In Bolla, Pajtim Statovci tells the story of love, war, and living in the moment because of an uncertain future.
Arsim finds himself in Kosovo in the yIn Bolla, Pajtim Statovci tells the story of love, war, and living in the moment because of an uncertain future.
Arsim finds himself in Kosovo in the years building up to the Kosovo War. An Albanian man, he is in an arranged marriage with a woman who finally becomes pregnant. But when he stumbles upon a young Serbian man at a cafe one day, he will fall in love, altering his life forever. As the War tears apart Kosovo and Arsim finds himself in love with a man while married to a woman, he must choose between family and love.
Statovci can tell a story and that is clear in Bolla but the ending of this book is starkly inhumane and unexpected. I am still deciding whether this ending is acceptable but nonetheless this book is a good read....more
Baggage is Alan Cumming's memoir about being himself, an actor in the 90s and early aughts.
Cumming was a young boy in Scotland when he realized he hadBaggage is Alan Cumming's memoir about being himself, an actor in the 90s and early aughts.
Cumming was a young boy in Scotland when he realized he had a knack for acting that could take him beyond the stages of Edinburgh and Glasgow. His recounting of his acting experiences takes him from the stages of London - where he learned to embrace his Scottishness - to the stages of New York's Broadway. On Broadway he became a breakaway star as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret and eventually would become a regular in a number of Hollywood films.
Alan Cumming always seemed to me to be an edgy, interesting, and unique queer figure. But this book made me realize that he thinks far higher of himself than is warranted. Much of Baggage is Cumming going on about how famous he is . . . over and over again. There are nuggets of the book where Cumming explores the people that populate his life - Gore Vidal, Liza Minelli, and his partner - where this annoying self-indulgence disappears. But far too much of the book is the product of self-promotion to make this memoir memorable....more
Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery is a classic work that recenters the deeply intertwined connections between capital and enslavement. In particulEric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery is a classic work that recenters the deeply intertwined connections between capital and enslavement. In particular he argues that slavery and its abolition - far from being the humanistic-focused endeavor that history has told it was, was more a concern of laissez-faire capitalism trying to do away with the last withering bows of mercantilist monopolies. Many of the political leaders in Britain saw the monopoly powers of the Sugar plantations in the West Indies as being a drain on the British economy and saw 18th Century Imperialism as a huge hurdle to the growth that comes with free trade. By refocusing the eyes of history on the economic nature of slavery, Williams casts light on the shadows of capitalism....more
James Han Mattson’s Reprieve is a thriller that’s suspense gets lost in the weeds.
Quigley House is a cutting edge haunted house in Lincoln Nebraska whJames Han Mattson’s Reprieve is a thriller that’s suspense gets lost in the weeds.
Quigley House is a cutting edge haunted house in Lincoln Nebraska where the actors attack you and survival wins you $60,000. A cast of characters come together in this book to take on the Quigley challenge and in doing so pull back the curtain on the various ways race and racism permeate and define the world. A Thai immigrant, a Black college student, and a white heterosexual couple come together for the challenge but the racial dynamics cause massive error that haunts them for years to come.
If Reprieve were half as long as it is, it would be a fine book with good thrills and suspense. But the story takes too long to get off the ground and readers spend hundreds of pages in the weeds before any suspense even occurs. And despite being a 400 page book, all of the characters are flat and massive cliches. The racial critique of whiteness that the book is meant to convey is important and on point but such a heavy hand and boring story makes the book hard to read....more
Acclaimed legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky uses Presumed Guilty to tell the story of a system of unjust policing that has been entrenched and strengtheAcclaimed legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky uses Presumed Guilty to tell the story of a system of unjust policing that has been entrenched and strengthened by a Supreme Court that refuses to hold it accountable.
With the exception of the few years of the Warren Court, the U.S. Supreme Court has shown a penchant for supporting police officers over the constitutional civil rights of criminal suspects and defendants. Chemerinsky gives a painstakingly detailed account of all the Supreme Court rulings on policing and what appears through this analysis is deeply disturbing. As the Court has only grown more conservative since the late 60s, the Court has also increasingly put our 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment rights in jeopardy. The Court has made it next to impossible to hold police officers, departments, and cities liable for police abuse. The Roberts Court is gunning to eliminate the few remaining 4th Amendment protections against warrantless searches and seizures. And the Court has slowly eroded any protections that Miranda rights were supposed to provide. What appears is a conservative Court that has single-handedly created a system of policing that puts all our civil rights in jeopardy.
For a reader with no knowledge of the legal history surrounding policing, Presumed Guilty is essential reading. For readers who already know much of this history - and know the few avenues available for police reform - this book will offer little new substance. At times far too repetitive, this book can be frustrating both in form and content and the closing recommendations Chemerinsky offers - legislative and state-based solutions - leave little hope and no new ideas. But this book is essential reading nonetheless, and I highly encourage you to read it if this is a topic you have only tangentially been following....more
Elias Rodriques' All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautifully written story of returning to and confronting our pasts.
Daniel, a Jamaican immigrElias Rodriques' All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautifully written story of returning to and confronting our pasts.
Daniel, a Jamaican immigrant, grows up in rural, Northern Florida as a star track athlete and one of the few Black kids in his high school. While in school he befriends Aubrey, a white self-proclaimed "redneck" and forms an uncategorizable bond that sticks with him. Years later Daniel is a teacher in Brooklyn, an out gay man in a relationship with a man, and learns that Aubrey has died in a drunk driving accident. He returns to Florida and reconnects with the people of his past life and confronts who he was and what it means for who he is today.
Rodriques' writing is incredible. When I say this book is beautifully written, I mean it. But the story itself makes little sense. I still don't quite understand why, in the first few pages, Daniel breaks up with his boyfriend after he learns of Aubrey's death. And I am still uncertain of what the meaning of his relationship with Aubrey was. The story is clearly about reconnecting with our pasts but the way Daniel ends up doing this is without explanation: why does he feel such a connection with a girl from high school who he hasn't seen in years? The book tries to explain this but it doesn't succeed. All the Water I've Seen is Running is a beautiful book and makes me long to read more from Rodriques but just not this book....more
David Treuer's The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is a significant and beautiful statement that Native Americans exist despite all our country's efforts toDavid Treuer's The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is a significant and beautiful statement that Native Americans exist despite all our country's efforts to make them not.
For many historians, Native culture and history ended when the Native tribes were defeated and slaughtered at Wounded Knee in 1890. But through extensive anthropological and ethnographic research, Treuer meticulously tells the stories of Native Americans as they were forced into abusive educational systems, poverty, and loss of land. And then proceeded to fight back, take pride in their identities, and reconnect with and fight for their culture and people. Treuer tells the stories of allotment, termination laws, relocation laws, treaty violations, legal suits, and casinos, fireworks, and marijuana to show that Native Americans are still here and will continue to be here as they fight for their tribes and their identities.
Treuer research is incredible and his storytelling is rich in a way that makes you feel as though you aren't reading history at all. But I walked away from this book wishing for a bit more in two regards. First, it is alarming at how little Treuer discusses Native women activists in his book - not even naming the likes of Madonna Thunder Hawk or Winona LaDuke. Native women have always served as a backbone - and often leaders - of the Native rights movement so leaving this out seems like a glaring error. Additionally, much of the later history especially regarding the various activist movements felt surface level at points, likely, I assume, cut for length requirements. And while I truly loved the opening 100-page historical accounting of Native tribes and the numerous anecdotal stories from Treuer's life, I couldn't help but think that a book that reports to be a retelling of Native history after 1890 ought to limit aspects that don't directly account for this so that time and pages and can be dedicated to more detail of this period.
Nonetheless, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is truly a remarkable book. I am thankful that I read it because I learned so much that I hadn't known before. This is a book that ought to be requirement reading for all Americans lest we forget who we are, what we did, and where we came from....more
If there were ever such a thing as a perfect collection of short stories it would be Brandon Taylor's sophomore publication, Filthy Animals.
The collecIf there were ever such a thing as a perfect collection of short stories it would be Brandon Taylor's sophomore publication, Filthy Animals.
The collection oscillates between a long-form story of Lionel, a boy coming to terms with his failed suicide attempt, and short stories about a cast of characters, mostly in Madison, WI, coming to terms with the darkness in their own lives. Lionel is a young, gay, Black man adrift in life as he takes time off from his graduate work in mathematics to come to terms with his life, his history of self-harm, and his feelings of worthlessness. At a potluck hosted by a former friend-with-benefits, Lionel meets Charlie and his girlfriend Sophie. As he connects with this couple, Lionel comes to terms with his own sense of worth. And peppered between Lionel, Charlie, and Sophie's stories are the stories of a young woman nannying for wealthy people, two gay lovers living in the country with their goats, and a young woman fighting cancer. Each story is unique, meaningful, and connected.
Filthy Animals is so beautifully and powerfully written that reading it reminded me of why I love reading so much. The issues I had with Taylor's debut novel, Real Life, (mostly about the clunky writing style) are gone in this book. Filthy Animals rips you open and forces you to consider how you view your own worth and whether your own sense of self is tying you up and holding you back. I cannot emphasize this enough: read this book....more
Joss Lake's debut novel, Future Feeling is a futural fantasy about being trans and finding home and self-love with other queer people.
Pen is a trans mJoss Lake's debut novel, Future Feeling is a futural fantasy about being trans and finding home and self-love with other queer people.
Pen is a trans man living in Brooklyn who spends his days obsessing over the (insta)Gram of another social-media-famous trans man, Aiden, who loves to show his abs and post-op body alongside inspirational quotes. When Pen teams up with his witch roommate and hacker roommate to cast a spell on Aiden, things go awry and Pen is forced to work with Aiden to save another trans man: Blithe. All three trans men learn things about their own transness and find value and meaning - and what they were longing for - in queer family and togetherness.
The "bones" of Future Feeling are compelling. Lake does a nice job introducing characters with compelling arcs and a world that while based in the not-so-distant future has anchors to our world today that make it recognizable. But what starts as a compelling story falters with how much it tries to accomplish. Lake tries to jam in too many story lines and tries to develop all of his characters so none of them reach the complexity they could. Had Lake focused on Pen's development alone and made the other character ancillary to this development the book would have been so much stronger. And though I completely agree with the many digressions in the book that discuss Blackness, race, and indigenous people, the discussions felt out of place, forced, and therefore didn't add value to the book or the discussions about these topics.
A fine first novel, this book could have been so much better. While I wasn't a fan of this one, I do look forward to future books by Lake....more
Deesha Philyaw weaves together the beautiful and complex stories of a cast of Black women in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies in a way that leaves yoDeesha Philyaw weaves together the beautiful and complex stories of a cast of Black women in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies in a way that leaves you wanting more and more.
In each of the nine stories in this collection, a Black woman confronts some aspect of her life - from a mother with dementia to a queer woman who's lover moved her whole life for the narrator's new job. And in each story the vibrant and complex lives of Black women growing up in conservative Black culture is dissected, discussed, examined, and given a nuanced treatment that shows respect and care for both the beauty and challenges of this culture. A reader walks away with tears of joy and sadness and a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the lives of Black women.
Not normally a fan of short story collections, I found Philyaw's writing un-put-down-able. I came to this book for the queer stories and stayed for the stories of Black resilience, Black excellence, and Black life. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a beautiful, necessary examination of Black-ness that all should read....more
Dennis Cooper's I Wished is an ode to a beloved who was never able to love him back.
Dennis met George when he was 15 and George was 12. George, a kid Dennis Cooper's I Wished is an ode to a beloved who was never able to love him back.
Dennis met George when he was 15 and George was 12. George, a kid with a messed up home life and an ungrounded understanding of himself, wrestled with mental illness from the moment he had a sense of himself. Meanwhile Dennis finds himself falling in love with George, sacrificing everything for him, but in a way that can't be returned - either because of George's mental illness, his inability to love, or just simply his inability to reciprocate Dennis' love. Dennis moves on and tragedy strikes George - but Dennis only learns of this tragedy ten years later. As a result, Dennis spends the rest of his life using his writing to attempt to turn George into an understandable being; he writes book after book about George to explain him, to design him in a way that is understandable to Dennis.
What unravels in I Wished is typical of Dennis Cooper in that it blends extreme surrealistic fiction with reality. Cooper's writing puts readers at unease as they consider how connected they feel to a story that is dark and haunting. Dennis' feeling for George, after all, is not so unique: so many of us have loved a beloved who for some reason or other robs us of reciprocity. And who we spend the rest of our lives recreating in our own minds in order to explain why they never quite loved us back....more
Venita Blackburn's second collection of short stories, How to Wrestle a Girl is a dreamscape of life for a young, Black person with shifting identitieVenita Blackburn's second collection of short stories, How to Wrestle a Girl is a dreamscape of life for a young, Black person with shifting identities and an unmoored future.
The book is split into two distinct parts. Part 1 is truly a story collection - each story asks questions about community, race, queerness, and identity. From a special effects artist to a young trans woman with a new trans roommate, each story feels darkly salient. Part 2 is a collection of connected stories told from the perspective of a narrator finding out her own gender and sexual identities as she wrestles with her friend, sister, alcoholic mother, and a cast of childhood sexual abusers.
I wish so deeply Blackburn had given us a complete narrative that focused just on Part 2. Where Part 1 felt disjointed and the stories a bit incomplete, Part 2 told the story of a character that I wanted to know so much more about. Had this short story collection instead been a Part-2 novel, it would have been five stars: Blackburn's prose is beautiful, dark, and unmatched. But instead the collection left me wishing for something different than what I had finished reading....more
In Are You This? Or Are you This?, Madian Al Jazerah tells his story of growing up gay and exiled from his family's home in Palestine.
Madian was born In Are You This? Or Are you This?, Madian Al Jazerah tells his story of growing up gay and exiled from his family's home in Palestine.
Madian was born the third of four children in Kuwait to Palestinian parents with Jordanian passports. And so begins a life characterized by its inability to be neatly identified and categorized. As Madian gets older, he becomes aware of his sexuality and moves to the United States for work. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, his family was once again sent into upheaval. Madian returned to Jordan to be with family where he and his brother opened a progressive restaurant/cafe/book shop, Books@Cafe. From this he is able to build community with LGBTQ+ Jordanians, Arabs, and even a few Israelis.
Are You This? is a beautiful story about a man who became an activist as he began exploring his identity. Though the end of the book feels long-winded and redundant, the first portion certainly does not. This book will pull you in and Madian's story will stick with you even when you put it down....more
In Passing, Lipika Pelham recounts the myriad ways in which the boundaries of identity are transgressed, subverted, and overtaken by those who find thIn Passing, Lipika Pelham recounts the myriad ways in which the boundaries of identity are transgressed, subverted, and overtaken by those who find themselves trapped inside it.
Passing is a concept as old as time as racial minorities left their old identities behind in order to use whiteness, as women used maleness, and as queer people used straightness to evade the oppressions that come with marginalized identity. At each turn, passing both gives the passer a chance at some semblance of safety but also requires depths of sacrifice as the passer leaves behind their community, their history, and, in many cases, their own selves. Pelham uses literary, film, and historical characters and people as case studies in the ways passing can be used to both challenge identity categories and sustain them.
Passing is thorough to a fault; it acts more as Encyclopedia of passing than as a cogent theoretical treatise with a clear thesis. Nonetheless, the book is important for what it contributes: a recounting of a concept that happens all around us and yet feels hard to pin down because of its very own hidden nature....more
In The Family Way, Christopher DiRaddo uses ties to gay classics like Ethan Morden's Buddies series and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City to tell aIn The Family Way, Christopher DiRaddo uses ties to gay classics like Ethan Morden's Buddies series and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City to tell a story of gay life in the 21st century.
Paul is a 40-year old gay man living in Montreal in 2011 with his younger, late-twenties boyfriend, Michael, his collection of gay friends, Charles and Danny, and a litany of friends and family. Against this backdrop, his longtime lesbian friends, Wendy and Eve, ask him to be their sperm donor as they attempt to start their own family. What transpires is a collection of gay adventures for the modern era: trips to Provincetown, conversations about open relationships, monogamy, and threesomes, debates about alternative forms of family-building, and discussions of survivor's guilt, brought on those older gays who watched their friends die during the AIDS crisis and yet somehow survived. and through all of this DiRaddo manages to tell a compelling story of love between friends, lovers, and with one's self.
DiRaddo is clearly influenced by the styles of Maupin and Morden - gay literary figures who managed to truly capture gay life in their respective decades. And DiRaddo does a nice job eliciting them in his writing (I even thought "hmm, this sounds like Ethan Morden" before Ethan Morden was name dropped in the book). But DiRaddo's writing is plagued by too much detail: in an attempt to convey a sense of everydayness he spends too much time opining on literally everything each character does minute-by-minute. This tendency makes an otherwise enlightening book feel a bit clunky. Nonetheless, DiRaddo's contribution to this vein of gay literature is significant and I cannot wait for the sequel to learn how Paul, Michael, and others grow and change....more
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking is yet more evidence that you don't review Joan Didion, she reviews you.
"Tragedy" does not even begin to deJoan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking is yet more evidence that you don't review Joan Didion, she reviews you.
"Tragedy" does not even begin to describe the year Joan Didion experienced between December 30, 2003 and December 2004. On 12/30/03, Didion's life changed forever when her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne, went into cardiac arrest at her dinner table. To add to this already tragic news, Didion's daughter, Quintana, lay in a coma in the hospital from pneumonia gone awry. During the year that follows Didion wrestles with the grieving process, learning that she must accept the fact that her husband will not return and that she must allow her husband to stop operating as a human figure. In short: she must accept the realities of the world and move beyond her magical thinking.
Didion is a master of words and The Year of Magical Thinking is no exception. Deserving of the National Book Award, you won't be disappointed by it....more
New York Times writer, Walter Thompson-Hernandez, write about the lives and livelihoods of a group of Black cowboys in The Compton Cowboys.
Thirty yearNew York Times writer, Walter Thompson-Hernandez, write about the lives and livelihoods of a group of Black cowboys in The Compton Cowboys.
Thirty years ago, Mayisha, a woman in Compton, CA, started a program for at-risk youth in her community that introduced them to horses, rodeos, and riding. Fast forward to 2020 and as Mayisha retires, a collective of Black cowboys, all of whom came from Mayisha's youth program, are set to takeover the program and invest themselves back into their community. Each member of the Cowboys has a unique backstory - from alcoholism to gang membership to harassment at the hands of the police - and it is these stories that propel them to fight hard to make their community better and stronger. As the ranch at which they work is in transition, the question is if they are up to the task to build anew on already strong foundation.
The Compton Cowboys is an interesting read, but Thompson-Hernandez did not go as deep as I would have really liked to see him go with this topic. While he does a nice job centering the stories of each member of the Compton Cowboys, I wish the book had included more information about the ranch where they all work, the youth program they all came from, and history about black cowboys in California and in Compton. Adding these elements would have made a good book into a great book....more
Keith Ridgway masterfully weaves together the lives and stories of a collection of London fringers in his novel-qua-collection A Shock.
In the opening Keith Ridgway masterfully weaves together the lives and stories of a collection of London fringers in his novel-qua-collection A Shock.
In the opening story, a widow finds herself neighbors with a new gay couple in her London townhouse. What unfolds is a collection of short stories in which a cast of characters all interweave their anxieties, addictions, and lives in ways that many don't even realize. As one traipses the city in search of crystal meth and sex, another delves deep into socialist and Labour politics and all the while another finds himself abandoned in the attic because his plumber-boss abandoned him. Ridgway manages to get his readers to experience the anxieties and thoughts of these people in a way that is truly magical.
A Shock is a challenging book: it confronts addicts, the mentally ill, and more. And Ridgway deals with these issues in a way that makes you, as a reader, feel as though you you are experiencing them with his characters. In fact Ridgway's ability to use prose to create this experience is something I haven't encountered often in literature. Though this book is tough - and may not be for all - I highly recommend it: reading it was truly an experience....more
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