Reviews

From Austin Chronicle

NOTES OF A HUMAN WAREHOUSE ENGINEER is a slim chap by Belinda Subraman published by Nerve Cowboy. It won first place in their 1998 chapbook contest. Subraman chronicles her eight-month stint as a nurse in an El Paso nursing home. Someone once said you can judge a culture by how it treats its children and its elders. Let's see: We put our kids in day care and our elders in nursing homes. They are watched over by hourly workers who are overworked and underpaid. Very little one-on-one contact is afforded to these "clients." We hide them away, birth and dying being such shameful acts, it seems. Who are we who treat our beginnings and our endings so shabbily? We are blind; we are selfish; we are afraid. Worse, we cannot forgive ourselves our weaknesses. That is the tragedy. That is the course leading to a culture of warehoused human beings, where "They are abandoned by their families./Loneliness is their disease." Nerve Cowboy, PO Box 4973, Austin, TX 78765. $4.