lareinebee's Reviews (609)

Masterfully crafted poetic prose — raw, blooming, explosive, dancing, wailing imagery. Thoughts becoming feelings, feelings becoming thoughts, the book almost breathes with words come intensely alive. It’s a brilliant fever dream. 

The content was difficult at times, but in that struggle between running away and committing to involvement, we better understand the narrator’s lived experience as a Vietnamese immigrant, as a product of violence and war, as a queer man, as a son who can best express his life in a language his most beloved audience doesn’t speak. Weaving language into often dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, but always artful palpable displays may be a symbolic way to share himself with her, despite all other barriers. 

The influence of Roland Barthes and semiotics was apparent throughout — signs, symbols, syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics conducted by a maestro.

For anyone who occupies space in a minority or oppressed group, or as an active and engaged ally. For anyone who struggles with how and when and where to speak up, especially after people show that they don’t want to understand your experience if it’s not comfortable or easy, that anything you bring to their attention that’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, or difficult will make them see being around YOU as inconvenient, uncomfortable, and difficult… and that “diversity” is now a buzz word, where merely claiming the word apparently does the job of creating it, with a little tokenism and no further action.

When we speak our lived truths and are not given ears or empathy, we can lean on each other. Calling attention to exclusion is not the same as ingratitude or complaining. If my speaking up about inequality, pain, and marginalization for myself and others kills your joy, is “too serious,” and ”makes a big deal out of nothing,” then your joy and fun and comfort are RELYING on our inequality, pain, and marginalization. In that case, I’ll happily be a killjoy. 🗡️💁🏻