bahareads's Reviews (1.09k)

Christina Cooke has a beautiful writing style. Her wording and descriptions of scenes were poetic. THE TITLE BEYYYY. Yinna een got no broughupsy aye.

Broughtupsy is shallow. The plot was not present. One could argue this is a character-driven book. But there was no character depth. The plot flashes back and forth between Akúa's present and her memories of the past. It was jarring. It would happen in the same paragraph with no warning. I was confused the first two or three times it occurred, wondering if I had missed something while I was reading.

The countdown of days left in Jamaica did not add to the plot. It was unnecessary. It prompted me to think there would be a build-up of reconciliation between Akúa and Tamika, or at least some deep talks but no. Nothing. The synopsis itself feels feel disjointed. How do we go from marketing Broughtupsy as a family reconciliation, love, awakening etc to growing friendship with a woman you've known for two days (and in total like two weeks)?

Akúa is already openly gay when she goes to see her sister in Jamaica. She is just getting out of a long-term relationship with a friend-turned-lover. I do not see how this novel can be a sexual awakening when she's already been awakened(?). I do agree people can evolve and change their sexual attraction but Jayda was not a change from her previous attraction. I thought the introduction of Jayda took away from what I perceived to be the main point of the book, at least in the first half.

The first half appears to be all about Bryson (her brother)'s death and trying to reconnect with the rest of her family as well as rediscovering herself as a Jamaican. Akúa left Jamaica at the age of 8 or 10 (lol I can't totally remember). However when she meets Jayda that plot point is totally abandoned. The introduction of Jayda was meant to explore what it is to be queer in Jamaica and openly yourself. I found Akúa to be engaging in a lot of dumb bitch shit. I love a good romance development but Jayda and Akúa together was shallow. I was not convinced. PLEASE keep in mind she has known this gyal for a total of 2 weeks but acting like this the greatest love story of her life?? It could have worked if Cooke had brought in more character development for Jayda.

OR more character development for everyone!! Tamika is stereotyped as this hard-feeling, religious sister. The interactions between her and Akúa should have been fleshed out more. Instead half the time they're together Akúa is running away for her to explore and re-learn 'her' Kingston. Akúa is the narrator of Broughtupsy so we are seeing from her bias. Akúa links Tamika to Jamaica so the fact that that was not developed more is... Their father is bland. Blah. Just there. Grief is almost the only emotion we see on him. I wanted more about his motivations and feelings about Tamika living in Jamaica away from them. I was confused about his acceptance (?) of Akúa as a gay woman. It is not mentioned how he felt. I automatically assumed it would have been negative, which shows my preconceived notion. HOWEVER I was just thinking that this man would be a typical old-school Caribbean father; especially keeping in mind this book is set in the 1990s. Spreading Bryson's ashes everywhere was unexplained. I understand it is used to show Akúa's reconnection process to Jamaica but I wanted to see Tamika's open feelings about this. Akúa's actions come off more as a YA MC than a grown adult (20 or 21) character. She acts quite childish at times.

I think this could make a decent book club book. I would be very interested to see what Jamaicans living within the country and Jamaicans living in the diaspora have to say about it.

After all this word vomit. I will summarize by saying the book felt like it was split into two distinct halves. The plot was fast and loose. The ending was.... The character development was shallow. I love love love loved the title.

Thank you to House of Anasai for the ARC (lol)

Both characters were annoying. I don't mind a more childish MC but WHY is Nascosta always emphasising that Lowell ACTS like a child. It is not cute. AT ALL. Moriah is.... something else. I don't know I stuck through this book.

Embodying the Sacred considers the variety and complexity of individual and collective spiritual pathways taken by women religious figures in Lima, Peru. Two theories Van Deusen uses are "sacred materialities" and "gender performance." Sacred Materialities matters a lot in her book. It is a construct of features of physical objects and cultural spaces that are produced, consumed, exchanged, and displayed. Van Deusen acknowledges that women were limited by gender. Feminine expressions of spirituality were not manifested to counter male oppression but spiritual self-transformation on behalf of others.

The book's methods center on female sensorial, linguistic, and relational resonances with the sacred. Part of Van Deusen's argument is as women experienced movements of spiritual transformation, they engaged in the material and immaterial worlds of early modern Catholicism. Feminine knowledge of the sacred was less on formal experience and more on spiritual experience. Heterogeneous diffusion and transformation of key theological points by women facing different issues were part of Catholicism's richness, adaptability, and perseverance.

Van Deusen claims to move beyond stale paradigms that Catholicism was monolithic and oppositional to other religious practices. She wants to broaden the understanding of a range of texts that contain elements of narrativity, surrounding women in Lima. She moves the discussion of piety into the realm of relationality with other women and objects instead of a binary.

Van Deusen is very passionate about her work, as can be seen in her writing style. I was not totally convinced by all of her arguments. I did appreciate the way she looks at women in her study. She says focusing on women's resistance to the patriarchy does not tell the whole story.

This anthropology brings together top scholars to discuss Black women in the Americas. The essays cover life and labour to slavery and resistance. I wished that I enjoyed this book more but alas it was hard to get through. Many of the essays have excellent topics but the historical profession has moved beyond the way of analysing them that's in this book. I wanted more narrative and there were a lot of statistics and analytics all over the place. This was a transformative work for its time.

Pete Sigal investigates the writings (indigenous and Spanish) on sex and sexuality in Nahua culture. He looks at the persistence and gradual change of indigenous knowledge regarding what the West calls sexuality. Sigal reads the sources against each other to envision the Nahua commoner's connection between sexual discourse with everyday experience and material well-being. There are pictorial texts and alphabetic texts. He adds to the historiography of people who suggest that the colonized can influence the colonizer.

Sigal asked himself if he could write the early colonial Nahua history of sexuality, which I loved. Throughout the entire book, he lets readers know the limits of his knowledge and the extent of the sources. He uses sources from before the Spanish conquest as well as after. Sigal engages in theoretical and methodological conundrums and sexual cosmology, rituals and ways in which sexual acts enter public discourse. His core methodological intervention is using Talzolteol and 16th-century Nahua commoner to argue to read beyond notarial archives to understand Nahua sexuality & focusing on priests and friars & relationships with the Nahuas. He also looks at gods and goddesses' influence on Nahua fertility rights. Nahua deities may be beyond our concept of gender and sexuality. He analyzes ritual production on large and small scale. He uses the category "homosexual" to the idea that that identity existed for the Nahuas at the Spanish Conquest. He works with the category "sex" to challenge the reader to find sex in Nahua discourse.

I LOVED this book. I have no knowledge of the Nahua people but Sigal makes it so easy. There's a lot of theory, which could have been made super-duper complicated but it's all very readable. TFATS forces the reader to try and think outside of their Western mindset. It made me grapple with not imposing your thinking onto your historical subjects.

I enjoyed that the audiobook was narrated by Harry himself. It was interesting to see an insider’s perspective on royal life. The comments he made about his visit to The Bahamas were interesting… It made me reflect on that time. He said "At some point, I visited a stadium full of children. They lived in abject poverty and faced daily challenges and yet they greeted me with jubilant cheers and laughter." It totally skews my own memory of the event where everyone was dressed in their best looking lovely. There was a range of children there for all social classes. I was there as a Girl Guide (Girl Scout), I recall him being lectured on how we should act etc. I just hate being reduced to someone living in poverty..

WHO comes up with these plots?! I need to hear their imagination. The tension between the couple was great; loved that. There was some language and ideals from the FMC that I called fetishising and it made me feel icky. The writing was decent - the book is character based; there’s no plot. 

There was great historical detail infused in the plot. However, I feel like that might have been the major problem for me because there was a lot of historical plot going on and barely any romance. The insta-love was meh! The ending was too convenient.

Enemies to lovers is so peak! I eat it up every time. I love highland themed romances as well. The characters were great. 

I enjoyed this so much. The prose and plot were so smooth. The tropes were exactly what I love; the tension and feeling between the characters were exquisite. 🤌🏽