• Home
    • About Luna Luna
    • EDITORIAL TEAM
    • Special Issue Submissions
    • Volunteer Roles at Luna Luna
    • Archive
    • Legal Stuff
    • Mental Health
  • Light
  • Dark
    • Luna Luna — Occult, Sex, Vice
    • Opinion, Essay & Lifestyle
    • Poetry
    • BROWSE ALL
    • Witchcraft
    • Confess
    • Books
    • Feminism
    • Health
    • Music
  • Submit
  • Witchcraft
  • Coven
Menu

luna luna

  • Home
  • About
    • About Luna Luna
    • EDITORIAL TEAM
    • Special Issue Submissions
    • Volunteer Roles at Luna Luna
    • Archive
    • Legal Stuff
    • Mental Health
  • Light
  • Dark
  • Sections
    • Luna Luna — Occult, Sex, Vice
    • Opinion, Essay & Lifestyle
    • Poetry
    • BROWSE ALL
    • Witchcraft
    • Confess
    • Books
    • Feminism
    • Health
    • Music
  • Submit
  • Witchcraft
  • Coven
Recent diary entries
Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
Apr 24, 2018
Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018
The Text Is My Enemy: Erasing The Patriarchy With Isobel O'Hare
Apr 20, 2018
The Text Is My Enemy: Erasing The Patriarchy With Isobel O'Hare
Apr 20, 2018
Apr 20, 2018
How the Cure Helped this Cambodian Refugee Survive America
Apr 19, 2018
How the Cure Helped this Cambodian Refugee Survive America
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Mari Evans
Apr 18, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Mari Evans
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018
7 Reasons I Stopped Shaving My Legs, Arms & Bush
Apr 16, 2018
7 Reasons I Stopped Shaving My Legs, Arms & Bush
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018
Sonnets by Kristin Garth
Apr 13, 2018
Sonnets by Kristin Garth
Apr 13, 2018
Apr 13, 2018
Interview with Magda Knight of Mookychick About May Day Magic
Apr 12, 2018
Interview with Magda Knight of Mookychick About May Day Magic
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018
This Is Why I Don’t Call Myself A Woman Anymore
Apr 10, 2018
This Is Why I Don’t Call Myself A Woman Anymore
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018
Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems by C. Bain
Apr 6, 2018
Selections from Omotara James: 2 Poems by C. Bain
Apr 6, 2018
Apr 6, 2018
Poetry by ryn weil
Apr 4, 2018
Poetry by ryn weil
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018
A Playlist for the Strange & Unusual
Apr 3, 2018
A Playlist for the Strange & Unusual
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018
Interview with the Founder of The Brown Orient — Elizabeth Ruth Deyro
Apr 2, 2018
Interview with the Founder of The Brown Orient — Elizabeth Ruth Deyro
Apr 2, 2018
Apr 2, 2018
A Playlist for People Who Are Told They Internalize Too Much
Mar 28, 2018
A Playlist for People Who Are Told They Internalize Too Much
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018
Poetry by Julia Laxer
Mar 23, 2018
Poetry by Julia Laxer
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018
2 Poetry Collections That Will Change Your World
Mar 22, 2018
2 Poetry Collections That Will Change Your World
Mar 22, 2018
Mar 22, 2018
My Hair Is Not a Petty Thing
Mar 20, 2018
My Hair Is Not a Petty Thing
Mar 20, 2018
Mar 20, 2018
When You're Grieving
Mar 19, 2018
When You're Grieving
Mar 19, 2018
Mar 19, 2018
Mar 12, 2018
The Tattoo That Began as a Declaration of Love Is Now a Memorial
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018
With Hands Made of Light: A Creative Analysis of Sailor Moon
Mar 9, 2018
With Hands Made of Light: A Creative Analysis of Sailor Moon
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018
What It Means to Be an Empath
Mar 6, 2018
What It Means to Be an Empath
Mar 6, 2018
Mar 6, 2018
Interview with Sweta Srivastava Vikram About Her Debut U.S. Novel 'Louisiana Catch'
Mar 2, 2018
Interview with Sweta Srivastava Vikram About Her Debut U.S. Novel 'Louisiana Catch'
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018
The New Ambient Album You Need to Listen To
Feb 26, 2018
The New Ambient Album You Need to Listen To
Feb 26, 2018
Feb 26, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Karin Boye
Feb 26, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Karin Boye
Feb 26, 2018
Feb 26, 2018
Falling in Love with the Rose: Some Beautiful Images To Make Your Day
Feb 23, 2018
Falling in Love with the Rose: Some Beautiful Images To Make Your Day
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018
These Valentines Are Hilariously Weird & Strange
Feb 14, 2018
These Valentines Are Hilariously Weird & Strange
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018
Poetry by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Feb 12, 2018
Poetry by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018
Dear Jesse, by Andi Talarico
Feb 9, 2018
Dear Jesse, by Andi Talarico
Feb 9, 2018
Feb 9, 2018
That Zine Life: Laguna Collective's Jemimah Barba
Feb 9, 2018
That Zine Life: Laguna Collective's Jemimah Barba
Feb 9, 2018
Feb 9, 2018
Writer & Artist Joshua Byron on Being Nonbinary & Navigating the Dating World
Feb 6, 2018
Writer & Artist Joshua Byron on Being Nonbinary & Navigating the Dating World
Feb 6, 2018
Feb 6, 2018
Poetry by Amy Saul-Zerby
Feb 5, 2018
Poetry by Amy Saul-Zerby
Feb 5, 2018
Feb 5, 2018

Marian Palaia's The Given World Is A Must Read

November 20, 2015

BY MAGGIE MAY ETHRIDGE

The Given World by Marian Palaia opens time capsules like Maruschka dolls: First, it is late 80’s in Siagon. Swiftly, it is 1968 Montana, and Riley, the protagonist, is a little girl whose world is about to be blown open.

Marian Palaia writes Riley as a casualty of the Vietnam War. After Riley’s idolized, older brother goes permanently missing in the tunnels of Cu Chi, Riley remains locked in the bubble of her home with her parents. Life drains from the home as the months and years go by as the body of the family slowly dies next to the ghost of their oldest son. Riley’s fall from the roof—foreshadowing the falls to come—introduces her to morphine, and her hunger for escape is met with an outlet.

The next fall: a pregnancy. Riley leaves her infant son with her parents and spends the next 30 years wandering San Francisco, briefly touching everything she encounters with an attentive, wary mind, never embracing anyone or anything. She meets and walks alongside a number of walking wounded: Primo, the half-blind vet; Lu, a cab driver with an artistic heart; Phuong, a Saigon barmaid; and Grace, a banjo-playing girl on a train, holding her grandmother’s ashes on her own journey. All are hiding in plain sight.

Her removal and appraisal are slowly eroded by the scraping of drink, drugs and sex against her outer shell, and the lull of the years, each collapsing on the next until Riley is far enough away from the moment she learned her brother was missing. Once she is far enough away, she can return to the wound; following her brother’s footsteps, she visits Vietnam. Only then, Riley attempts sobriety.

Marian Palaia’s sentences are excellent in drawing out Riley’s inner experience of the world—highly observant, intelligent, but flattened and removed—allowing us to experience the colossal damage of loss that the Vietnam War brought to Riley’s family. That Riley’s brother disappeared, that the family never had a body to mourn, is an echo of Riley’s own internal life—one foot in, one foot out.  No proof of death, no proof of life.

A grown son and ailing parents meet Riley as she awakes; I appreciated the way Palaia draws Riley’s story to a close—not in a neat bow, but in an outline of possibilities, a sketch of what is possible if Riley can continue to emerge from the fog of disbelieving grief, and into the arms of an imperfect, but living world.


Maggie May Ethridge was born southern Mississippi and has lived in San Diego most of her life. She is a community/social media manager and writer and poet. She writes for Bustle.

In Poetry & Prose Tags Literature, Marian Palaia, The Given World
← Nardo Lilly’s Debut Album Takes WingPoems Written Under The Skin: Eliana Maldonado Cano →
Join our coven.
  • Poetry & Prose
  • Interviews
  • Social Issues
  • Music
  • Lifestyle
  • Personal Essay
  • Beauty
  • Pop Culture
  • Art
  • Video Reading Series
  • Wellness
  • Politics
  • Place
  • NYC
  • Flash Contest
  • Self Portrait
  • Occult
  • Confession
  • Sex
Featured
Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
Apr 24, 2018
Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018
The Text Is My Enemy: Erasing The Patriarchy With Isobel O'Hare
Apr 20, 2018
The Text Is My Enemy: Erasing The Patriarchy With Isobel O'Hare
Apr 20, 2018
Apr 20, 2018
How the Cure Helped this Cambodian Refugee Survive America
Apr 19, 2018
How the Cure Helped this Cambodian Refugee Survive America
Apr 19, 2018
Apr 19, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Mari Evans
Apr 18, 2018
A Poet I’ve Never Heard Of: Mari Evans
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018
Featured
Which Classic Winona Ryder Film Are You, Based On Your Zodiac?
Apr 17, 2018
Which Classic Winona Ryder Film Are You, Based On Your Zodiac?
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018
6 Ways To Use A Tarot Deck To Get What You Want
Apr 11, 2018
6 Ways To Use A Tarot Deck To Get What You Want
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018
This Is How A Witch Is Born
Apr 9, 2018
This Is How A Witch Is Born
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018
How to Create a Witchy Gallery Wall in Your Home
Apr 3, 2018
How to Create a Witchy Gallery Wall in Your Home
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018
Tweets by @LunaLunaMag
💜 Happy Friday, Luna’s! Go find out how to use a tarot deck to get anything you want, by @joannacvalente over at lunalunamagazine.com
.
.
📷 @unsplash Look what we got! @gabyherstik’s ultra-gorg witchy lifestyle guide 🖤 we recommend it, darklings. 🖤3000+ followers: We’re so grateful to you for your support! This community is everything to us. Be sure to join our coven on Facebook by searching “The Luminous” in groups or clicking the link in our bio! 🖤 🌺 Mid-week reminder: set one small, attainable goal and put your energy toward it. Be mindful about it, treat it like a small flower — water it, give it light. Be careful with it and be attentive to it. Let it root inside you. 🌺 🔮☠️💜a gathering of Luna Luna witch-editors: @lisamariebasile @joannacvalente @stephanieasteria ☀️🍃 Support your local shops! We picked up some goodies at @shopmyths in Brooklyn: palo santo oil, white sage and facial scrub. As a magazine based in NYC, it’s important to grow community and support small businesses — it helps form a much needed sense of neighborhood magic! Luna Luna reader & friends: head to Myths of Creation on Graham off the L—they’ve got gorgeous clothes and great magical goodies and shoes and poetry, too 🍃☀️ 🖤☠️ We hope your Friday the 13th is free from bad luck, and as absurd and extraordinary as this depiction of a spirit-human wedding at a seance 🖤☠️ 🖤🔮 Our editor @lisamariebasile has a book coming out soon, LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES—it’s a modern grimoire of rituals and practices for self care and replenishment and self exploration. She’s looking for a few people to interview for her blog (to be cross posted at Luna Luna!)...if you perform or have daily rituals for wellness, self care, creativity, sex, fashion — please DM us! 🖤🔮

Luna Luna — Occult, Sex, Vice RSS
Opinion, Essay & Lifestyle RSS

powered by TinyLetter

  • Confession
  • Occult
  • Sex
  • Art
  • Beauty
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Music
  • NYC
  • Personal Essay
  • Poetry & Prose
  • Politics
  • Pop Culture
  • Social Issues

COPYRIGHT LUNA LUNA MAGAZINE 2017