aimiller's Reviews (689)

This book was fine. The bits about empire were honestly among the most painful reading (in terms of shoddy analysis) I have read for grad school thus far, but overall it was informative and a good starting point for thinking about food in a transnational context. It's also very accessible in terms of readability (I read the entire thing in maybe two hours with a lunch break,) so if you're looking for that, it's a good read!

An important piece of history, though the ideas it contains are outdated at best and incredibly offensive and harmful at worse.

Sprinkle says this book is a call to action, and especially a call for community unification, but I'm not sure this is exactly how he wants it to be done, nor does it necessarily address the same questions that a lot of queer community folks have been grappling with for a while now.

I want to say right here that this book is extremely graphic. There are descriptions of the hate crimes (all of which are murders, in this case; Sprinkle makes no claims as to why he chooses to focus on that, except probably because they have the most rhetorical power? which is a whole other thing,) and those descriptions can be incredibly, incredibly graphic; I was definitely triggered while reading the book more than once. Please, if you feel compelled to read this, take care of yourself while you do so.

There are also few questions about what it means to address these crimes in a larger sense. In the wake of Tyler Clementi's death, there was a lot of grappling with what it meant to think about imprisonment, framing certain actors in certain ways, and calls for death sentences. Sprinkle is not interested in those questions at all--perhaps this reflects the requests/wishes/desires of the surviving family members, who I will say he does due diligence by. He is careful and tender in his reporting of familial (biological or otherwise) relationships. But for a book making a political claim, and which is attentive to differences in race, gender, and class of victims, it is not attentive to larger questions about imprisonment. At times, it comes across as somewhat bloodthirsty, which is an odd take.

If I were to teach this (which I wouldn't,) I would pair it with Sarah Lamble's piece on Transgender Day of Remembrance. It does good journalistic work of structuring these people's lives, but there's very little heavy lifting and the parts where he justifies his reenactment of violence fall flat for me.

This is a really fascinating trip through Bordowitz's work; he's such a deep thinker about art and AIDS, and it really shows. I enjoyed the later essays more, as I think you see him settle into his frameworks in a really interesting way, but the earlier ones are still fascinating. I will note that I don't read a lot of stuff about art more broadly, but I still definitely found this book interesting and also useful as you watch Bordowitz's journey from someone sure he's going to die in a very short period to someone who had to think about living in the long term. Favorites include "Boat Trip" and "Dense Moments" as well as "My Postmodernism."

Some of this felt like a reread, especially if you're familiar with histories of ACT UP or women's involvements around AIDS, but the other chapters felt far newer and I would love to see all of them be expanded further. The stuff about needle exchanges especially felt super interesting and rich, as well as the sex worker chapter. The Asian (/American) chapter seemed the weakest to me, and especially unincorporated in other aspects (like the chapter on women.) But a good read and interesting piece, and certainly interesting in the context of a larger historiography.

This was cute, though not entirely my deal in terms of tone and content. Still pretty cute, and definitely may be good for little kids interested in stories about fairies!

This was okay. A kind of odd collection, felt pretty disconnected in parts, though maybe that's because so much of the book was rooted in Holocaust studies with which I'm not hugely familiar. The last chapter was for me (for maybe obvious reasons) the most interesting, but yeah the collection as a whole was weird but some of it was interesting.

This book was okayish? It read quickly, certainly. It just struck this weird chord where I think it was supposed to mirror the main character's arc but came off kind of weird. Like even when he "changed" it still felt kind of smarmy? And the ending felt... idk, not cheap, just not satisfactory wholly. I rolled my eyes at the revelation moment, and I'm not that cynical of a person. It didn't help that some of the things the narrator had to say (especially around mental health in the first 20 pages) put me way up on edge. But yeah. This book was fine I guess? Just not my cup of tea.

Super interesting, especially now as an artifact of a different era. I'm not sure how relevant is is for folks actually looking for answers today, and some of the citations are just WILD (there's a citation from 1844 that makes a claim that is completely contradictory to a lot of current work,) but it is super interesting if you read it as a primary source!