Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto My rating: 4 of 5 stars Now that I teach English as my main job I am more than ever aware of how language shapes and limits what can be expressed, how it makes and remakes the social world as it is made and remade. I have read few books from… Continue reading Love in the Kitchen
One Day I Will Write about This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the memoir of a book addict, and Wainaina’s savour for language glows from the first. His descriptions dance, they sing, they jump, syncopated, a lively, twisting flow like swift water, throwing rainbows of unexpected images into… Continue reading Not your images, not your words
Passing by Nella Larsen My rating: 5 of 5 stars Judging by the fact that this book has an introduction by the awesome Ntozake Shange, extensive notes and a detailed critical foreward by Mae Henderson loaded with references to related books and other critics who have written on Larsen, and that Bitch magazine devoted a… Continue reading The stickiness of race
Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro My rating: 5 of 5 stars Where do I begin? My second Munro and I feel that familiar sensation, like feeling for the barely palpable edge of the sticky tape on the roll, a way in, when everything feels like the centre, a cycle that’s encircled me, that I’ve… Continue reading Dear Alice
Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others by Sara Ahmed My rating: 5 of 5 stars Philosophy! The foundation pit of all the sciences and all the arts and all the humanities, no? Philosophy! A praxis… of thinking about stuff more than usual, of following the trail of ideas, seeing where we can go with them… something… Continue reading Turning to Tables
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’ve heard that her more recent take on the same material Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal is even better. If that’s true, I’m in for a truly superlative treat, because I loved this book to the bones.… Continue reading playing in the twists of history
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by CherrÃe L. Moraga My rating: 5 of 5 stars This anthology by radical, feminist and mostly lesbian Women of Colour has the aura of a revolutionary moment. I loved the range of styles, especially the wonderful poems and prose poems, and generally the… Continue reading teaching us to swim
The Lesbian Postmodern by Laura Doan My rating: 4 of 5 stars The winged lesbian on the cover of this book gazes anxiously at the hand with which she finishes drawing her second, presently missing trouser leg, while in the other hand she holds aloft a fragrant bottle of essence. This image got funnier as… Continue reading Strange Encounter
**update** A reader pointed out that my use of the word ‘transphobia’ in this post, and indeed the term itself, is problematic, and sent me a link to this blog Bigotry is not a Mental Illness In her novel NW Zadie Smith shows us how certain bodies are convenient for making certain arguments. One of… Continue reading Inconvenient bodies
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde My rating: 5 of 5 stars There is something spellbinding about reading this book, as though one had stepped into a room where someone was speaking, quietly and clearly, and a crowd of people were listening intently, feeling together in mutual awareness and sympathy. It must be… Continue reading It feels right to me
(I am because you are) 