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Les Portes
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Review of advance copy
Les Portes is a reckoning. Meredith Nnoka's debut poetry collection traces how harm against women and femmes takes root, recurs, and reshapes itself across generations, and it does so with a rawness that I deeply respect. Unfolding in three movements, Le Début, Le Passé, and Le Présent, the collection moves through a queer woman's experience of domestic abuse and her search for what justice could look like outside of punishment. It is heavy, yes, but it is also alive and searching.
I read a lot of emotionally heavy work, and I am drawn to writing that explores human resilience and the psyche without flinching. Les Portes sits right in that space. Nnoka does not soften her subject matter, and the collection is better for it. She uses forms like zuihitsu, ekphrasis, and erasure to mirror the fractured experience of living through and after harm, and the effect is striking. The form itself becomes part of the story.
What stayed with me most is the question Nnoka poses at the heart of the book: where is the path forward that ensures no recurrence? She does not offer a tidy answer. Instead, she sits inside the question, and what emerges feels honest in a way that resolution never could.
This is poetry that pushes limits and refuses to tidy itself up, and I so appreciate writers who do that. If you love work that is unafraid to be raw, that treats the reader as capable of holding hard truths, and that blends the personal with the political, this one is worth your time.
4.5 out of 5 for me. A powerful and necessary debut.
I read a lot of emotionally heavy work, and I am drawn to writing that explores human resilience and the psyche without flinching. Les Portes sits right in that space. Nnoka does not soften her subject matter, and the collection is better for it. She uses forms like zuihitsu, ekphrasis, and erasure to mirror the fractured experience of living through and after harm, and the effect is striking. The form itself becomes part of the story.
What stayed with me most is the question Nnoka poses at the heart of the book: where is the path forward that ensures no recurrence? She does not offer a tidy answer. Instead, she sits inside the question, and what emerges feels honest in a way that resolution never could.
This is poetry that pushes limits and refuses to tidy itself up, and I so appreciate writers who do that. If you love work that is unafraid to be raw, that treats the reader as capable of holding hard truths, and that blends the personal with the political, this one is worth your time.
4.5 out of 5 for me. A powerful and necessary debut.
Review of advance copy received from Storygraph
Thanks to LibraryThing and Autumn House Press for sending me a free, advanced review copy, in exchange for an honest review.
The amount of decent to good books that I've been getting from LibraryThing has been surprising. Most of the first few books I got were pretty bad, but there's been a steady improvement since then, and Les Portes continues that trend.
Admittedly I didn't read this as slow as I would normally read poetry. Some of it was read at work while I was semi-distracted and, even when reading at home, I sometimes wouldn't take the necessary pause between poems. Still, this book made me feel things. Nnoka is coming from a pretty dark place; her words speak of abuse and isolation. Not only the abuse that she suffered, but also the evil that she knows she's capable of committing. She ponders how being in an abusive relationship has taken away a lot of her goodness. Sometimes when we're being abused we react with anger and meanness that we didn't know we were capable of. And sometimes, even after escaping these relationships, those attributes remain unless we do a lot of work to rid ourselves of them. This comes through so hard in Les Portes.
Like the books I've gotten from LibraryThing, Les Portes also started off a bit uninteresting. Some of the first poems felt like the were either written before the rest or maybe were building on each other. After finishing the book, I'd like to maybe go back and re-read some of the earlier poems. Will I though? Almost definitely not.
The amount of decent to good books that I've been getting from LibraryThing has been surprising. Most of the first few books I got were pretty bad, but there's been a steady improvement since then, and Les Portes continues that trend.
Admittedly I didn't read this as slow as I would normally read poetry. Some of it was read at work while I was semi-distracted and, even when reading at home, I sometimes wouldn't take the necessary pause between poems. Still, this book made me feel things. Nnoka is coming from a pretty dark place; her words speak of abuse and isolation. Not only the abuse that she suffered, but also the evil that she knows she's capable of committing. She ponders how being in an abusive relationship has taken away a lot of her goodness. Sometimes when we're being abused we react with anger and meanness that we didn't know we were capable of. And sometimes, even after escaping these relationships, those attributes remain unless we do a lot of work to rid ourselves of them. This comes through so hard in Les Portes.
Like the books I've gotten from LibraryThing, Les Portes also started off a bit uninteresting. Some of the first poems felt like the were either written before the rest or maybe were building on each other. After finishing the book, I'd like to maybe go back and re-read some of the earlier poems. Will I though? Almost definitely not.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Les Portes is sectioned into what I interpret as before, during and after. Her poetry touches on many different harmful situations that occur towards and against women/femmes. She touches on childhood traumas, domestic abuse relationships, mistreatment of men towards women, and more. The way she writes is very easy to interpret what she is trying to convey, but also writes so well. This is my first book by Meredith and I hope to read more by her in the future.
favourite quotes:
"A Black woman is disbelieved never all at once: first, her own memory, then the mind that retained it, the emotions it elicits, the words she chose to speak."
"The wounds she carries have become mine as her mother's became hers, limitlessly."
"I wanted justice to mean that he never hurt another person in his truncated lifetime."
"I was born into a world that provides unending reasons to fear what living as a woman could bring me,"
"I learned early to stay safe by capitulating, to forgive readily, and hold others' words inside like bile."
favourite poems:
- Epigenetics
- Golden Shovel
- Blessing
- Self-Portrait As Release
- People Always Ask Why She Stayed With Her Abuser
favourite quotes:
"A Black woman is disbelieved never all at once: first, her own memory, then the mind that retained it, the emotions it elicits, the words she chose to speak."
"The wounds she carries have become mine as her mother's became hers, limitlessly."
"I wanted justice to mean that he never hurt another person in his truncated lifetime."
"I was born into a world that provides unending reasons to fear what living as a woman could bring me,"
"I learned early to stay safe by capitulating, to forgive readily, and hold others' words inside like bile."
favourite poems:
- Epigenetics
- Golden Shovel
- Blessing
- Self-Portrait As Release
- People Always Ask Why She Stayed With Her Abuser
Review of advance copy
Meredith Nnoka’s Les Portes is a powerful collection in three sections that mines a history of violence – personal and systemic. Her poems on the way trauma reaches across generations and takes root in the next generation is important no matter if one is a kindred spirit or has miraculously avoided such pain – as a testimony to what is being inflicted around them. “Ours is a story meant/ to be heard, but everywhere/ the shape of love/ is inexpressible,” her speaker shouts, almost anticipating the question posed to victims of why it wasn’t said before. While there’s much pain, the collection as a whole, creates a place where resilience is possible – even though safety is a fleeting idea, hope exists. “Indifference to me / is a lit flame over a gas stove” she writes in “Eyes,” no matter the past walling ones self off, or choosing isolation does not offer a path forward. There are moments of epiphany where the speaker weighs what has happened, what has been inherited, and makes the only decision – to “weight what’s inside me and what I’m still capable of / what can never happen to anyone else, and how I can ensure / it ends with me.” This is the necessary work of a moral imagination even when the past hasn’t suggested such restoration is possible. A well crafted, wise collection
Review of advance copy received from Author
*I received an ARC of this book from the author.*
Phenomenal collection. Meticulous in its use of language, virtuosic in its use of form, and shot through with both compassion and steel. By situating interpersonal harm within the broader context of cycles of abuse and heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and carceralism, Nnoka asks vital questions about how to break these cycles and what justice looks like within an abolitionist framework. Much as the titular doors function throughout the collection, this book is an opening to a better future.
Phenomenal collection. Meticulous in its use of language, virtuosic in its use of form, and shot through with both compassion and steel. By situating interpersonal harm within the broader context of cycles of abuse and heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and carceralism, Nnoka asks vital questions about how to break these cycles and what justice looks like within an abolitionist framework. Much as the titular doors function throughout the collection, this book is an opening to a better future.
March 1, 2026
I come from a long line of beautiful powerful women. My mother told me a few days ago in the car that my father hit her 8 times. One of my sisters has been in physically abusive relationships. The other two including myself have been in abusive relationships as well. Thank you for making this book for all of us.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book is phenomenal, one of the best I’ve read this year so far. Follows the author’s life before, during, and after an abusive relationship and wrestles with things like being an “imperfect victim.” This book excels tho both in content and in form — it is clear the author is immersed in the world of poetry and the result is a richness I haven’t seen in other books.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews