bisexualbookshelf's reviews
793 reviews

N.K. Jemisin's "The World We Make" is a tour de force in speculative fiction, intertwining themes of identity, community, and power dynamics in a mesmerizing narrative that challenges readers to confront the complexities of our world. Through a series of meticulously crafted chapters, Jemisin deftly navigates the lives of a diverse cast of characters, each grappling with their own struggles and aspirations amidst a backdrop of urban upheaval and supernatural intrigue.

From the thought-provoking prologue, which echoes unsettling truths about contemporary society, to the intricately woven plotlines of the various chapters, Jemisin captivates with her masterful storytelling. The exploration of identity and belonging, particularly through the lens of marginalized communities, resonates deeply, inviting readers to contemplate the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in shaping individual experiences.

One of the most compelling aspects of "The World We Make" is Jemisin's adept world-building, which seamlessly blends elements of fantasy with incisive social commentary. The concept of cities as living entities, imbued with their own personalities and histories, adds a layer of depth to the narrative, while also serving as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of human experience.

Throughout the book, Jemisin skillfully addresses themes of systemic oppression, community resilience, and the power of collective action. Whether delving into the intricacies of gentrification, the impact of immigration policies, or the dynamics of solidarity among marginalized groups, she navigates complex issues with nuance and empathy, challenging readers to confront uncomfortable truths about the world we inhabit.

The characters in "The World We Make" are richly drawn and multifaceted, each contributing to the tapestry of the narrative in their own unique way. From the fiercely independent Brooklyn to the enigmatic Manny, Jemisin imbues her characters with authenticity and depth, allowing their stories to unfold with grace and authenticity.

At its core, "The World We Make" is a testament to the power of imagination and resilience in the face of adversity. Jemisin reminds us that while the world may be shaped by our beliefs and actions, it is also capable of transformation and renewal. As readers journey through the pages of this remarkable novel, they are invited to envision a world where justice, compassion, and solidarity prevail—a world worth fighting for.

In conclusion, "The World We Make" is a thought-provoking and emotionally resonant work that reaffirms N.K. Jemisin's status as one of the most visionary writers of our time. With its compelling narrative, richly drawn characters, and incisive social commentary, this book is sure to leave a lasting impression on readers long after they turn the final page.

📖 Recommended For: Lovers of Urban Speculative Fiction, Supporters of Social Justice Narratives, Critics of Systemic Oppression, Fans of Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower."

🔑 Key Themes: Urban Ecology, City as Character, Identity and Belonging, Collective Action, Intersectionality, Community Resilience, Supernatural Intrigue, Power Dynamics, Found Family, Resilience in Adversity.

Controversial opinion alert: I did not like this book! 

I’ve seen how popular this book is in my various reader circles, from book clubs to bookstore displays to Bookstagram. I’ve seen a lot of hype and not much criticism. This concerns me because I found some of the ideas in this book potentially harmful. 

The first half of Doppelganger focuses on Naomi Klein’s experience with and reaction to being confused with Naomi Wolf. Klein, as a self-proclaimed leftist and anticapitalist, focuses on how disarming and alarming it was to be confused with a now prolific alt-right conspiracy theorist. As someone who somehow missed this particular Twitter drama, I was slightly interested in the first half of the book. It felt a bit like an unedited diary and, as my good friend Dez said, “All of what she says could have been in a New Yorker op-ed.” While I was curious about her story, I felt like I kept waiting for the analysis while Klein waxed on about her distress. To be clear, I’m sure her experience was very distressing. I just didn’t feel she had reflected on it in a way that deserved 200 pages. Throughout the first section of Doppelganger, I had one main question: if our culture weren’t so highly individualistic, would Klein have even had anything to write about?

Around halfway, Klein pivots away from her reaction to her experience and attempts to connect doppelgangers as a whole to the struggles of various social justice movements. Based on her experience and a cast of cultural figures throughout history, Klein concludes that the existence of a doppelganger is a natural and guaranteed phenomenon for anything in existence, from people to social justice movements. As an example, she offers Christianity’s depictions of God and Satan, casting the devil as God’s natural and guaranteed opposite. It’s possible I didn’t appreciate this book because I fundamentally disagree with this entire thesis. For those who don’t have the psychology background that I do, this perspective smells a lot like an expansion of Freud's and Carl Jung’s ideas about the unconscious and shadow selves. While some practitioners still embrace these frameworks, many are shifting to more dimensional and somatic analyses that first reject this internal dichotomy and also embrace the body as the source of many of these “unconscious” feelings and drives. For those who are interested in these lines of thinking, I highly recommend Richard Schwartz’s book “No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model.”

Beyond my disagreement with her main argument, the second half of the book also got problematic for me at times. Let’s talk about the anti-vax chapter: the anti-vax movement is a legitimate problem, and Klein offers some important critiques of it. She introduces us to these critiques through anecdotes about her son and some of the difficulties she’s faced as the parent of an autistic child. This is an immediate nope for me. Therapy and safe, trusted relationships are the place for these conversations, not a book that’s going to be made publicly available. Again, I’m sure some of her experiences have been distressing, and she has every right to want to talk about that. But a public forum is not the right place, especially when her son has no say over or understanding of how his neurodivergence and neurodivergent experiences are depicted. As Klein even admits, she doesn’t know how her son will feel about what she wrote when he’s old enough to read and understand it. That should have been enough to stop her from doing so. 

As mentioned, the first section of Doppelganger is dedicated to explicating the distress experienced by Klein, a respected journalist and researcher, when she was confused with Wolf, someone whose ideas are not respected or based on valid research. So I was surprised when referring to her autistic son in the anti-vax chapter, Klein mixes up the terms “neurodivergent” and “neurodiverse.” I was not aware of the proper use of these terms until recently, and there are many of you who I wouldn’t expect to be either, as this clarification is only just now making its way into mainstream discussions.

But, as the journalist and academic she establishes herself to be in the first section and, more importantly, as the parent of an autistic child, I would have expected Klein to have done her research and determined that “neurodiverse” is an adjective that can only be applied to a group of people. Her son cannot be described as a “neurodiverse kid,” as she describes him in her book, as he is only one individual, and you need a group of people to have diversity. Even then, no one in the group must be neurodivergent for it to classify as “neurodiverse.” Neurodiversity is a term that captures how no two brains function the same way. You could have a group of people whose brains all function “normally,” according to sociocultural standards, and still use the term neurodiverse to describe it. The adjective to describe an individual who is not neurotypical is “neurodivergent.” Klein’s son is a neurodivergent kid, not a neurodiverse one. And Klein should have known the difference.

At this point, Doppelganger probably wasn’t going to recover for me. But you guys know that DNF-ing is not my brand, so I persisted. Klein goes on to cover some important social justice movements and the ways their work has been impaired by alt-right groups. I was never quite sure how these chapters and their analyses connected, nor did I think they supported Klein’s thesis about doppelgangers. I also didn’t feel like Klein added much to the conversations happening in these movements; if anything, she simply include a blurb from an activist who is contributing to the work happening within them. On top of all this, as we jumped from anti-vaxxers to Black Lives Matter to anti-semitism to pro-Palestine advocacy, I was shocked that movements for queer and trans justice did not appear in this wide breadth of topics. You know who the alt-right hates as much as Black and brown people? Queer and trans people. But somehow, this didn’t occur to Klein, which felt very much to me like a cishet person who might think homophobia is over now.

Doppelganger highlighted a lot of bad things that are happening in our world right now. Beyond that, I’m not sure what it had to offer. There are many more radical books out there dissecting how we got to where we are now and what we can do about moving forward toward a less harmful world. While I haven’t read them myself, I appreciate that Klein’s previous works have significantly contributed to anticapitalist theories and conversations. Yet, for me, this one didn’t contribute anything to our advocacy movements and did add harm in some places. With the impression I have of Klein’s former work, I can’t help but feel that she didn’t allow enough time for the trauma dust to settle. From very early on in this book, I felt that Klein was still too emotionally close to her doppelganger experience to write about it critically and reflectively. By the end of the book, I still felt that Doppelganger failed to offer any significant insights into the issues plaguing our society today, leaving me questioning what the point was.

I first came to Jules’s work via the Death Panel podcast (highly recommend for all my DJ bookworms!), & her new book did not disappoint. A Short History of Trans Misogyny is a brief but impactful attempt to answer questions like why the average life expectancy for American trans women is 35 years of age. Jules powerfully explicates that, despite continuous calls for trans equity, the violence & harm perpetrated against trans women, especially Black & Brown trans women, seems to continue unquestioned. This book opens by asking if men are not inherently violent & there is nothing about trans feminity that inherently invites violence, where & why did this phenomenon begin? To answer these questions, Jules takes us first to 19th-century British India to discover how hijras were trans-feminized &, thus, forced into sex work for survival. She contrasts this treatment with the 2020 pardon of a US soldier for the murder of a trans-Filipina woman, emphasizing how colonial capitalism has facilitated the Western gender binary’s entrapment of the globe. Jules’s next stop is antebellum America’s sex work industry: she investigates how newly-freed Black & Brown trans feminized people turned to sex work to avoid other types of extraction, be it in labor or in marriage. Jules then turns to the street queens of the American 50s & 60s, investigating how they served as foils against which gay men contrasted themselves to gain entry to a middle-class status they had previously been denied. Lastly, Jules introduces us to the mujerista of Latin America, explaining that “mujerísma underlies a fierce commitment to being unabashedly the most feminine, or the womanliest of all, in a loudly travesti way, manifestly different from the normative ideal of womanhood.”

This book is such an important read. I think all cis women, especially white ones & queer ones, should read this book to understand the importance of standing in solidarity & unity with our trans sisters against misogyny. I also appreciated Jules’s insistence on how crucial abolition is to trans liberation. As she tells us in the book’s closing, “Keep the faith, but don’t give up the political struggle on which it depends.” 

“I want to be worthy of the great terror my existence inspires.”

This book left me absolutely breathless. 72 hours after finishing it, I’m still suffering from the hangover of how much I loved it. Martyr! follows Cyrus, a yet-to-be-discovered Iranian American poet, as he tries to make sense of his life and his grief. His mother is dead, his father is dead, he’s stuck in a job as a medical actor, and now that he’s sober, he can’t use substances to take the edge off. He’s starting to wonder whether joy is even real anymore when he’s struck by his next great idea: he’ll write a book about martyrs. As he begins searching the world for examples, a friend tells him about a museum exhibit: an Iranian woman, dying of cancer, spending her last days in the museum, talking to people. And thus begins Cyrus’s search for meaning.

Being familiar with Akbar’s poetry, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when I cracked this book open. The goosebumps that peppered my arms and tears that crawled down my face while I was reading would suggest otherwise. Akbar’s lyricism effortlessly echoes through every line of this book. Martyr! illustrates the power and the insufficiency of language, the way it can both elucidate and obscure. Beyond the prose, Akbar’s fiction debut tackles a wide range of topics: grief, racism, sexuality, family dynamics, Persian culture, gender roles. Martyr!’s characters leap off the page as Akbar employs them to explore these diverse subjects. With alternating POVs between Cyrus, his mother, his father, and his uncle, this book becomes both a captivating character study and a heart-rending family saga.

This is another must-read recommendation for my diverse lit-fic lovers! Thank you, Kaveh, for such beautiful polysexual and sapphic representation and for everything I learned about Persian culture. I’m already planning to reread Martyr! later this year 🌻 Run, don’t walk, to pick up a copy of this amazing new book!