Elizabeth Acevedo seems to be a writer I really want to love but two times I have been quite disappointed. I looked back and saw I did give ‘With the Fire on High’ four stars, but I remember being kind of let down by it in the end, so I must have felt generous that day.
The story follows Xiomara, one part of twins born to Dominican Republicans after years of struggling with infertility. Her parents feel like their birth is a gift from God, a miracle, especially their mother who has been very religious all her life. Consequently her mother ups her devoutness in life, going to daily mass and her father swears off his playboy lifestyle of dancing and flirting.
The twins and especially Xiomara live a very sheltered life with a lot of religiously founded rules about dating, modesty and church life.
When Xiomara starts having questions about her faith there is no room for asking those at home and when she starts falling for a classmate she finds herself breaking more and more of the rules she had taken for granted all her life.
Xiomara has always been more of a quiet type, scribbling away at poems in her notebook instead of speaking up for the things she wants in life. When she gets a new English teacher in the beginning of the new school year, she is pushed to come out of her shell and thrown into the world of slam poetry.
The whole book is written in verse, because we are basically reading what Xiomara writes in her notebook. I listened to the audiobook that is narrated by the writer as it seemed to be the best way to consume this story. Unfortunately most of the poems didn’t hit me that hard emotionally. Most of the time it felt really easy and I felt like it portrayed more of characature of a teenage girl, Catholic devoutness and teenage love and consequently they did not feel like real people or real emotions and situations.
I was pleasantly surprised in the end that it didn’t go cliché all the way and debated giving it 4 stars because of that, but ultimately I didn’t feel like it transcended mediocrity in any way.
Books & Babies 