the time were missed.
Then there are the tales of spirit that belong to the strong among us as in "Cross Country," by Julie L. Kunen, who packs us into her car on an eerie escape to Montana. Leaving everything behind, we join her cross-country trip full of desolate detail and hopeful horizons as she finds her way to doing something she loves. "Reboot" by Lin Bo explores trying to think logically in an illogical situation when deciding to keep one's job or find a new one seems critical. Personal uncertainty gets a thorough examination. Finally, "Time and Space Travel Courtesy of the Pandemic," by Helen Cheng Mao, shares how the condition of self-imposed exile opens a Zoom door to skills and talents she could only imagine pre-Covid.
And, of course, a light that shines from within is the most effective. In "Year of Light," Annette Cyr examines her artist's sensibilities of seeing light in water in its infinite variations while separated from her aging mother. She manifests this light in paintings representing the thousands of Americans lost to COVID. She sees her mother and other women as courageous, proud, and able to persevere.
But where would an anthology be without a bit of opinion coming from the designer of the art for this anthology? Jo Dominguez's essay, "Growing Pains," takes a unique view of what society must go through when mandatory change is upon us. Also, "What Came First? The Chicken?" tries out a hard-boiled metaphor to examine how some of us made it through the pandemic, some having a harder time, and some still being tested.
Dominquez also delivers two soothing and gentle poems. In "Concerning Recent Events," complicated feelings are shared, and "Company," which imparts the rejuvenating freedom of a walk in the woods. Perhaps it is as Maya Angelou said, "You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong everyplace – no place at all."
There is an honesty in each piece that is raw and that these creative writers, artists, and poets relate. It speaks in ways that are frank without covering up insecurities, needs, and quests for safety. We are in every story, every hope and suppressed hope, every loss and gain, every frustration, and every small victory. Shades of Positively Pandemic reassures us that whatever we did to survive and support our fellow earth travelers was real. Each writer reached inside and found what they needed to be objective, enabling their stories to be added to the greater story of us all.