read this in two hours...was just completely mesmerized

its one of those books that reminds you that reading is activism! art is activism! vulnerability, the courage to write this and be vulnerable with everyone that reads it is activism!!!!! 

i love love love his writing style. theres music and jazz and art and dance and photography and love and trauma and the feeling of being seen, the feeling of being looked at and the realities of being a black man. there is being loved and being vulnerable and holding grief. he has such a beautiful way with words, i love the repetitiveness and the parallels, every paragraph and page refers to another and it all comes full circle. 

i have no words to describe this book. as he says "language is flimsy, language fails us, always" 

asian immigrant abandoned by her parents ( w an emphasis on mom), ofc my therapist recommended this to me ! 

i love memoirs but sometimes i wish they were written more poetically than...academically. especially if there's this much emotional weight

a classic for a reason! love how in depth and equally important the side characters are in this book! also a very interesting way to portray women for something that was written at this time

great recommendation from my therapist. ive always considered philosophy and psychology as two very closely related things so its interesting to see it show up here. 

 i love how they incorporate outside factors (childhood, politics, war, social standards) to overall mental health bc thats something a lot of books emphasizing individual psych fail to mention. i think trauma was a bit glossed over and that itself could have its own book tbh, but otherwise, understanding the importance of your own will to want to be better is SO important...its def not as easy as they make it sound though

end times is 5 stars alone...some of the short stories were not for me but spud and spud, end times, habitat, excitable creatures and disruption were amazing 

end timed stood out to me the most because of how human it was. the entire laying rocks sequence and how the world ending seems like something so small and mundane next to the grief that son and husband had for the narrator. also loved how we get to see grief from the side of the person being grieved and, in general, i loved seeing the idea that time is experienced differently by everyone applied so cleverly into a story using footnotes! 

idk how to explain these stories other than whimsical, magical and human. also love the unique takes on narrating, loved the use of footnotes, the use of the second POV and the alternating perspectives in the spud and spud stories

super slow start but once i actually understood what was going on it was p good

Revisiting this book as an adult was a great idea. This book means a lot to me