BOOK REVIEW: ​GLASS SLIPPER DREAMS, SHATTERED BY DOUNGJAI GAM

With this, her debut collection, Doungjai Gam delivers a stunning menagerie of work--mostly short pieces that walk the razored-wire between poetry and flash fiction. Every one of them using the economy of words to inflict the perfect amount of raw emotive power.  Some are, even at their short length--sprawling murals of tragedy and sadness while others are dizzying finger paintings of brutality and honesty. 

An example: "Christmas Lights in February" is a slap across the face, the slapping hands fingers laced with barbed-wire.

Another example: "Repose" is a blindfold soaked in despair and tied tightly across the eyes, not to inhibit sight but to force them to see what it hold so very, very closely.

On more example: "Divorce and Road kill" a short story that reads more like prose but regardless of what you want to label it--it is a weapon of anger and strength and dark as a miner's lungs.
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The slivers of wordage displayed in here are grim and dire, sharp and stony. They are a million screaming pebbles on the beach of your mind and they have much to say and scream.   The glimpses of what has got to be personal suffering and sadness are tremendous and took undeniable strength and more than a fistful of love.  All of what I said here--the ridiculous metaphor and simile--it's all true. Every single thing I said about this collection, I speak with honesty.  Doungjai has crafted a helluva debut and has craved her name into the walls of the genre as a person to keep watching. I know I will be, I'm certain that it's a name that will be seen with much more frequency in the future.
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Glass Slipper Dreams, Shattered is available from Apokrupha.com