A brilliant, affirming, clear, and concise primer on antiracism.
Notes: I wouldn’t equate being bullied for wearing ‘ridiculous’ Pentecostal garb with Islamophobic aggression, nor imply that headscarves represent nothing but religious oppression. Crystal also seems to have a grudge against the idea of an immigrant work ethic … Read more
It’s understandably a challenge to distil a colossal amount of research into a flowing document. Also the author’s Frenchness seeps through in regular reminders, including when she cannot refrain from commenting on how well colonised the tongues are of the Vietnamese doctors and scientists she interviews.
It is … Read more
Her comedy stylings are not for me. There’s also a noticeable void of anti-pseudoscience condemnation in the Goop chapter. But even when she introduces her searing dissections of global political misdirection via the prism of sappingly irrelevant subcelebrities, Lindy West is still a cultural force.
He’s got his finger on the wrong pulse, the putrid blob of bro culture and anti-pc dinosaurs. This is a fremdscham-inducing collection of clunky essays that are a long decade old, none of them written specifically for this book. The slivers of interrogation related to the title … Read more
For essays about rejecting motherhood and Christianity and about living abroad, this collection was surprisingly unresonating. There’s also an unnecessary and specific march of ‘this is what tools of the patriarchy would say’. Keturah confronts cultural confines except for those that work for her, with a blind spot … Read more
At least three works in a row are variations of the same essay on globalism. The introduction on the power of art is trenchant. The rest I skimmed were meandering, dense, and glancing, even when I wanted them to pierce me. The repetition and lack of notes of … Read more
Jesse’s writing is magnetic and his story’s intense. Facing racism and bullying and dropping out of school in grief is the faint overlap I’ve lived. I thought about when a friend from Turkey told me that he was never bullied growing up—because the school system was so oppressive … Read more
While this work is entwined with numbing repetition, Kendi brings forward vital ideas in defining and repositioning antiracist consciousness.
The parts I appreciated touch on the experiences of children and grandchildren of immigrants in Europe. The socialisation of dehumanisation—with a quick sampling in racist children’s songs, the German version of rock-paper-scissors (if you point it out to them they say, ‘What? That’s what Chinese sounds like’), television … Read more
I’m really into well-formatted language-learning textbooks and this is one. It’s not visually busy which blights many modern textbooks, it’s colour-coded sensibly so that pertinent information is accessible at a glance, and the exercises are helpfully reinforcing.
I resented having to read through the chapters that presumably were to humanise the superintendent. We learn that he’s never had the capacity to socialise with other men, has lived in cellars too long, but at the same time he has absorbed the misogyny of our culture just … Read more
While I’m into Manglish, it’s a dragging chore to wade through stilted, pompous fantasy-speak. On top of that, referring to the female of the species so insistently is eminently irritating. It’s hard to stomach fantasy when one creates a world of dragons and fairies and … Read more
Believably melodramatic until the absolute betrayal in “The Two”.
Directors as gatekeepers including Celine Sciamma think claiming colourblindness is progressive. France is a country where the national sense of humour is one of punching down, and the official line is that naming race is racist, which conveniently denies the reality of inequitable experience and keeps the … Read more
In between significant and smaller blind spots—including, like Goethe, promoting a stalker’s idea of love—is a work of phenomenal imagination. It’s the most absorbing book of the three, and excitingly explores ideas of humans in time and space.
Like Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower this is an intensely believable dystopia with anxiety-inducing on-the-run survivalism.
There were a few off points. I wish Dimaline didn’t include the rivalry between the protagonist and a later character or at least had Frenchie apologise and own up to lashing out … Read more
Reading about an ant painstakingly tracing each character on a gravestone signals the early slog. The flatness of the first two parts cannot be pinned entirely on the alternate translator either. The details are dull and offensive. Women squeal and fuss, and when … Read more
While I didn’t connect with the Christian elements, Austin Channing Brown’s essays are concise and stunningly reaffirming in naming and cutting to the core of white supremacy and the structures of racism.
The first third was easily engrossing. It was refreshing to learn about the history of Ikuno and about the Korean diaspora in Japan. The formula of family sagas is difficult to escape though. The older generations stoically live through readable hardship, while the younger generation is spoiled … Read more
Zen Cho is my new favourite short story writer. Generally I find magical realism exhausting and irrelevant (García Márquez). Spirits Abroad is the first work I’ve read whose magical elements complement the stories—which pulse with inventiveness and humour.
