When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Díaz
Published 2012 · 28,325 words · about 2 hours at an average pace
How hard is When My Brother Was an Aztec to read?
When My Brother Was an Aztec scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Mojave and Spanish alongside classical and biblical reference.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- Long lines with folded syntax.
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Addiction and colonisation handled through myth.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Dense with allusion.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- A speaker close to the poet, writing about her brother.
- Symbolic density: 75 out of 100
- The Aztec, the reservation and the body work as sustained figures.
- Ironic distance: 52 out of 100
- Sharp irony about American mythology.
- Resolution withholding: 62 out of 100
- No resolution is offered.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Three sections with recurring figures.
How When My Brother Was an Aztec is regarded
When My Brother Was an Aztec holds a literary regard score of 52 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.