Review by Kevin Brown
The subtitle of A. Kendra Greene’s collection, No Less Strange or Wonderful, is “essays in curiosity,” an apt way to sum up this work. In essays ranging from one to thirty pages, often with illustrations Greene has either drawn or uncovered from books from the past four hundred years or so, Greene lets her curiosity run throughout the natural world.
In one essay, “Megalonyx Jeffersonii,” she writes about dressing up a model of a giant sloth, which leads to reflections on the debate in gender identification of such a species when there’s not enough evidence to determine a clear answer. Though Greene doesn’t make an explicit connection to the current debates about how one determines gender, it’s difficult to read this essay without thinking about that echo.
Greene also explores cultures most of us aren’t aware of, such as balloon twisters, which goes well beyond birthday party clowns. Greene volunteers as a model for Laura, who uses balloons to recreate the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress from The Seven Year Itch. While attending the convention where Laura crafts the dress from balloons, Greene meditates on balloon twisting as a symbolic art — “A balloon sculpture is always, obviously, made of balloons. And yet it is always, obviously, more than that.” — as well as personal space. She points out how willing people were to touch her balloons in ways that are inappropriate otherwise, with one man putting his hand on a balloon representing her breast.
As with all good essays in the tradition of Montaigne, the seeming focus of Greene’s essays is both subject and springboard for meditations on what it means to move through this world, both natural and human-created. Her curiosity leads her to places many writers never arrive.
No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity by A. Kendra Greene. Tin House, March 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
