This novel offers an intimate character study of a woman grappling with her own assumptions and prejudices, set against a backdrop that captuDNF @ 48%
This novel offers an intimate character study of a woman grappling with her own assumptions and prejudices, set against a backdrop that captures the quiet routines and tensions of suburban life. While the portrayal of the main character is somewhat complex, I found the book’s broader framing—particularly its engagement with the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls—to be extremely troubling. The story centers a white woman’s perspective and emotional journey while only lightly touching on the systemic violence and indifference that define the real-life context it draws from. The narrative also leans heavily on the lead’s personal transformation, which bordered on overshadowing the far more urgent realities facing Indigenous communities. While the novel may aim to critique passive complicity, it often lingers too long on the feelings of those adjacent to injustice rather than those most affected by it. In that sense, I remain unsure of what the book hoped to contribute to this conversation, and I’m really trying to be DNF more books if they lose me, so sadly, I gotta throw in the towel.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review ...more
Cannot believe this has been collecting dust on my bookshelf for so many years. The best poetry I’ve come across usually elicits a reverence at the plCannot believe this has been collecting dust on my bookshelf for so many years. The best poetry I’ve come across usually elicits a reverence at the places in my body and mind where the words find home. This collection is a perfect example of that—a beautifully heartbreaking exposition of being Black, queer, and HIV+ in America and despite how each one of those identities may mark one as a target, the persistence and joy is unrelenting.
“but here, not earth not heaven, we can't recall our white shirts turned ruby gowns. here, there's no language for officer or law, no color to call white. if snow fell, it'd fall black. please, don't call us dead, call us alive someplace better. we say our own names when we pray. we go out for sweets & come back.�
“he needed me so much he had to end me. i was his fag sucked into ash his lungs my final resting place. my baby turned me to smoke choked on my name 'til it was gone. i was his secret until i wasn't alive until not. outside our closet i found a garden, he would love it here. he could love me here.�
“there was a boy made of bad teeth & a boy made of stale bread & together they were a hot mouth making mush out of yeasty stones & in the end the one made of bad teeth walked away broken jawed, sick with hunger & the one made of stale bread walked away half of himself, his softness proved a lie & what remains left for unparticular birds.�
“it began right here a humbling at my knees. i let him record me, wanted to watch me be monster, didn't know he'd leave m with vultures grazing my veins. me: dead lion who keeps dying. him: flies who won't leave my blood alone. the devil sleeps in my eyes, my tongue, my dick, my liver, my heart. everywhere blood is he sleeps. & i knew before i knew & can't tell you how. ghosts have always been real & i apprentice them now. they say it's not a death sentence like it used to be. but it's still life. i will die in this bloodcell. i'm learning to become all the space i need. i laughed today. for a second i was unhaunted. i was the sun, not light from some dead star. i was before. i was negative. but i'm not. i am a house swollen with the dead, but still a home. the bed where it happened is where i sleep.�
“is there a word for the feeling prey feel when the teeth finally sink after years of waiting? plague & genocide meet on a line in my body i cut open my leg & it screamed�
“do i think someone created AIDS? maybe. i don't doubt that anything is possible in a place where you can burn a body with less outrage than a flag.�
“ask the rain what it was like to be the river then ask the river who it drowned.�...more
I read this for Osgood Perkins and Theo James. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of horror, but Stephen King has never been an author I typically reaI read this for Osgood Perkins and Theo James. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of horror, but Stephen King has never been an author I typically reach for. Everything I’ve read from his has triggered in me moments of pause. Sometimes its about how characters are written, typically women and people of color. Other times it’s about the use of indigeneity as a foundation to build out the history of his horrifying plots. With this story, it was the unnecessary use of the N-word not once, but twice. King is a founding father of the contemporary literary horror genre, and I have to give it up to him for masterfully crafting an eerily nightmarish setting, but I think I’ll stick to watching his stories as they’re adapted for the screen. ...more
The unsettling horror of a woman being socially isolated and stripped of her bodily autonomy remains just as disturbingly relevant today as it was wheThe unsettling horror of a woman being socially isolated and stripped of her bodily autonomy remains just as disturbingly relevant today as it was when Rosemary’s Baby was first published over 60 years ago. This novel has cemented itself as a cornerstone of literary horror, its influence rippling through generations of thrillers and psychological terror. Knowing the infamous twist going in softened the impact for me, but it did nothing to diminish the suffocating dread that builds throughout the story. Even with its legacy firmly established, Rosemary’s Baby remains a chilling and insidious tale—one that feels even more sinister in a world where debates over bodily autonomy unfortunately continue to rage.
This gripping coming-of-age novel explores the gritty and thrilling corners of 1980s Manhattan, capturing the pulse of the city as seen in awe and terThis gripping coming-of-age novel explores the gritty and thrilling corners of 1980s Manhattan, capturing the pulse of the city as seen in awe and terror by Nina Jacobs, a young woman desperate to fit in on the Upper East Side. Written with a gentle hand, Nina’s youth and vulnerability shine through the more pedestrian prose. Her story quickly intensifies as cocaine seeps into her world, making my heartbeat rise with each of her fervent lines and bumps. Drawing on the notorious Preppy Killer case, Cynthia Weiner crafts a lush and incisive critique of privilege and recklessness, while delivering a deeply personal story about identity, belonging, and the fragility of youth. Equal parts evocative snapshot and cautionary tale, A Gorgeous Excitement is a haunting, propulsive, and slightly overwritten read.
thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the e-arc!!
“Drinking was fine with them, even a hit off a joint at a party, but serious drugs were trashy. They had no tolerance, much less appetite, for trouble. They weren’t even curious, which Nina considered a lack of imagination. She thought of Stephanie gaping at Palladium murals, transported, of her running barefoot in the rain. Funny how someone who dropping into your life from out of nowhere could make more sense than the people entrenched there from the start.�...more
This book has everything it needs to be exceptional—razor-sharp writing, a captivating plot, and deeply evocative settings that bring each timeline toThis book has everything it needs to be exceptional—razor-sharp writing, a captivating plot, and deeply evocative settings that bring each timeline to life. Shamieh’s storytelling is both confronting and thought-provoking, challenging my understanding of diaspora while illuminating universal truths about familial expectations, desire, and belonging. The novel’s intergenerational lens on Palestinian identity is especially powerful, exploring womanhood through the complexities of motherhood, ethnicity, and expectations of duty. Writing about Palestine in such an intimate, deeply personal way is an act of resistance, and this novel asserts the importance of remembering and honoring histories deliberately targeted for erasure. While some early character development, particularly with Zoya and Arabella, felt rushed for the sake of narrative progress, once the stage was set, I was fully immersed in their minds. Ultimately, this novel is striking in its humor and honesty, expanding upon an ongoing history of violence with love, courage, and nuance.
“We girls weren't people who possessed eyes that could watch the boys watching us. We were portals to their manhood. The thing about selecting a portal is that it sets you on a path. There is no return. You only get to choose once. You have to choose wisely.�
“The experience of reading fiction is so singular because anyone can access it anytime and anywhere. You can open a book and close it five minutes later feeling less alone in the world.�
“The only thing that feels real to me is that my mother is gone. In some ways, this year after I lost my mom has been a time of excavation. I spend it trying to discover who she was.�
“Her way of punishing me was to close herself off. Never give me the space to apologize, so she would never have to face the fact that some sins are unforgivable. They go with you to the grave. Those sins always involve children.�
“I was my most attractive the year I turned forty. A woman that age is a rose in full bloom with all her layers unfurled and the once-hidden folds within her shamelessly on display. For the first time, she is nourished enough to stretch out, open, expand... A woman of forty is a flower fully unfurled. It's also the instant before she starts to wilt.�
“Give rage a home in your body and lend it your voice, and it wears itself out. Otherwise, it turns into resentment, a ghost of itself, and you can never kill a ghost.�
“To act onstage is to revel in the slipperiness of life, to be yourself and not yourself at the same time. It's the one time you can take two journeys at once.�
“Your life, not the plays you put on, is our story. You're a daughter of a people who are demonized for the crime of refusing to be erased, who show the world there is a difference between a defenseless people and a defeated one. When the story of Palestine is told, it's the artists that history will remember. We've been flung to every corner of the globe. Wherever we find ourselves, we thrive. Call us animals? Go ahead. Depict us as monsters? Irrational? Uncivilized? No matter. History will remember the truth. Wherever we go, people like you prove we contribute. We make beauty. We make art.�...more
Fear takes on new dimensions when a book like this aims to confront the horrors lurking just beneath reality’s surface. Like a waking nightmare, it doFear takes on new dimensions when a book like this aims to confront the horrors lurking just beneath reality’s surface. Like a waking nightmare, it doesn’t just entertain—it unsettles, creeping into your thoughts and questioning the metaphysical foundation upon which this book is written. The terror here isn’t only supernatural; it attempts to root itself in the everyday struggles of survival, family, and the weight of Black histories both personal and collective. What lingers most isn’t just the fear, but a sense of disappointment at what could have been. This is a story with the potential to say something urgent and profound about the monsters we live with—grief, violence, injustice—but too often, it gets lost in the noise. Still, there are moments that shine, and for readers willing to sit in that discomfort, the book offers a glimpse of horror that’s disturbingly close to real life.
At its best, the novel is an exercise in tension, with moments of gripping atmosphere and haunting imagery that evoke a sense of dread through what’s unspoken as much as what’s seen. But despite its ambition and powerful themes, the execution doesn’t always land. The narrative’s pacing often feels chaotic, and the emotional arcs—especially around harm and accountability—don’t get the space they deserve. There are glimpses of something potent and raw here, but they’re buried beneath a structure that leans too heavily into disorientation without grounding the reader in what’s at stake.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this e-arc!
“Being a sibling was intimate; someone else knew when he’d stopped wetting the bed, when his braces had snapped a bracket and wires were exposed in his mouth. All his little levers and pulleys.�
“He would not eat breakfast with injustice, sit in school with injustice, scrub toilets or run a cash register through injustice. He would not look past it and pretend to be grateful for every day he wasn’t murdered. Why did he have to be peaceful when white people got to be so gloriously violent.�
“Trauma didn’t age like wine. Theirs was a robust creature, a veiny thing that had taken its time growing thick roots and soaking up nutrition.�
“Calla was a pool of swimming things and life. She was a girl-woman of parts and exhales and wrath and grief and iridescent glimmers of delicious joy.�
“This was reality, too; the light in Calla’s eyes when she saw him, the multitudes of her love, the easy affection of Dre pinching a raspberry on his cheek, and the answering beat of Jamie’s heart. The trust between them, gangster shit and stardust.�...more
This book makes me miss liberal arts courses in college—the kind of text that begs for conversation, for voices layering like waves, deepening its meaThis book makes me miss liberal arts courses in college—the kind of text that begs for conversation, for voices layering like waves, deepening its meaning with each exchange. Each chapter stands on its own as a beautifully crafted historical recounting, yet together they form a mosaic of Black life—fractured at times, but always luminous. The blues in these pages—indigo, cobalt, cerulean—hold stories of survival, creation, and the endurance of culture, whether through longing, resistance, or the sea that carried both devastation and dreams.
I would’ve appreciated a clearer roadmap in the introduction, a sense of where each blue would take me. But perhaps that’s the point—drifting, searching, being momentarily lost, only to be caught in a current that carries you somewhere unexpected and necessary. Even when I struggled to find the throughline, I was buoyed by the brilliance of each chapter. This is a book that understands the resilience of Black life, the way it continues to shine—brilliant, boundless, blue.
Thank you to the NetGalley and the publishers for this e-arc!
“Slave ships changed ecosystems. Blue-green tiger sharks, with stripes along their sides, took to the taste of human bodies. Tiger sharks will eat anything. Some people chose that end over the hell ship, diving with the belief that the afterlife would restore them to belonging and, better yet, home. There was good reason to escape life. The Middle Passage was a terrible journey through a blue netherworld. I have wondered about the ones who leaped, or were thrown to their deaths, or after death, overboard, ravaged bodies with hollowed eyes flying off the deck, through the air, into ocean. What did they see in all that blue?�
“Consider this becoming Black, then, both a parable and a process, one within which people, assorted in every way, gathered. It is interesting that the color that best teaches this lesson is not black or brown or yellow or milky—all the colors Black people come in. It is blue, with its hues of melancholy and wonder
“What I mean when I say that my people gave a sound to the world's favorite color is this: In the blue above, flight is possible. In the blue over the edge of the ship, one plummets to death. Hell was the bottom of the ocean floor until it became salvation. You had to swing mighty low to bring them up to the blue sky, weightless to memory and suffering. A voice could do it; a chorus could ensure it. In the main and in the meantime of history, Blackness insisted upon standing inside of life with a song.�
“Melancholy is part of social movement, as is restraint. They are companions. The work of organizing for freedom requires a management of rage that can break your heart. There is no good reason one should have to endure spittle and bombs, insult, dogs, and jail in order to achieve simple legal recognition.�
“Movement is divine word. To call organizing for freedom "the movement" was a strike of genius. The moves in our culture of art and performance-be they dancing, playing jazz, blues, or hambone, singing or hoofing-are all the art of living. And forgive us, Lord, for the Western sacrilege of sometimes being mere spectators to that divinity. It beckons participation.�
“On each hand that day, my uncle wore a single lapis ring. I was curious and asked him questions. Later he sent me articles about the symbolic meanings of lapis. I told him that I live according to one of his precepts, that as long as I can read, I can teach myself to do anything. Even survive a broken heart. And I have found something out along this way of grief-reading the sound and color and text. We Black people are not quite like other Americans. We do not live in the same fantasy that we might evade death by collecting things like dollars, houses, fences, and passports. But we are as human as humans come. The incomprehensible keeps happening. Death comes fast, frequent and unfair. And we're still here. We know how to breathe underwater. Living after death.�...more
John Green’s been teaching me history since I was a preteen. And here I am, nearing 30, in medical school, still having the Fault in Our Stars author John Green’s been teaching me history since I was a preteen. And here I am, nearing 30, in medical school, still having the Fault in Our Stars author teaching me about tuberculosis.
But this isn’t just a book about a disease. It’s about the structures that allow some to live and others to die. It’s about how illness maps onto inequality, how biology doesn’t care who we are, but systems always do. Green doesn’t sensationalize TB. He sits with it. He lets it reveal the moral geometry of our global health systems. He recognizes that diseases like TB aren’t relics of a distant past—they’re mirrors of the present, sharpened by neglect and stigma. In that way, this book reads like an elegy and a call to arms. It reminds us that survival isn't just personal; it's collective. And that history, especially the kind we try to forget, is still being written—in lungs, in clinics, in choices.
“The world we share is a product of all the worlds we used to share. For me at least, the history and present of tuberculosis reveal the folly and brilliance and cruelty and compassion of humans.�
“At the time, I knew almost nothing about TB. To me, it was a disease of history; something that killed depressive nineteenth-century poets, not present-tense humans. But as a friend once told me, nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.�
“Imagining someone as more than human does much the same work as imaging them as less than human. Either way, the ill are treated as fundamentally other because the social order is frightened about what their frailty reveals about everyone else’s.�
“Biology has no moral compass; it does not punish the evil and reward the good. It doesn’t even know about evil and good.�
“I would never accept a world where Hank might be told ‘I’m sorry, but while your cancer has a 92% cure rate when treated properly, there just aren’t adequate resources in the world to make that treatment available to you.� That world would be so obviously and unacceptably unjust, so how can I live in a world where Henry and his family are told that? How can I accept a world where over a million people will die this year for want of a cure that has existed for nearly a century?�
“Tuberculosis is so often, and in so many ways, a disease of vicious cycles. It’s an illness of poverty that worsens poverty. It’s an illness that worsens other illnesses, from HIV to diabetes. It’s an illness of weak healthcare systems that weakens healthcare systems. It’s an illness of malnutrition that worsens malnutrition. And it’s an illness of the stigmatized that worsens stigmatization. In the face of all this, it’s easy to despair. TB doesn’t just flow through the meandering river of injustice. TB broadens and deepens that river.�
“But survival is not primarily an act of individual will, of course. It’s an act of collective will. Henry had only contracted TB because of choices humans made together to deny treatment to people in poor countries.�...more
This is my favorite book in Yarros’s Empyrean series so far. While Iron Flame struggled with info-dumping and rushed characterizations, Onyx StormThis is my favorite book in Yarros’s Empyrean series so far. While Iron Flame struggled with info-dumping and rushed characterizations, Onyx Storm quickly finds its stride, building to an explosive climax. I’m fully invested in where the story goes next—though, ironically, the romance interests me the least. Fortunately, Yarros crafts an epic fantasy that stands strong on its own, proving that the world and characters can thrive beyond the love story. With its gripping action and well-paced developments, this installment reaffirms the chokehold this series has on so many readers (myself included).
“It was hotter than rage, and sharper than fear, and cut deeper than helplessness, all because I couldn’t get to you.�
“Or is the miracle of our relationship the result of a precise combination of tragedies that broke us both so completely that when we collided, we became something entirely new?�...more
The Unworthy builds on Agustina Bazterrica’s previous work, particularly Tender Is the Flesh, in its ability to construct an all-encompassing, eerie aThe Unworthy builds on Agustina Bazterrica’s previous work, particularly Tender Is the Flesh, in its ability to construct an all-encompassing, eerie atmosphere that lingers long after the final page. This time, she turns her unflinching gaze toward a world undone by environmental collapse, where faith has metastasized into something brutal and inescapable. This novel’s plot unspools with suffocating intensity, blurring the line between devotion and indoctrination, safety and captivity. As the narrator’s belief system begins to fracture, the novel forces readers to interrogate the cost of survival in a world where power thrives on submission. Bazterrica masterfully unearths the psychological toll of repression, making every revelation feel like both a liberation and a horror. The novel doesn’t just ask what happens when the truth is uncovered—it demands we consider the consequences of seeing it too late. Bazterrica’s signature is her ability to make horror feel intimate, inescapable. The Unworthy is a claustrophobic fever dream where devotion and violence are indistinguishable, and where faith—like flesh—is something to be sacrificed. It pulses with dread, but also with aching humanity, exploring the fine line between belief and brainwashing, survival and complicity. Unsettling and deeply thought-provoking, this novel solidifies Bazterrica as a master of feminist dystopian horror.
Thank you to the publishers and author for this e-arc!!
“The stained glass was smeared with black paint. The glass with images of the erroneous God, the false son, the negative mother, the God unable to contain the avarice and stupidity of his flock, who let them poison the nucleus of the only thing that mattered. This God, who left us adrift in a poisoned world, cannot be named or looked at.�
“But I knew too well that mercy was like silent dynamite; it lodged itself in your heart until it went off, and then there was no chance of gathering the pieces.�...more
The level of frustration this book evoked in me is almost admirable. I love getting lost in a story, sometimes clinging to every word—but this book deThe level of frustration this book evoked in me is almost admirable. I love getting lost in a story, sometimes clinging to every word—but this book deliberately disrupts that connection. The author masterfully constructs a character study out of chicken-scratch, using a style that confuses as much as it illuminates. It demands a flight-of-ideas approach that mirrors the human consciousness on an all-too-ordinary day. In doing so, Watson reminds us that regardless of intention, time barrels forward. Even in moments of mindlessness, we are constantly narrating the story of ourselves. Each day is a series of moments, and our bodies accompany us without fail. It begs the questions: What story am I telling? What moments am I missing? What traumas do I carry? How do I return to myself? And where does permanence exist in the endless cycle of rumination?
tldr; this maybe wouldn’t have hit so hard if I weren’t watching Severance every week
“look at me now lost in linearity, where is the freedom in my head, to not have to only move side to side, stuck in straight lines every morning once I've arrived in this office, breaking myself in every morning, having to loosen the numbness punch by punch but yes I can feel my head loosening, freeing, it's always this way, numbness ebbs, visits, interrupts, but always pushed down eventually taking my head away, but always giving it back (or do I wrench it back? I am not sure but I am tired certainly, so I might have been wrenching), takes a while to unstick�
“If a man says a certain sort of man, that is, I can't say for sure, can't tell you how to know, just that you'll know when you know, that it's that sort of man, yes, when that sort of man says nice shoes he is not saying nice shoes he is saying I am itemising you he is saying, take yourself out of that head and put your eyes in my sockets because hello I am itemising you like yesterday that man rapping the side of his stand selling caramel nuts me sitting nearby propped on the side by the river ten minutes before I needed to go back to my desk reading and then him, suddenly, rapping the side, rap rap rap, me head down ignoring, him rapping the side, me looking up and beaming at me, nothing more, just wanting to grin, to show his presence when I was finally for a moment not present anywhere�
“it doesn't scare me now it just sounds over the top but then it freaked me out, could feel it rising in my head and it made me wonder what if it kept rising? you know, that feeling (I know you know, you're me) of nothingness that feeling of all these routines and things, being on time for trains, building pavements on top of green, going to work! eating off a plate! what if that feeling of purposelessness just kept rising, heightening, rising, getting louder, what then? what happens at the point where your head should burst? what instead? when the roar hits the ceiling of your head (your scalp I guess) where does it go next, when it's got nowhere left to go?�
“at what point is it that I think THINGS CANNOT BE WORSE at what point do I stop qualifying? saying, yes that happened but at least THIS didn't maybe that is what will send me mad, not being allowed to be mad trained to believe it's never quite justified god once more I have to tell myself enough�...more
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, especially in the age of straight-to-streaming horror movies about AI’s emergence, but Weaver’s approach I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, especially in the age of straight-to-streaming horror movies about AI’s emergence, but Weaver’s approach was a pleasant surprise. Instead of leaning on social panic, he crafts a gripping mystery-thriller where AI is seamlessly embedded into the world-building. Set in a dystopian future marked by climate catastrophes exploited by power-hungry political systems, the story feels eerily plausible, blending speculative fiction with unsettling suspense. Beyond its compelling plot, the book raises profound questions about the ethical boundaries of AI, the consequences of environmental neglect, and the corruptibility of power, leaving me not only entertained but reflecting on humanity’s role in shaping the future.
“Emotion and logic have the same purpose. They're both tools for guiding your choices and decisions, and for understanding the world. And emotion is important; it's like a depth gauge for how important a choice is. But you need a threshold over which emotions can't tread, so that decisions aren't taken from a position of anger, depression or grief. All in all, experiencing those things is part of the human experience�
"I can't imagine it's easy. But if there's one thing I have learned about humankind, it's how bad you are at living in the now. People seem to live in both the past and in the future, two big overlapping circles, but rarely focus on the intersection and enjoy the moments given to them right now.� ...more
This book is less a thriller than a descent into obsession, grief, and the way loss mutates when filtered through the internet’s endless gaze. Kate BrThis book is less a thriller than a descent into obsession, grief, and the way loss mutates when filtered through the internet’s endless gaze. Kate Brody captures the uneasy voyeurism of true crime culture, but she’s more interested in what happens when that fascination turns inward, when seeking answers becomes indistinguishable from self-destruction. The novel’s atmosphere is thick with dread, its imagery unsettling enough to linger long after the final page. Teddy, the protagonist, is both victim and architect of her own unraveling, her grief manifesting in reckless choices and toxic entanglements. By the time she realizes how deep she’s gone, it’s too late to climb out unscathed. The book offers conclusions, but no real catharsis—just the hollow ache of something that can't be undone.
“You shouldn’t be able to love bad people. You shouldn’t be able to miss them.�
“There’s no returning to how it was, things that are broken cannot be unbroken. Men who split in half cannot be patched together. Daughters who are lost can never be found. Guns drawn in front of children, mothers predeceased by their daughters, dogs betrayed in the woods, veins filled with hot toxic liquid, women slammed into walls crumpled against the floor, the violence of the world that was always there, lurking behind a thin scrim now brought into the stark gray light that passes for sunshine up here.� ...more
In my Junior year Lit class, we read Jazz by Toni Morrison, and one of the lessons that will always stick with me was a discussion on the word “reIn my Junior year Lit class, we read Jazz by Toni Morrison, and one of the lessons that will always stick with me was a discussion on the word “remember.� Specifically, we explored remembering as an act, putting ourselves back together, literally re-membering ourselves. Rivers Solomon’s novella brings that idea to life in a way that felt both transformative and deeply personal.
Afrofuturism has a unique power to reclaim history while dreaming new futures, and The Deep embodies that potential with stunning grace. It's a story that pulses with memory, grief, and resilience, and in doing so, it dares to imagine healing and possibility. Reading it felt like being held in a space where pain and beauty coexist, where the past does not have to be forgotten but can be reimagined into something generative. Solomon’s prose carried me, like a current, through an emotional experience that left me both shaken and renewed. This book reminds us that stories—especially those born from trauma—are tides that can erode, reshape, and reveal new possibilities, turning the weight of history into vessels for healing and creation.
“‘What is belonging?� we ask. She says, ‘Where loneliness ends.’�
“Forgetting was not the same as healing.�
“One can only go for so long without asking ‘who am I?�, ‘where do I come from?�, ‘what does all this mean?�, ‘what is being?�, ‘what came before me and what might come after?�. Without answers there is only a hole. A hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.�
“When you're everyone in the past and when you're for everyone in the present, you're no one. Nobody. You don't exist. I didn't exist.�
“We wait to be numbed by it, for the grief to become so much that we no longer feel it. That point never arrives. Our numbers reduce, and the rage grows.�
“What does it mean to be born of the dead? What does it mean to begin?�
“That was all remembering was. Prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting was not the same as healing.�...more
“As a five-year-old learning to ride a bike, the first thing I did was throw myself from the little turquoise handlebars, deliberately to the ground. When my mother asked why I did it I told her, to know how bad falling could be so I didn't have to worry about it anymore. I do not hold the memory of this first-hand, rather the vision of her reminiscence is planted history, a metaphysical inheritance. Its recall forms fantasy nostalgia. Memory squared. At the centre of me is my mother. A strange transference over time, to become my figurative passenger. Like epigenetics, we keep each other safe. A tether all the same.�
Merged review:
This is me announcing the start of my flirtationship with poetry.
Peter Scalpello uses form to his advantage in creatively sharing his lust, chem-sex, addiction, and lived experiences in an unforgiving world.
“As a five-year-old learning to ride a bike, the first thing I did was throw myself from the little turquoise handlebars, deliberately to the ground. When my mother asked why I did it I told her, to know how bad falling could be so I didn't have to worry about it anymore. I do not hold the memory of this first-hand, rather the vision of her reminiscence is planted history, a metaphysical inheritance. Its recall forms fantasy nostalgia. Memory squared. At the centre of me is my mother. A strange transference over time, to become my figurative passenger. Like epigenetics, we keep each other safe. A tether all the same.�...more
Anyone with a tacit interest in racial equity has at least some awareness around the ongoing history of state-sanctioned violence against Black peopleAnyone with a tacit interest in racial equity has at least some awareness around the ongoing history of state-sanctioned violence against Black people, particularly Black men. Yet, this awareness often doesn’t capture the full scale of brutality, systemic dehumanization, and relentless oppression that have shaped this history. Admittedly, I approached this book with some understanding of these injustices but was wholly unprepared for the devastating details Whitehead brings to light. The characters, despite living in a world designed to strip them of their humanity, are brimming with life, potential, and resilience, making their struggles and triumphs deeply resonant. The plot is gripping not just for its storytelling but for the raw, unvarnished way it confronts the reader with the atrocities Black men have endured—and continue to endure. This is not just a story; it is a call to witness, to acknowledge, and to reflect on the enduring impact of racial violence in shaping the lives of individuals and communities.
To supplement your reading with the truth behind Whitehead’s beautiful and tragic writing:
“We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.�
“The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place. Doctors who cured diseases or pertorm brain surgery, inventing shit that saves lives. Run for president. All those lost geniuses - sure not all of them were geniuses, Chickie Pete for example was not solving special relativity - but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal.�...more
This strangely meta and absurdly self-aware book wired me over the few days it took me to finish. It’s impressive and persistent in its unflinching acThis strangely meta and absurdly self-aware book wired me over the few days it took me to finish. It’s impressive and persistent in its unflinching accompaniment of each intertwined character along the paths of their desires, moving towards the places they’ll go to both keep such desires at bay while paradoxically stretching to unleash them. Each chapter has tendrils of connective tissue to the larger whole, linking each character (and their respective experience with rejection) to one another. Doing so illuminates the social vulnerability of proposal and the choreography of shame when such proposals are met with rejection.
“Julian doesn’t know the difference between embarrassment and shame. How shame soaks, stains, leaves a skid mark on everything and, when it has nothing to stick to, spreads until it does. Embarrassment is contained my incidence; gets funny and small over time. Shame runs gangrene through the entire past, makes the future impossible. You can’t own it or laugh it off, only try to bail it out in sloshing bucket-fulls, drenching yourself in the process. Embarrassment is an event, shame a condition.�
“Love is not an accomplishment, yet to lack it still somehow feels like failure.�
“But discourse is loneliness disguised as war. What people there really want is to be perceived on their own terms which is so, so funny. Because if the grand promise of the internet is to be whatever you want, in reality, it will make of you whatever it wants. And beneath every mask is another mask mistaken for a face.�
“Identity is diet history, single serving sociology; at its worst, a partriotism of trauma, or a prothesis of personality. Privilege discourse a well-meaning attempt to balance scales that have become tainted, like most things American, by the puritanical paradigm of original sin.�...more
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