I really deeply enjoyed this. Wilkerson does a great job of pushing against stereotypes about Appalachian people, and her careful attentiveness to the women she writes about reveals so much in conjunction with her analysis. Her framework is really compelling and interesting for future use, and this definitely could be used in excerpt for teaching. Definitely a book I want to share with other people and talk about!

This was just so kind; you can really feel welcomed by it, and the stories are so engaging and tell so much. I appreciate Coyote's attention to care throughout, as well as the multiple responses to people asking for help. The brief interludes are also beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. Just such a good book, and one I'd strongly recommend for both trans folks and cis people.

Clearly a classic for a reason. Some of it weirdly does not actually age well (some of her comments on the Chinese and the Japanese--while she makes a critical point about Black folks being able to fill in spaces violently made open by Japanese internment, there were still definitely some moments where I was like "yikes" that I hadn't expected, as well as the whole lesbian thing which speaks to her life but is also kind of cringe-y,) but definitely beautifully crafted and 100% makes me want to read the other autobiographical pieces she's written.

I went in with low expectations of this book--after a while many popular histories of things about presidents read the same, and I've read many of them--but this was a surprise, mostly in how quickly and easily it read. It does suffer in some ways from that popular white history trope of the odd dive into a tidbit that really isn't necessary to the story, but is still potentially interesting to the reader (all of the details about newspaper battles were not necessarily critical to the entire story, I would argue, but I get why they're in there, for example.) Overall it was, like I said, a quick and easy read, and fairly enjoyable for a book in this kind of genre. If these kinds of books are already your thing, you'll definitely enjoy this!

I would say this was really more of a 3.5 for me, and it's because some of the writing she does about books worships the book-object so much it's like... grating to me.

The chapter where she burns a book made me roll my eyes so hard, and it's because I, as a child of two librarians and the grandchild of another, know that sometimes books need to be thrown in the trash!

Otherwise the book was a really interesting, and if you're not super familiar with all the services a library offers, this is definitely a read for you! Really good arguments against the folks who say libraries are outdated, and that no one uses them. (I, for example, borrowed this book from my local public library!) If you're more connected to the present reality of library uses, the history parts are pretty interesting. It definitely kept me engaged, and maybe if I was a little more sentimental about books-as-objects I would find it less grating. (Her engagement with issues of homelessness is also uh kind of iffy, though she does finally kind of admit it in the end, as if you couldn't tell from the way she writes about it before that moment.) But definitely well-researched, well-written, full of interesting tidbits and little pieces that don't end up feeling extraneous to her overall story.

Right off the bat, I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I am grateful to the publisher for the opportunity to read this. I'm also a white settler-descendent living in the territory currently known as the United States.

This book is really solid read on indigenous issues with regard to environmental justice, and how indigenous communities need specific frameworks that are not covered by State initiatives. Gilio-Whitaker crams a LOT into this relatively short book, and somehow makes it all pretty accessible, though there are maybe some terms that could be explained more? (I'm wondering at a US settler-descendent's introduction to settler colonialism through this book, and if they felt like they would understand it.) She manages to use the #NoDAPL protests from 2016 as a solid frame, while not exclusively focusing on or fetishizing what happened there. Her citational practice is super solid, and it's very easy to find more books to read on the topic after hers. Her topics are also cover a lot of ground--not only what we might think of as issues of environmental damage, like toxins etc., but also food sovereignty and tribal sovereignty as well. Overall a really good, accessible book for people interested in understanding issues surrounding environmentalism, environmental justice, and indigenous issues in a fairly complex way.

I received a copy of this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I'm grateful to the publisher for the opportunity to read it; I also backed the original anthology when it was a Kickstarter project.

This collection is solid, and the hope nuggets in each story and poem are really powerful. I will say I think a list of trigger warnings would have really aided this collection; the last two stories ("The Judith Plague" and especially "Kill the Darlings (Silicone Sister Remix)") are deeply powerful but definitely need to be approached with self-care in mind. (I've written about the inclusion of trigger warning indexes before, with [b:Resilience|36904454|Resilience|Amy Eleanor Heart|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1512467247s/36904454.jpg|59802919], which is an example of it being done really well!)

Overall, this is a great collection of stories and poems with hope in despairing times, and may be really useful to folks looking for that in our current weird dystopia.

A really great read, and I think much more revealing about butch/fem culture than the works of Les Feinberg (as much as I love Feinberg's work, and appreciate hir work towards liberation.) Kennedy and Davis make incredible use of their interviews; they let their narrators speak for themselves in ways that I think many historians still struggle to do, and their analysis is clearly done with a deep sense of care for the community, while also being realistic about the darker aspects of lesbian community. The specificity here is also just such a gift; they're so careful to pay attention to what makes this site, and the narrators within this site, important to pay attention to. Their direct engagement with feminists who have really shaped the conversation around butch/fem makes it honestly an incredible resource from that perspective, and blows open the claims made about butch-as-oppressors as well as butch-as-masculine. There are clearly aspects of butch that get dropped out in the focus on "lesbian" as a category made up of women; those who passed as men full-time, for example, are not interviewed and are generally dismissed by the narrators, but I think in combination with Feinberg's work it's totally possible to get a far more realistic understanding of working class butch/fem culture than the misrepresentation of what it is that seems to plague our current understanding.

Really, I want to shove this book into the hands of so many, and if butch/fem is something you'd like to learn more about, I'm not sure you can get a more thorough examination than in this book. Just really great work, detailed and so careful while leaving room for so much analysis and moving forward.

Really delightful; the narrator did an INCREDIBLE job, and has a frankly amazing Harrison Ford impersonation. The plot moved quickly without feeling rushed, and the characters that we know already from the series felt pretty in-character. Han's whole plot re: trust might feel a little heavy-handed, but Star Wars is for kids and this book especially is so that's what you get! Some weird 'hot women' stuff going on, which I guess we could chalk up to a Han characterization thing but it still made me roll my eyes. Still definitely a fun read, and really do stress that the audiobook is GREAT, not too long but enough to pass the time for a big hunk of a mid-sized car trip.

Just incredible. Deeply lyrical, beautiful and also harrowing and painful at times. I'm going to have to go back at some point and reread this; even as I was reading it, it felt like it was slipping through my fingers. But really can't stress how incredible it is, and feels like a gift, honestly, one I'm so grateful to get the chance to read. I'm not sure how much more I can say, because I feel like I'm still sifting through this one and trying to figure it out, but god it's so, so good.