“Before colonization, enslavement, and disaster, we had cultures where disability was a normal part of human existence, where we were honored and valued. As Black disabled queer writer and organizer Cyree Jarelle Johnson remarked to me, “Harriet Tubman had seizures and narcolepsy because a slave owner threw a weight at her head. While on trips she likely had to sit down, lay down, move slowly and rest. Her comrades didn’t abandon her then, and we can figure out how not to abandon each other now.” We have ancestral shame to heal. We have disabled lineages to honor. Let’s get to it.”

This was heavy, but at the same time gave me the strength to bear it.
A must-read for anyone interested in justice, fighting fascism, and imagining a better future.
I knew some of the organizing history discussed but not all, and I’m so grateful to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha for documenting and thinking of ways of archiving these movements. This book also helped me reframe the way I think about my relationships with loved ones who might not identify as disabled, but who could benefit from more of this care work.

“I don’t want to be fixed, if being fixed means being bleached of memory, untaught by what I have learned through this miracle of surviving. My survivorhood is not an individual problem. I want the communion of all of us who have survived, and the knowledge. I do not want to be fixed. I want to change the world. I want to be alive, awake, grieving, and full of joy. And, I am.”

This is my year of the re-read and I’m embracing it fully at this point.

😭😭😭

Took a while for me to get into it, and even then I think I would have absorbed more having a physical copy instead of the audiobook.

Took me a while to get used to the writing style, and I think I need to accept that I generally do not enjoy short stories.
Also, why the Harry Potter reference? Unnecessary. 

This book affirmed my asexuality. I normally don‘t mind explicit sex scenes (I read enough spicy romances not to) but every sexual act in this book was so disgusting, from teenage solo work to adult hookups, no matter the gender or relationship with the partner, I hated reading all of them.
The beginning puberty years were especially difficult to get through. I almost DNFd multiple times, and while the read did have some things to teach me, I kind of regret not putting it aside.

Also, this was published in 2022. Whyyyyyyyyyy is there a whole paragraph about how much the main character loves Harry Potter 

Mostly repeating my review from when I read this as an eBook, only adding that it moved so nicely in audio and was well narrated. The poetry flowed so well, I often got lost in the story and once almost missed my metro stop. The pain of losing traditional and family knowledge, the trauma and danger of assimilation, was so clearly but beautifully shown.

“I wanted to show we can thrive in our own homes. We don’t have to flee or migrate to cities and abandon part of our identities. We can be Indigenous and we can be queer and we be rural—all at the same time. Those spaces are our homes.”

I agree with other reviewers that in the eBook it was very difficult to tell when Abdou or Whitehead were speaking, but overall this was an interesting conversation. I haven’t read Jonny Appleseed yet and hope I can return to this once I do.

I can't really say this wasn't what I expected (positive) because I didn't go in with any expectations, having not even read the blurb, but even when I thought I had a grasp on where the book was going, I was surprised. The change in perspective kept the story moving at a good pace, and while it was certainly a heavy read, it contained so much fun and joy. 
This wasn't the Vivek Shraya work I had planned to read for the Trans Rights Readathon, but it was the work my library had available, and I'm so glad I checked it out. Thank you to the TRR for continuing to introduce me to incredible works, and thank you to public libraries for everything and more. 

A last note - once again begging authors to stop including references to Harry Potter in their work, though this book may be just old enough to escape the worst of the trend.

“What would it take for me to no longer be a woman? If I cut off my breasts? If I cut out my womb? …I’m a prisoner in this world, in this era, in this room, in this body. It never ends. It will never end.”

Having just finished Sunrise on the Reaping, it was interesting to read another work exploring propaganda, abuse of AI, and even a possibly mind-controlled body-double situation. As expected, this sequel was very different than Iron Widow. A lot of it dragged, and the political theory lessons and feminist discussions were interesting at first, though sometimes heavy-handed, and then became too repetitive. However, this was still engaging and I hope the ending leads to great finale.