This was so sweet, just what I wanted from a Persuasion retelling.

I'm so glad I read this after being introduced to Sins Invalid by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Care Work. I wasn't in the best headspace for another nonfiction activism guide after my recent reads, but this book make it easy to keep going anyway. Touching and motivating, I hope there's something for everyone to be inspired by or learn from here.

I'm still not a fan of short stories, and many of these felt like they would have benefited from better conclusions, but this was still enjoyable. I wish the stories would have overlapped even more because it was such a joy when characters or specific places reappeared. Overall, very dark but very interesting and mostly fun.

"There is no doubt that love can change us deeply. Love is dangerous and full of liberatory potential because of the ways it can shake us loose from what we are doing, can help us desire new horizons, and shift to meet them. How do you want to be changed by love? What about you and your life do you want to protect from being lost or changed by love?"

A beautiful and easy read about all kinds of relationships and the ways we need each other to survive. I especially appreciated the wrap-ups at the end of each chapter and the way Spade brought each point home with questions and engagement work. Not all of it was for me in my own love life, but all of it was for me as a community member.

"My greatest hope for everyone who reads this book is that, if you are not already involved, you will join the resistance. I hope you are part of groups working on destroying systems of domination, helping people survive the current crises, and preparing for the catastrophes that are coming. Now, as we face the collapse of consumer industrial society, we desperately need dense networks of support and care. We still depend on unjust systems for our basic needs and those systems are crumbling. More and more, we will be forced to rely on each other to get by.”

and again the promise of never"

Heart-wrenching and captivating poems.

I didn't quite get the hype. The atmosphere was stunning, but it took me a long time to get into it, and even then, some aspects of the world building and plot didn't click.

It was especially hard to read about her murdering her companions. While some definitely chose that, those who were suffering from memory loss might have lived happily for longer, and those who died later might not have chosen their early end if others hadn't set that precedent before them. Of course, in excruciating pain one might long to die. But she said her self near the end, that between those bouts of pain she can't imagine wanting death. So taking the deaths of the other women into her own hands (literally) seemed wrong.

It was frustrating the times that the reader was reminded how little the child knew, only for her to then describe things she should have no knowledge of.

She talks about how Anthea fails to teach her how to swim, but when she's alone she swims by herself? The women have no medicine, but they can make a hot compress (out of what?)

She says, "I cannot mourn for what I have not known," but many of us mourn for a past or future or place or person we can only imagine. It was frustrating as well how little the women

once they were free. They had been tortured and possibly drugged, but eventually they were able to create buildings and carve and sing. They could have lived more happily, making new art and connections. This also felt very wrong and almost eugenicist, implying that without men or capitalism, these women only could look forward to death.

This book will definitely haunt me, but maybe not in the way it lingers with other readers.

It might have been refreshing to hear COVID correctly discussed in the present tense and see the failure of the government to take the pandemic and those current risks seriously, but this book suffered a lot from not connecting any of this to mitigation or disability justice. It hurt to know that Kendzior recognizes COVID as a threat, but fails to do more than the absolute bare minimum to prevent the spread. In fact, she writes about traveling to businesses that were supposed to be closed at the beginning of the pandemic, deciding to travel home while her whole family was likely infectious instead of finding a place to isolate (and rest, which would not only have been good for those they likely came in contact with getting food and gas etc. but also for their own health), and continuing to travel without talking about upgrading masking, avoiding crowds or poorly ventilated indoor spaces, or anything beyond being outside and I suppose that included the now very outdated 6 feet guidance. On her social media, she is now advertising a book tour without requiring masks (something authors Dean Spade and Sim Kern have required at their events this year and last year.)
It hurts trying to wrap my head around how someone with so much sharp insight into politics and the harms of the rich and powerful have on minorities can still fail to see how the lack of action around COVID and her own individual actions can ruin lives and are also propelling fascism. When we fail to mask and demand masks at events we host, we make life harder for those disabled or still living in the reality of the impact COVID can have. This was especially difficult to stomach with her passages on losing her bodily autonomy as someone who could become pregnant, the connection to the loss of freedom in the disability community is right there, but it wasn't included.

If you enjoyed this book, if you connect to Kendzior’s warnings, then I urge you to resist eugenics. Inform yourself on the damage COVID can really do. And then don’t just acknowledge it - mask up to protect yourself and others and help provide masks for those who can’t afford them.

Read for the Decolonize Your Bookshelf Reading Challenge from paperbacks_n_frybread

A beautiful story with fun and engaging illustrations. A heartwarming story full of Palestinian culture.

‘In the end, she was desperate for God’s forgiveness, but I reckon it’s God who should ask forgiveness from her.’

A very difficult but interesting read.