This was such a beautiful collection. Individually, the poems were powerful and beautiful, but also as a collection, it felt very cohesive. I loved that there were three distinct parts with their own motifs, but they were still all connected by other themes. I cannot wait to see what other collections they put out!

This was a really important view into how the AIDS epidemic impacted a group of constantly overlooked people. This book outlined what they had to go through to get this group together and what the group was able to do for people as individuals. While some chapters do have a section of text explanation, most of the book is comprised of testimonies, experiences, and even poetry from women who were a part of the ACE program. The end covers the workshops that they did, including information about AIDS that they had at the time and activities for workshops, but they also included some responses that people had given in past workshops, giving us another window into these women's experiences. 

This book really paints a picture of stigma and life with AIDS in prison at the time and the issues that these women faced outside of it through these snapshots of experience. But it also shows the importance of community support and resilience that shines through when people are given the proper resources -- which is particularly huge since in most aspects of life, many of these women weren't given the support they need. Something that really struck me is how much the creators of ACE had to work to get this program. Eventually people from the outside could come help them and they reached out to new inmates, but at first the people in charge of the prison were resistant. These women did such incredible work, but they shouldn't have had to. Most of these women were at the intersection of AIDS, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, racism, poverty, and often other sorts of violence and misogyny. These women should have been given resources in prison certainly -- but they should have been given them way before. So much of their experience handling AIDS is similar to what I have read of other groups -- having to come together for social support, solidarity between PWAs and people who are negative, having to go out of their way to help treat and care for their own. But they had to do it all while navigating the time constraints, lack of personal support, and so much more that comes from being in prison. 

On a technical level, I'm sure I could pick out some issues. And I would love to see a discussion that brings the experiences together more -- and discussion of prisons and AIDS looking at the system, but I'm sure I can find that elsewhere (and I'm sure there would have been much more barriers to publishing that sort of book from prison). I am so glad that they were able to put this together. There is so much work and organizing that goes unrecognized, so having this documented is really incredible. 

 In beautiful prose, stories from two different times converge, connected by art, queerness, and community. This book explores grief, identity, and community in ways I have never seen articulated together in such a cohesive and breathtaking way. Each aspect of the story contains multitudes, weaved together so intentionally. I'm not sure I can even articulate all of my feelings or all aspects of the story with one read. It's one that I want to reread even more intentionally -- not just for theme or plot, but to peel back the emotional layers. I'm afraid this is more of a 3am rambling post than a proper review, but suffice it to say, this is an incredible book 

Another incredible collection from Danez Smith. So many quality poems and the shared themes (cinema and Black community) were so cohesive and complex, explored from several angles. This was a smaller collection than the others I've read by them, but no less powerful. 

Simple, cute, and made me teary-eyed. Cute lesson but the way it could be about being trans got me in the feels

Reviewing this book is really difficult because there is just so much that went on in this book. This could be seen as a character study, a study on a theme, and a study on a community. It's about how much a person (or a community) has to be situated in context -- not just the context of the past, but also the present, and with space for the future. This was a messy book about messy characters in messy situations and its reflective of how messy reality really is and how complicated people are. There were aspects of the book that one could critique, certainly, but I think it all adds in to this theme of life and people being messy and complicated. I do think that parts of this book will read really differently for queer people than trans people. Parts of this book are really unapologetically trans -- you don't get the 101 and if you aren't aware of the culture, you may be a little lost. But there are other parts where it is directly about the cishet community. The whole book really acts as a conversation about community, but also about gender (gender at large, but also specifically Ames/Amy's gender), about motherhood and the need to be mothered. This is such a complex and interesting book. I could see it not being for everyone, but I really enjoyed it and found it so fascinating. I'm already planning a reread to unpack it more eventually. The only thing I was really unsure about was some of the conversation about race. Some of it did seem good, but some of the comparisons that happened, I would like to see some biracial trans perspectives on