aimiller's Reviews (689)

This was a gorgeous collection, both the poems in front but especially the "Whereas" portion. Long Soldier's poetry is biting and funny and wrenching and so thought-provoking. There were so many great lines that were moving, and the style seemed constantly in motion, always shifting, never settling, which made for a really refreshing reading experience. Highlights for me included "38" (though it feels so wrong to name that as a "favorite," I just want everyone I know to read it,) the "Diction" series, and so many of the "Whereas" poems. Cannot encourage folks to read this enough, it's really beautiful.

Really I would give this like a 3.5 stars... I liked it, but it was very, very much a Lesbian Story from that time period, stylistically, and it reads like a Lesbian Story, and I like Lesbian Stories in part but also Why Do All Lesbians Write Like That. It was still a good, solid read though, once I got past the stylistic thing, and also like boy Iowa as a center of lesbian/bi woman experience, am I right? But it feels good to have another classic queer read under my belt, and I did like the book quite a bit; it was well-paced and the tension was pretty palpable! So if you like Old-Timey Lesbian Stories that are Like That, you'll love this!

First off, I have to say that I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and I am grateful to the publisher for the copy of this book.

I will say that I did not have super high hopes for this, mostly because I haven't seen a kind of 'introduction to transgender' done well before, but this surprised me with its nuance! The authors do a pretty decent job of painting trans people as more than a monolith, and always leave room for a lot of difference within the community, which I really enjoyed and found interesting. My one major complaint is that although there are "notes" in the back, these notes are not connected to specific claims in the book, so when I come across something that makes me go "oh???" I can't find the exact place the authors got that information. I understand why they might not use foot or endnotes (some readers might find them intimidating) but it was something I missed.

I will also say this isn't really a 101-level book, either; more like 102, maybe. It felt accessible but like maybe there was a little bit of previous knowledge needed. I could be wrong though, as I have a hard time gauging these things.

Overall, I was pretty pleasantly surprised to see how nuanced this book was, and encourage folks who might have questions to seek it out!

Wow what a book. I actually skimmed this once for a class and then went back to try to read it more carefully--and while it took me a really long time, it was so worth it. Johnson (as I'm sure many other people will tell you) is an amazing writer, while also being so intellectually rigorous in his work and with his argument. And that argument is so important--drawing together imperialism and its connections in the US to slaveholding culture, to the absolute necessity of expansion that I think really still is glossed over in teaching US history. I will say, if read in as many disjointed ways as I did, it can feel a little disconnected (especially the last three chapters from the initial readings) but each piece is so beautiful and really does connect. It's long but boy is it really, deeply worth it if you're at all interested in slavery studies and connection to empire.

I really want this to be a 4.5 stars, and the reason it's not five probably has to do more with my own inability to understand Marx and Fanon than the book itself. This was a really great and oddly smooth read, especially once I got out of the introduction where Coulthard lays out the heavy theoretical work and really gets into the meat of the book. Each chapter is laid out really neatly, which I appreciate a lot as a graduate student, and though Coulthard's argument is pretty heavy in both marxist and psychoanalytic theory, I did not ever feel frustrated with what the book was saying. This is a really key book to read for thinking about Indigenous politics and relationships to settler states, and manages to feel super grounded at all times. I really recommend this for anyone thinking about other modes of interactions!

This was interesting to read, especially given that I spent four years on Meskwaki lands, but I definitely need some guidance through it in terms of how to read it (it was accompanied, for this course, with a reading by Mark Rifkin entitled "Documenting Tradition: Territoriality and Textuality in Black Hawk's Narrative," that I found to be a useful guide,) and found it to be fairly confusing at times. I do still think it's a really important read for anyone who lives on those lands, as Black Hawk's experience is so often glossed over or barely talked about. If you're a fan of Chicago hockey, I'd say you doubly need to read this.

This was a delightful ride--the magic was super fun without feeling intrusive or overbearing, and the story itself managed to be fresh while also definitely echoing back to what little of the original. I might have liked it more if I had more familiarity with the original play (lol I have zero knowledge and my brain is made of swiss cheese). I'm also pretty unfamiliar with steampunk as a genre of writing, but I love how the magic and tech intertwined here, and it felt like it supported the story rather than overwhelming it like I think people assume it will? Regardless, I really strongly encourage people to read this, especially if you have a greater love of The Tempest than I do.

ALSO I really liked how queer rep was just slid in there and that it wasn't about homophobia per se but about not being sure if the other person felt the same way, it was really organic and wasn't like a shocker, just a piece of the story that appeared.

A solid and interesting read about ethics. Didn't hit on everything I would have liked, but that's a product of my work and not the way that the book itself goes. The chapter especially on DNA/genetic testing and ethics, while super old at this point, is an interesting starting place to think about certain things.

God I struggled so hard with this book. I kept having to remind myself while reading it that a book cannot be perfect, that it won't speak to everyone, that expecting a book (especially about trans people, when you are a trans person) to do that is falling into that trope where we get so little representation that we put so much pressure on the people who do produce that representation and are never pleased.

All of that being said, even though I knew why this book had been so hyped the the 'lgbt ya lit' world (if there really is such a thing,) I googled somewhere in the first third to confirm that the author was indeed trans because fuck me this book felt like it was written by a cis person. In my edition, at the end, Russo writes a note first to her cis readers and basically says "I literally made this character a big stereotype with all these things to show you she is a girl and to make you understand that trans girls are girls the easiest transition possible for you to make" and then everything clicked into place. I highlighted that part and said in my notes "this makes everything make sense- but what about the trans readers? What are we supposed to do with this?"

And that's being a little unfair--there were parts of this book that I was like "oh thank fuck for articulating this," but most of it was like..... fit into so many tropes. I read somewhere that Russo was like "I wrote this so that we'd have a story where trans girls get a happy ending" and like yeah eventually but also like the outing sequence was so terrifying and awful because I'd read that, because I spent the whole book going "it'll be okay, she's not going to pull this bullshit on you" and then she did? And some of that might be the genre Russo is working in--like if you know anything about high schooler romcoms, you'll see the arc of this book pretty much perfectly, but also the stakes are so much higher here because she's writing about a trans girl and. I'm not sure how I feel about that part of it yet. Very little of it felt like an experience I related to (which, fair, I'm not a straight trans girl living in Georgia, just because we're both trans doesn't mean we have similarities in how we experience our trans-ness) and it really felt like I was reading a typical high schooler romcom with someone who just happened to be a trans girl. Which is probably Russo's point! But that switch is so not simple and so complicated and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

(I did have to keep reading it because it also kind of felt like a thriller, with her whole 'going stealth' thing, which..... is also super fucking complicated and stereotype-y while still being part of people's lived experiences and it's just this book is so complicated and messy and I don't know how to feel about it.)

Gosh I really loved this. It just really felt so good to be in the world of Star Wars again, and having all these stories be at the same time as the most home-feeling movie was just amazing. I will admit that a couple of these felt a little repetitive, and there was one that I thought was just flat-out BAD, but when they were good they were so. good. My faves include Rae Carson's, GLEN WELDON'S BOY I LIKED THAT ONE A LOT, Gary D. Schmitt's, and Greg Rucka's, though so many were so good that honestly it's hard to pick even that handful?

If you don't love Star Wars you uh probs won't like it as much as I did, but if you do love Star Wars this is definitely for you and you should read it bc it's so great.