Spotlight: Jubilee by Jenn Givhan
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Who understands why I needed you?
Why I need you still?
When Bianca appears late one night at her brother’s house in Santa Ana, she is barely conscious, though not alone. Jubilee, wrapped in a fuzzy pink romper is buckled into a car seat. Jubilee, who Bianca feeds and clothes and bathes and loves. Jubilee, who Bianca could not leave behind. Jubilee, a doll in her arms.
Told in alternating points of view, Jubilee reveals both the haunting power of our lived experiences and the surreal possibility of the present to heal the past.
The first thread, “Before Jubilee,” follows Bianca in her girlhood home on the Mexicali border as she struggles with her high school sweetheart Gabe and a secret they’ve shared since she was fifteen.
The second thread, “With Jubilee,” is told from the point of view of her new love, Joshua, who along with Bianca’s family helps her cope with a mysterious trauma by accepting Jubilee as part of the family. But as Joshua’s love for Bianca grows, so does his fear that Jubilee has the power to tear his tiny family apart.
Alternating chapters give readers a unique perspective on Bianca’s present and on her relationship with Jubilee as her past life with Gabe comes to a catastrophic end.
In this searing story about a young woman’s reach to escape what haunts her and the mind’s clever inventions that help us survive the greatest losses, Jennifer Givhan draws on her immense talent as a poet to create an intensely beautiful yet complex treatment of reality, delusion, and imagination with an entirely fresh perspective of parenting in the borderlands. Both Bianca and Joshua choose to believe the world is beautiful, even as their survival means they cannot shy away from the violent, painful moments life brings.
Jubilee is at once a darkly suspenseful psychological drama and a luminous reflection on how beauty emerges from even the most traumatic of experiences.
Excerpt
“Bee, I’ll hold your baby so you can rest.”
She choked out a sob, letting him take Jubilee as she wobbled backward, landing on a couch that reminded her of the borrowed one she’d been bleeding on for two days, in the empty house-for-sale two hundred miles away. But soft and beige and beckoning, this one whispered safe. Whispered let go.
Her eyes fluttered. Matty said, “Wait, what the hell?” His voice reminded her of a flashing siren. It sounded an alarm. Something cold and blacktop and ugly. She squinted, willing herself not to fall asleep. Was something wrong with Jubilee? She tried opening her mouth to speak, but her tongue scraped sand. She’d become a noiseless womb. Mami’s here, she thought of saying. But she couldn’t recognize her own thoughts.
“Shit, Bianca. What’s going on?” He seemed repulsed by Jubilee, holding her away from his body unnaturally. Was he angry Bianca had stayed in the Valley with Gabe, then come back with Gabe’s baby? Matty had always hated Gabe. A childhood of abuse had given Matty a sixth sense that Bianca hadn’t developed. Where she trusted everyone, he trusted no one. Yet surely Matty would forgive her mistakes, now that she was here, that she’d come home. Accept her for what she’d become. That’s why she’d gone to him instead of Mama.
Hug her, she tried saying. The words wouldn’t form. Hold her tight. It’s calming.
“Bianca? What is this?”
She closed her eyes. Matty’s living room swelled and shrank, a lung, breathing her in, breathing her out.
“Handro,” Matty yelled. “Come help me. Something’s wrong with my sister.”
Jubilee was safe. The flashflood was gone. The arroyo was dry. Bianca was a lungfish. Drowning.
“Handro? Get my phone. I need help…”
Hail Mary, full of grace. Switch off the light and grant me peace.
And the light switched off.
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About the Author
Jennifer Givhan, a Mexican-American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert, is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently Rosa’s Einstein (Camino Del Sol Poetry Series), two chapbooks, and the novels Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing). Her work has appeared in The Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, POETRY Magazine, The Rumpus, The New Republic, AGNI, TriQuarterly, The Nation, Crazyhorse, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, and Kenyon Review. She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellowship, and New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize, chosen by Tyehimba Jess. Givhan holds a Master’s degree in English from California State University Fullerton and an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and she can be found discussing feminist motherhood at jennifergivhan.com as well as Facebook & Twitter @JennGivhan and Ig @thebrujapoeta.
