As I have previously mentioned, I love reading books about the systems at work in our world that we barely ever think about. Grocery stores are one such system. The supply chain for things like grocery stores has been slightly more in the news lately, given disruptions caused by the pandemic (not to mention a ship blocking the Suez Canal for days). Yet the news can only ever give a cursory explanation of the complexity of the supply chain. Benjamin Lorr dives deep in The Secret Life of Groceries. This book is neither superficial nor shallow: it is clearly a labour of intense fascination and dedication. There’s so much happening here that I don’t even know where to begin.

Lorr divides the book into 6 lengthy parts rather than chapters, but it works. First he traces the history of supermarkets—how we got from general stores to the behemoth stores in which we shop today. Then he discusses transportation, in particular the transport trucking industry in the continental United States (and Canada). Part 3 covers food entrepreneurs and what it takes to break out onto store shelves. From there, Lorr returns to the store, this time to examine how stores manage their employees, resources, and customers. Next, he examines how regulations around the grocery and food industries aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Finally, he indulges those who crave a really deep dive down the supply chain, all the way to the “bottom”—a world of slave labour, unsafe and unethical practices, and disruptive NGOs. Within each part, Lorr frames his investigations through the lens of personal stories: Part 1 discusses Joe Coloumbe, founder of Trader Joe’s; Part 2 follows Lynne Ryles, a transport trucker who allowed Lorr to ride along in her cab for several days; etc. By the end of the book, you’ll feel like you’ve met a whole bunch of people whose lives are probably very different from yours.

I picked up some great trivia from this book. For example, Sylvan Goldman introduced shopping carts in 1937, but initially he had to hire people to push them around the store so customers would understand their utility. This is just one way that Lorr helps us understand how different the world used to be, and that’s what I come to books like this for. I want authors to remind me that what I take for granted—hopping in my car to go to a big box supermarket, buying pre-packaged food, maybe even doing it all online these days—is new. In the 1950s and 1960s, supermarkets existed but were not like what we have now, and if you go back even earlier, they were seen as pipe dreams that could never work—until someone made them work.

Lorr is careful not to lionize these visionaries nor condemn them, a balance I appreciate. I think, depending on the writer, this story could become a validation of the fictional American Dream: look at these brilliant men who invented modern grocery shopping! Alternatively, the story could be one of complete despair and despondency over capitalism. Both these stories manifest within The Secret Life of Groceries, and it’s Lorr’s ability not to succumb to either side but instead find a middle path that makes this book so compelling.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m firmly anti-capitalist, and I appreciate how angry this book got me at points. Whether it’s the indenturing of truck drivers or the enslavement of Burmese refugees, there’s a lot to get mad about in the secret life of our groceries. But as Lorr remarks in the conclusion, there is something very performative about the way we white folx in the West handle learning about such exploitation. We love to see labels proclaiming food is ethically sourced; we love to perform outrage and dispatch inspectors. Yet how much actually changes? I appreciate rather than bringing us outrage Lorr chronicles those, like P’Aon, who are taking action.

Lorr worked hard on this book, and it shows. He embeds himself in various situations, and he has Done the Research. Though not a thick book by any means, it is meticulous, detailed, and thoughtful. There were times when Lorr’s writing style didn’t work for me—it struck me as that “trying too hard” kind of style that some journalists develop because they are caught in the awkward land between novel-style prose and plain English. Lorr luxuriates in his descriptions a little too much for a non-fiction book, in my opinion. But I can deal with that when he’s bringing me such interesting information!

The Secret Life of Groceries is well worth a read if you’re at all interested in what happens behind the scenes of where you buy your food. You might have noticed I’ve been judicious in my word choice—I don’t want to overhype this book, to describe it as “mind-blowing” or “life-changing,” because I don’t think it is those things, but I think you can easily come up for air after submerging yourself in this book and want to think it’s those things. That’s the kind of book this is: seductive in its exposition, enlightening in its selection of facts, always ready to make you ask for more.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Maybe it’s because this is Asimov’s last Foundation novel, published shortly after his death. Maybe it’s because it’s the last Asimov novel I am likely to read, now that I have completed my re-read of this entire series. Whatever the reason, I am inclined more favourably towards Forward the Foundation than I have been to the other books. Now, I will still pan Asimov’s writing skills and the general plot of the book. Nevertheless, this book is certainly not the worst in the series.

Picking up ten years after Prelude to Foundation, this book continues to follow Hari Seldon and his associates on Trantor. Seldon is still working on making psychohistory viable, but it is a lifetime of work. He is aware of his age—he’s forty at the start of the book, oh my God! As decades pass, Asimov tells us the story broken up into shorter novellas like he did with the first book (which might be one of the reasons this one feels more coherent?). In the end, we arrive at the founding of the Foundations that made the rest of the series possible. Full circle. Loop closed. Good night, sweet science fiction author: your work here is done.

Asimov’s intentness upon Seldon’s discomfort around his age jumps out immediately and feels so uncomfortable to me, a 31-year-old reader. Is this Asimov projecting his own advanced age and frailties onto his character of Seldon? Forty is not that old, my dude. Even when Seldon reaches the age of 60, I’m not sure he would be as “infirm” as you make him out to be. Then again, one might also interpret this as a microcosm for the wider decay of the Galactic Empire, which is the principal theme Asimov spins out over the course of this novel: the Empire’s last days are here, and only Seldon can provide the guidance (through psychohistory) that might mitigate the darkness ahead.

We’ve heard this before, of course. It turns out that watching the Foundations being built is not nearly as exciting as watching them existing and doing things. That being said, I’ll give Asimov credit for having plenty of action in this book—both physical and mental battles abound. There is plenty of tension, plenty of reversals, and lots of characters beyond Seldon get their time in the limelight. Shocked as I am to admit it … this book might actually have good pacing and an all right plot structure.

Ultimately, it is clear that Asimov wanted to tie up all the loose ends and fully explain the origins of the Foundations—and in particular, the psychic powers of the Second Foundationers. He even ties in another novel of his, Nemesis (which I don’t plan to read) that is only loosely related. This is the double-edged sword of long-lived and prolific authors: it can be a joy to see them revisit their oeuvre and continue to expand upon their earlier works. Yet that temptation, taken once too often, can become treacherous (I feel this way with Terry Brooks and the Shannara series as well). I’ll give Asimov credit for largely avoiding too much retconning or other such changes that could undermine what he accomplished with his earlier works.

Overall, the Foundation series is obviously a classic science fiction series, and I won’t argue otherwise. But if you have read my reviews of the other books here, then you’ll know that I don’t think it’s a particularly good set of classics. Asimov is not a great writer in the most technical sense of the word, nor is he a particularly grand storyteller, and his attitudes towards women leave a lot to be desired. Yes, some of his big ideas are interesting and commendable, yet I will argue that many of them are not particularly thought-provoking or so original that someone else wouldn’t have come along and done something similar.

So my verdict: if you are interested in the history of science fiction as a genre, reading this series (or at least the first few books) is a good idea. Asimov’s role in that history is indisputable even if his reputation is up for debate. If, however, you are a fan of science fiction but not particularly interested in its older, sexist iterations like this series, then give this a miss. You aren’t missing out.

I am fairly certain now that I have closed the chapter on my reading of Asimov. I have no desire to dig into his robot novels or any other works. I will hang on to these books in my library for a while, and then perhaps one day I will trade them in or pass them on to the next people who are interested in this slice of sci-fi history. It was an interesting experience, but it is also one I am happy to leave behind.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 A few years ago, I read The Hate U Give and liked it enough that I have multiple copies of it (various special editions). Angie Thomas then followed it up with On The Come Up, a spin-off set in the same neighbourhood but with a different cast and a focus on hip-hop, something Thomas cares about deeply on a personal level. Now we have a third novel that is clearly the result of a deep connection, in this case to one of her characters—I suspect Maverick wouldn’t shut up until Thomas told his story. That’s because Thomas is a fantastic storyteller who crafts characters you want to know personally, yet at the same time, she confronts serious social issues. Concrete Rose is no exception. 

Reconciling this Maverick’s voice with the Mav Carter we know from The Hate U Give was a challenge at first. This is not a criticism of Thomas but instead a comment on her prowess at fully realizing young adult voices. Maverick in Concrete Rose is young, grappling with the path to maturity, and above all else, he is in pain. It’s a pain that a white person like myself cannot fully understand, because I benefit from our white supremacist society rather than suffer from it. Yet, as with Thomas’ other two novels, this book also displays the power of Black joy.

First, an all-important question? Can you read this if you haven’t read The Hate U Give? Yes, most definitely. Though the books are closely related, they stand alone. Moreover, I suspect that regardless of the order in which you read these two books, you will find interesting connections.

Maverick Carter is 17 years old and finds out he has a child as a result of a one-night stand. This throws a wrench into his relationships with Lisa, his girlfriend but not the mother of his child, as well as King, his business partner/fellow gang member and sometime-lover of the mother of Mav’s child. Yeah, it’s complicated. Mav is a member of the King Lords, being initiated into a life of dealing drugs as the only possible escape from destitution. Mav tries to get out, tries to find a different path, yet it never quite seems like the opportunities are there. One setback after another leaves Mav feeling disconnected, desolate, and desperate. The question he has to ask himself, and hopefully answer, is this: what does it mean to be a man when everyone around you thinks they know how you’re going to turn out before you even turn up?

I’m really happy Thomas chose to tell a story with a male protagonist and to dig into the intersections of anti-Black racism and toxic masculinity. When we discuss white supremacy and patriarchy, we need to make sure we comment on those intersections, and that’s precisely what Concrete Rose does. Mav’s experiences are not simply because he is Black, nor are they simply because he is a man. He is a Black man, both things at once, and these identities together inform the expectations the world lays upon him.

Mav’s age is important, because so many people tell him to be a man and expect him to act like an adult. Yet, as Thomas shows us, he’s still in many ways a boy, a scared boy who needs a lot of help. This manifests most evidently (and joyously) when Mav is caring for his infant son. There’s a tenderness to the way he interacts with Seven that belies the tougher persona he tries to have around his friends. The only man he drops that persona around is Dre, his cousin, who shares with him the experience of fatherhood. We also see Mav’s immaturity in how he interacts with authority figures, such as the school guidance counselor who chews him out for his poor academic performance while simultaneously offering very little in the way of, you know, guidance. Mav’s response is to bristle and get his back up, which is an entirely natural thing for a teenager to do when they feel like you’re not actually listening to them.

Exploring this immaturity is important because our society likes to pretend Black boys are scarier and more threatening than white boys. Black boys (and girls, for that matter) get handcuffed and put in headlocks by school security and police. We criminalize them from an early age, and when we project this threatening aura onto their masculinity, is it any wonder it begins to seep in? Mav runs with the King Lords because this is his safest option in his neighbourhood. His father is in prison and therefore absent—not because his father abandoned them but because of the racist prison–industrial complex—and so Mav unconsciously seeks surrogate father figures. Some of the most significant and moving moments of Concrete Rose are the ones where other characters create a safe space for Mav to show emotion and let down his guard, as Mr. Wyatt does more than once.

The flaws in Mav’s character are what drive this book forward and make it so engrossing. I won’t go into too many details, because I don’t want to spoil the plot—but let’s just say that Mav makes a lot of mistakes, some predictable and some surprising. There is no clear arc here of “oh, I have a kid now, so I need to be responsible,” nor does Thomas even do the classic, “I’m going to try to be responsible and then there’s going to be a big setback.” Rather, it’s a series of ups and downs and lateral movements, and at the end of the book, honestly we don’t even really know if Mav will be ok. Thomas refuses to give us the satisfaction of that reassurance (obviously, if you have read The Hate U Give, we know what happens to Mav, but there’s still a 16 year gap!). This isn’t really a book about a boy learning to be a responsible father. It’s a book about a boy learning to question the narratives society taught him about himself, even though that means he has to undertake the hard work of creating a new narrative.

In the same way, we need to alter our narratives about Black boys and men. Even as I write this review, Minneapolis police have shot and killed an unarmed Black man, Daunte Wright, about a year after they did the same thing to George Floyd. Police brutality against Black people continues unchecked (defund and then abolish the police, plz), but this is part of the larger white supremacist structure of our society that is propped up by the narratives Thomas challenges with her works. Concrete Rose doesn’t have the flashy police-shooting plot underlying it like The Hate U Give does—there are no protests in this book, no tense standoffs—so for that reason, I suspect it’s going to get less attention and acclaim. Yet, as you might be able to tell from my 5-star rating, I think it’s every bit as good and important as The Hate U Give.

I’ll close with one other observation about white reactions to books like this. In my review of On the Come Up, I discussed how one reaction to books by Black authors about Black characters is to silo them off as being “for” Black audiences, not for us. I criticized this as an oversimplification (and still believe that)—we need to approach books about people whose experiences are very different from us with sensitivity, yes, but we should still read them. However, if we take that to an extreme, sometimes we get into the position of talking too much about how these books “create empathy” in white readers. And that’s gross and simplistic too. It once again centres white people’s experiences and needs in a conversation that should remain about Black people (and be driven by Black people). Read books by Black authors like Thomas. Celebrate them and uplift them. Learn from them! But don’t make it about you, ok?

Every one of Angie Thomas’ novels has hit me differently so far, and I love it. Every one has been powerful, has championed the need to talk about the issues that Black people face in America complexly and completely rather than through narrow lenses. Concrete Rose does this with a story about teenage parenting, gang membership, relationships, loss and grief, and so much more. Thomas is one of those authors who can bring alive an entire world through the eyes of a single narrator, and while her books at times can be heavy, reading them is always a joy.

 This is an interesting idea for the Object Lessons series from Bloomsbury. Blackface seems like more of an idea or practice than an object, yet semantic quibbles aside, Ayanna Thompson presents a concise and compelling overview of the subject. Blackface discusses the history of the practice, and in particular, Thompson helps us understand how power imbalances between white and Black performers have contributed to the unequal dynamic in which white people often feel ok performing Blackface and “Blackness,” but Black people do not have the same privilege of whitening their faces and performing a kind of “whiteness” for entertainment. My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the e-ARC to review.

The book begins by framing the question based on a person experience of Thompson’s. Her daughter was in Grade 8 and participated in a day where students had to dress up as famous historical people they had researched. Some of the white children in the class had researched Black people (great) and decided to wear blackface as part of their costume (not great). Thompson brought this to the attention of the school administration. They were resistant to acknowledge this as a systemic problem or take any steps to prevent it from happening again. And so, Thompson starts us off on our journey. She wants us to understand that blackface isn’t merely “white people being racist” but that rather it has a very coherent history one can learn if one does the research (or, you know, reads this book based on Thompson’s research).

My positionality, by the way, is that I am a white woman in Canada. Prior to reading this book, I already knew blackface was bad, and I was very much aware of issues with politicians and celebrities like our very own prime minister. I had a simplistic understanding of blackface’s history as it relates to minstrel shows, Jim Crow caricatures, Al Jolson, etc. But if you have much the same understanding and think that means you don’t need to read this book, then you would be wrong.

Thompson takes us all the way back to Shakespearean England—yes, that is right, circa 1600. She examines how acting at that time was full of race- and genderbending, since actors were white men. Actors took pride in performing blackface to be more “authentic.” I also had no idea that Dartmoor Prison had such a thriving theatre company, so that was an interesting aside. Thompson traces the direct line of influence from Shakespearean England through to actors of the nineteenth century. Along the way, she points out how Black actors struggled to be taken seriously as thespian talents, whereas white actors donning blackface were usually lauded for their performance.

All of this information is crucial for us to understand the turning tide in the 20th century, how we got from the Jazz Singer to “hmm, that makes me uncomfortable” with Laurence Olivier’s Othello. See, Thompson’s crucial point here is that it’s not enough for white people to walk away knowing that blackface is bad because it’s racist. We need to understand how blackface perpetuates stereotypes about Black people, and how white people’s feeling of freedom to perform blackface is itself a privilege embedded within our white supremacist society.

At the end of the day, this is not about Grade 8 white kids dressing up in blackface. But it is about how a school administration, upon learning of this, shrugged it off as no big deal. It is about the incredible amount of advocacy Black people have to exhaust themselves doing merely to get an iota of respect white people receive by default. It is about challenging simplistic or incomplete understandings of our history—which is, again, not a failure on the parts of ourselves as individuals, but a failure of the systems in which we’ve been raised.

Blackface is an object lesson all right—an object lesson in the tangible, cultural costs of white supremacy and how it creates a gulf between peoples where none need exist.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Much like my situation nearly a year ago when I read The Rhesus Chart, I was in a bit of a reading slump when I decided to tackle The Annihilation Score. I’ve been in this slump for all of 2021, mostly because it is harder for me to get books (especially fiction) right now—consequently, my ratio of fiction to non-fiction is much lower than it used to be, and as much as I love non-fiction, fiction is my brain candy. Fiction wraps me up in this warm blanket of narrative, and Charles Stross is a perfect example of an author who understands this. The Laundry Files is a reassuring series, in the sense that I know what to expect from each book—an increasingly escalating series of mostly bureaucratic yet still supernatural threats—yet it is also a series that isn’t afraid to change and shake things up. That’s what we see here, with the first book told from the perspective of Mo.

Set quite literally overlapping with the ending of The Rhesus Chart, The Annihilation Score has Mo seconded to a false-flag operation. With the rise of ordinary people developing “superpowers,” the Laundry has decided they need to create a fake “superhero department” to be a very public front for dealing with this issue. They tap Mo to be its director, and she is thrown into the special hell that is attempting to set up a new department while interfacing with law enforcement, the Home Office, etc. Her number two is a vampire with a history with her husband—oh, and she and Bob are somewhat estranged, because his recent power-up is orthogonal to Mo’s stressed relationship with her possessed, bloodthirsty violin.

So the book starts in a pretty dark, depressing place, at least for Bob and Mo. That’s the point—this book is, in many ways, delivering on a promise Stross dangled in front of us in previous novels that Bob and Mo’s relationship was under incredible strain as a result of their involvement in the world of the supernatural. Although Bob himself is largely absent in this book, his and Mo’s relationship is not. But also in the foreground is Mo’s own fear about how being the carrier of Lecter, her semi-sentient violin, is going to affect her. While none of these tropes are particularly rare in fantasy, Stross uses them deftly, and Mo is such a sympathetic protagonist here. Much like the very early days of Bob’s involvement in the Laundry, we get the sense here that Mo is out of her depth. She had adjusted (albeit reluctantly) to her role as a field agent, and now here she is being asked to run a department on short notice in a way that is almost certainly set up to fail.

Stross succeeds in making Mo’s voice distinct from Bob’s. Both are prone to the usual infodumping and third-order consequence-tracing that Stross loves to give us (but really, if you aren’t coming to a Charles Stross novel for the infodumping, why are you here?). Yet Mo’s speaks to her academic and musical backgrounds, and she also recognizes how her identity as a middle-aged woman affects the way the world perceives her. Finally, Mo brings a sense of urgency to what she is feeling: Lecter is this burden that is imploding her life, not some hypothetical problem later on down the road.

Perhaps the other big development for the series in this book is the way Stross bumps up the profile of the supernatural for the public. Most urban fantasy series keep the supernatural low-key and under wraps. Although not entirely “out” yet, elements of the supernatural are leaking into the public consciousness here in interesting ways. Stross is clearly teasing this out towards a more climactic event related to the existential threat that is CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. I like the ways in which this manifests, the ways in which he is bringing in cultural elements like our obsession with superheroes. It speaks to the cleverness and care that Stross brings to plotting and writing this series.

That’s about all I have to say about The Annihilation Score. I read it in a single Sunday, off and on throughout the day, plowing through the final half of the book in a couple of hours under my couch while I was feeling really upset and despondent. It’s urban fantasy but with lots of fun, thought-provoking takes on supernatural tropes. It’s a little meta, a little self-aware, but not so much that it gets overbearing. This is a good installment in a series that is very much in my “comfort read” territory.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Sex good. Pornography bad. With such utterances we begin to draw the lines that marked the “sex wars” of the 1980s, in which feminism schismed over how to approach sexual expression and the pornography industry. For some feminists, porn amplified the potential for violence against women—porn was essentially as bad as rape. For other feminists, the fight against porn was a fight against freedom of sexual expression, freedom to openly and intensely celebrate women’s sexuality. Lorna N. Bracewell seeks to subvert the conventional narrative that this conflict was a simple, two-sided fight between anti-pornography feminists on one side and sex-radical feminists on the other. Why We Lost the Sex Wars is a very deep, very slow dive into the sex wars and their echoes into the 21st century. Thanks to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the review copy!

Bracewell’s thesis has 3 components. Firstly, she examines how both anti-pornography feminists and sex-radical feminists flirted contentiously with liberalism, and how this undermines the simplistic view that the sex wars were a “catfight” between two feminist movements. Secondly, Bracewell contends that these two groups largely ignored, erased, or appropriated from the work of Black and self-identified “third world” feminists; in other words, the conventional narrative of the sex wars has been whitewashed. Finally, Bracewell attempts to connect this complicated narrative to more recent developments—in particular, as the subtitle suggests, the #MeToo movement originating from Tarana Burke’s hashtag and catching fire after numerous women began openly accusing powerful men of sexual harassment and assault.

Before I go further: this is an academic manuscript. On the plus side, that means it is saturated with citations. Bracewell is quite literally walking us through the minutes and minutiae of various feminist writers and activists from the 1970s onwards, and she does not come to play. On the downside, this means that if you are not of a particularly academic inclination—or if you are merely looking for a more conversational read, then this book is not going to be your jam. I can take what Bracewell dishes out here, but I’m going to confess I didn’t enjoy it that much merely because, the further I drift away from my university days, the less interested I become in reading highly academic publications. This was giving me flashbacks to revising my best friend’s PhD. dissertation a year ago! Nevertheless, I persevered, and Bracewell definitely has some interesting things to say.

I grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s, so the sex wars that Bracewell describes aren’t something I’m very familiar with. My feminist awakening during high school was very much an, “oh, yeah, ok,” realization that women are still oppressed in our society, followed by many years of autodidactic education and one or two university courses to help me come to appreciate how that oppression manifests. My knowledge of the history of feminism as a movement has always been spotty, so that was what attracted me to Why We Lost the Sex Wars: I was hoping Bracewell would fill in some of those gaps. For the most part, she does!

Writers like Andrea Dworkin, Caroline MacKinnon, Judith Butler, etc.—some of whom I’ve read things by, some of whom I haven’t—become central characters in this much larger story, and Bracewell helps you understand how the sex wars actually played out. As someone who wasn’t alive then, who didn’t live through those tumultuous middle and later decades of the 20th century, this is valuable. I do not want to be guilty of oversimplifying feminism’s past, of saying, “well, you had the good feminists and the bad feminists” or even, as Bracewell chides us, the anti-pornography feminists and the sex-radical feminists. It was, as these things usually are, so, so much more complex than that.

Bracewell devotes most of the book to examining how these various positions interacted with legal frameworks and proposed solutions to the problem of pornography and related ideas of sexual deviancy or otherness. In particular, Bracewell is keen to critique tenets of liberalism as a political philosophy grounded in the preservation of individual liberties provided they don’t threaten the coherence of the state. While I admit I found some of this interesting and enlightening, the staid, survey-like nature of Bracewell’s narrative means I was not exactly enthralled.

Probably the best part of this book is the chapter that looks at how Black women and other women of colour were shut out of the sex wars pretty much entirely. The problem, Bracewell points out, is a “monistic” view of womanhood—something that others might more commonly refer to as the “monolith” idea of feminism. The sex wars were not intersectional, in other words; both anti-pornography and sex-radical feminists viewed the issues as they pertained to white women, often in ways that were racist and ignorant of the history of white supremacy in the United States. This resonated with me a lot—I’m really interested in making sure that I approach equity work with an intersectional lens; we cannot burn down the patriarchy without also tackling the white supremacist society that enables it. So I think it is very important to acknowledge and critique, as Bracewell does here, how white feminism often erased or appropriated the work of Black feminists, pushing aside or dismissing race as a factor and choosing to focus exclusively on sex/gender as an axis of oppression.

Towards the end of the book, Bracewell goes off on a tangent about why she thinks trigger warnings are a not-useful outgrowth of tepid liberal responses to harm and oppression. I guess … agree to disagree? This is the part of the book that seeks to fulfill the promise of the subtitle and connect Bracewell’s historical overview with more recent events. She examines the SlutWalk phenomenon of the past decade before briefly turning to #MeToo. Bracewell is highly critical of the way that SlutWalk and similar movements embraced a carceral notion of feminism, i.e., that the best way to deal with things like violence against women is to make it easier and safer for victims to report violence to the police, who can then take care of it as part of a reformed criminal justice system.

Now, ideologically speaking, I agree with Bracewell here. She finishes the book with a call to action to return feminism to some of its more radical roots—i.e., the feminists from all sides of the sex wars who were sceptical of state involvement or invoking state power in what is ultimately a social issue. I am on Team Abolish the Police and agree that the solution is not “please, police, treat victims better!” and that feminism is best served aligning itself with more radical, abolitionist aims.

Nevertheless, this part of the book is the least satisfying because Bracewell ultimately doesn’t succeed at drawing a clear connection between #MeToo-ish movements of the now and the sex wars of the then. The moment the book seems to be getting good and about to make this connection … it ends. All we get are some tentative discussions in the introduction and then conclusion about how “sex-positive feminists” are complaining about #MeToo because it’s prudish. Yet I’m failing to see how the critical retelling of the sex wars informs this phenomenon, because Bracewell spends too little time on the modern phenomenon.

So Why We Lost the Sex Wars is incredibly detailed, well-researched, and well-organized. As an academic publication, it ticks a lot of the boxes. It is definitely informative and got me thinking about things like intersectionality and how liberalist philosophies interact with feminist thinking. Nevertheless, the book left me hanging with the third part of its thesis, the promise that this would feel relevant to more recent events.

You all know how much I love me a good confidence story, as much as I love a good heist story. Throughout the years, fantasy has handed us many such wonderful stories and lovable rogues—some of which I have read, some of which I haven’t. The Mask of Mirrors will doubtless be compared to the most popular and celebrated of these, with merit and good reason. I’ll eschew such comparisons as de rigeur then, and get right into why this book is my first 5-star read of 2021. Under the pen name M.A. Carrick, authors Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms have created a stunning work of storytelling, characterization, and world-building.

After losing her mother at an early age, Ren grows up as a member of a gang of street thieves overseen by a ruthless crime boss. The novel opens with a whirlwind flashback to this life, in which Ren poisons the crime boss to allow her and her chosen sister, Tess, to flee the city of Nadežra for a better life. Fast forward to the present day: Ren has returned to her home city as Renata, playing the role of the daughter of an estranged branch of House Traementis. She plans to get into the good graces of Donaia, the head of the house, and in this way, scam and take the nobility of Nadežra for all she and Tess (who takes on the role of her long-suffering but seamstressly-gifted maid) possibly can. However, Ren/Renata is not the only one with plans upon plans for this city. Soon, magic and mischief collide to result in twists, turns, and tragedies that I didn’t see coming.

The Mask of Mirrors is what I can only describe as a sumptuous book. If it were a room, it would be decorated lavishly, extravagantly, yet it would contain cozy nooks and comfortable furniture. As every chapter unfolds, Carrick adds new layers—to the mysteries at the heart of the plot, and to the city of Nadežra. Like any good fantasy novel, Nadežra takes on a kind of character of its own—although, lest I get too far drawn into fantasy review tropes, let me emphasize that this is mostly about the cultures that clash within this metropolis.

Though some of the language reminds me of Venice, Nadežra itself feels like Istanbul/Constantinople. Ren belongs to an ethnic group known as the Vrazenians, who view Nadežra as a holy city, even though it was conquered centuries ago. Now the Vrazenians are a minority, oppressed by the ruling Liganti, mostly shunned to live in the most impoverished areas of the city. Ren’s heritage is at the forefront of the story: she conceals it as Renata; brings it to the fore when playing Arenza, a card-reading fortune-teller; and her connections to her people and her birthright influence how magic interacts with her. From the beginning, it’s clear that Ren might indeed be able to get into the good graces of House Traementis, but she can never be one of them. This is an anti-assimilationist narrative, one that Carrick leaves tantalizingly unresolved at the end of the book, and I am so intrigued to see what happens next. Similarly, I appreciate that while Carrick has been influenced by various real-world cultures in creating the Vrazenians, Liganti, and others, they are also careful not to create cookiecutter fantasy countercultures as seen in the works of, say, Jacqueline Carey. In so avoiding that, Carrick can explore ideas of ethnic strife and oppression without inadvertently making inappropriate comparisons to what has happened in actual history. The result is a complex tapestry of society that feels a bit like ours yet has a rich and complex history all its own.

Ren herself is such a great protagonist. She’s clever, but she isn’t a Mary Sue. Carrick deals her plenty of setbacks—some that I thought would surely sink her con—and much of the fun of this story is watching Ren and Tess adapt to the cards they get dealt. There are several intense climaxes to the early and middle acts of the book that result in sharp turns for the plot. (As I transition, I now better appreciate the pleasures of more than one climax!) Ren must pivot her con, somehow preserving its central purpose while also adapting to the new threat posed by House Indestor’s machinations. Along the way, she makes mistakes that ultimately contribute to people losing their lives, and this is something she is going to have to live with.

Some other great tropes here—“unlikely/reluctant allies” abound, from Ren’s interactions with the Rook to Renata’s flirtatious partnership with Derossi Vargo. (As an aside, figuring out the Rook’s secret identity is pretty much the only thing in this book I saw coming—although I like that Carrick implies there is some supernatural force powering the Rook’s crusade.) As the book winds down towards its resolution, Carrick sets up the board for the next chess game. I love the ambiguity of certain relationships and the calculated coldness of others. (I am being deliberately vague here to avoid spoilers.) Let’s just say that while flirtation and romance exist in The Mask of Mirrors, it was not particularly important to the story. Also, lots of normative queerness going on, which I appreciate!

As far as magic and worldbuilding goes, Carrick’s approach is refreshing. (I like this word better than “original,” because I agree that originality is a fraught concept in fantasy literature—but “refreshing” indicates that the approach, if not novel, is a welcome departure from the ideas and tropes currently in vogue.) Light on exposition, we’re left to fill in a lot of the blanks or understand that anything mentioned merely hints at a richer history and collection of cultures and nations, which I love. They don’t even really care to explain much of the rules of numinatria either—we get some really basic concepts, but so much is left to be guessed or inferred. In particular, the nature of Vargo’s relationship with Alsius is so intriguing yet never quite made explicit, and I adore this ambiguity.

The Mask of Mirrors is a book that lives up to its title. The story itself feels like many layers of masks reflected in the mirrors that are the characters Carrick creates. Everyone in this book has an agenda, is out for themselves, has a goal, and the conflicts are so compelling right from page one. If you like refreshing fantasy, if you like confidence games, if you like stories of tough-as-nails women rising above inequities created by class and ethnicity, then do yourself a favour and pick up this book. Reading this over a weekend made me feel so energized, and the fact that the book is thicc reminded me of my youth spent reading doorstopper fantasy.

Finally, Carrick manage the difficult feat of wrapping up the loose ends of this book’s plot while setting up for the sequel in a way that leaves me both satisfied and wanting more.

Kara like. Kara like a lot.

Originally published at Kara.Reviews.

 If there’s anything I love, it’s discussing futurism and technology! This is the kind of book I could totally see myself learning about from CBC’s Spark (but in this case, I actually found it on NetGalley and received an e-ARC from Elliott & Thompson Limited in exchange for a review). The Future of You is an overview of various technologies that are complicating, problematizing, mutating, and perhaps rescuing our concept of identity as a legal and philosophical entity. Tracey Follows discusses everything from the bioethics of biometrics and facial recognition to transhumanist fantasies of mind uploading. There is certainly a feast for the mind here, but it’s the kind of multi-course meal that does not leave one sated.

Rather than attempt to summarize the wide array of technologies Follows discusses, let me quickly get at some of the themes. First, surveillance. The Future of You rightly points out that the rise in identity-tracking and identity-authenticating technologies means a corresponding increase in surveillance. Follows explains how this relates to the tension between decentralized and federated systems versus centralized systems. Second, convenience. New technologies make it easier and faster for people to confirm they are who they say they are. This is particularly important for the people in the world who currently lack any identity paperwork. Finally, innovation. New technologies would allow for changes to, for example, democracy, which Follows examines in the cases of Estonia’s “i-voting” and Taiwan’s highly personalized democratic system and handling of the pandemic.

Follows does a good job summarizing and surveying this very broad field. For people who want a whistle-stop tour of the various ways that digital technologies, particularly online ones, are challenging our notions of identity, The Future of You will likely be a useful guide. Unfortunately, for these very reasons, I personally was not satisfied.

Many of these technologies and issues were already known to me—and for the ones that weren’t, I was intrigued, but I wanted more than this book is equipped to give. This book made me realize I really miss the deep dives in non-fiction, the “here’s a whole book on a single bone in the body of this one dinosaur, lol” books. There is a whole book for each of the technologies discussed in this book. I can’t fault The Future of You for not being a deep dive, because it never claimed to go deep. But when I found myself skimming sections because I didn’t want to get attached to ideas I knew Follows would never explore thoroughly, I realized this book wasn’t working for me.

Preferences aside, however, I wasn't a fan of how uncritically Fellows presents some of the claims of technologists and futurists she features here. For example, at one point she cites a 2005 claim from Aubrey de Grey “that the rate of progress is accelerating so quickly that the first person to live to be 1,000 years old will probably be born only ten years after the first person to live to 150.” O rly? There’s no interrogation of this idea, literally no follow-up to it; Follows just moves on to her next thought, literally starting a new paragraph.

Now, I don’t believe Follows believes all of these various scenarios! Assuming the best of intentions, I would hope that Follows is simply trying to inspire and stoke the imaginations of her readers. I can get behind that. Nevertheless, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I believe the job of an author of a book like this is to examine critically these various ideas and technologies, not merely rattle them off like a “gee whiz, maybe in a century we’ll all be living to 1,000” factoid you’ll get on the back of a cereal box. This is particularly true for the more out-there stuff the transhumanists are saying, particularly around ideas like mind uploading.

Indeed, Follows claims in her introduction that The Future of You will eschew philosophical interrogations into the idea of identity—yet that is exactly what she does towards the end of the book. Discussions of modifying our kids’ genomes and uploading our minds into clone bodies inevitably verge into these philosophical territories. I don’t mind this, of course. I just wish Follows had been more up front about where the book was going.

Finally, I want to talk about how Follows discusses trans people. I was surprised to see us mentioned at all. At first I was just like, “Oh, it’s nice not to be erased in these discussions.” Issues of identity are so important for trans people, particularly when it comes to legal identity versus social identity. Alas, Follows chooses to focus narrowly on medical miracles of transition: look, trans men can have babies!!

And this is a problem.

I really, really need y’all to understand that if you only ever bring us up as medical curiosities, that is all we will ever be to cis people. We are not curiosities or props to be used in discussions of medical miracles. Stop featuring us in TV specials, and stop talking about us in books like this.

I will forestall my huge angry rant and just say that it would be easy to improve the trans discourse in this book. It’s fine to mention the medical stuff, but you need that to be a small part in a larger discussion about identity. If you’re not willing to go into that much depth, then yeah, honestly, I would prefer you didn’t talk about us at all.

Anyway.

The Future of You is a competent book if you’re looking for a survey. Poor trans discourse aside, I think Follows does a great job presenting some of the intriguing possible evolutions of identity in our future. Nevertheless, I was hoping for more depth to these discussions and more critical analysis.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Like many Canadians, sometimes it feels like I know more about American politics than our own politics. American politics are louder, flashier, and take up more space in our news. So I’m trying my best to continue to monitor my country’s politics, particularly when it comes to issues of equity. That’s what drew me to Can You Hear Me Now?: I had heard of Celina Caesar-Chavannes and her rocky experience as a Black, female Member of Parliament. But I had another reason to read this too: Caesar-Chavannes is a business owner, an entrepreneur, and this is a memoir about the lessons she has learned and the mistakes she has made. With my best friend Rebecca’s birthday in February, this book seemed like a great gift for an entrepreneur like her.

Caesar-Chavannes pulls no punches in this memoir. She discusses childhood abuse and molestation, and into her adolescence and adulthood she gets real with us about her struggles to complete school, get a degree, stay out of a toxic relationship, and later on, miscarriages, an affair, etc. She lays herself bare to the bone here in a way that is uncomfortable, certainly—but her vulnerability is powerful. Too many leadership memoirs focus on what the author did right, with maybe an anecdote here or there about hilarious failures that helped them learn an important lesson. In contrast, Caesar-Chavannes’ memoir feels more like a litany of “and then I made another mistake”—not only does this feel refreshing and human, but it’s also a reminder not to mythologize ourselves. Too often we look to leaders to tell us stories that paint them as larger than life because we, too, yearn to be that larger-than-life figure. Caesar-Chavannes reminds us that success is not a state you obtain and then you write a book: success and failure come and go in waves, and eventually you might write a book, but that doesn’t mean you’ve “made it.” She’s still got work to do.

Let’s talk about race. I’m white, and therefore I have never experienced racism and discrimination. It’s important for me to read books like this, because Caesar-Chavannes pulls no punches when it comes to calling out racism either. She is not afraid to criticize various politicians, including Prime Minister Trudeau, and I am here for it. She recounts awkward, belittling conversations with the PM where he basically lectures and mansplains at her, and it presents such a stark image to the “cool Justin” reputation Trudeau tries to cultivate for himself. But these sound bites are really just the tip of the iceberg. Those later chapters where Caesar-Chavannes recounts her tumultuous experience in the House of Commons are difficult reading, for it really exposes just how anti-Black the upper echelons of our government are. We teach our children that this country is a bastion of tolerance and diversity, but when you look at the representation in our House of Commons, it’s still very white. Caesar-Chavannes is careful to point out that she is not the only person on Parliament Hill who experiences racism, but that her position as an elected MP protected her in ways staffers and public servants were not. So that was another interesting point for me to think about.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that if, like me, you are interested in anti-racist praxis, this book is a valuable complement to the anti-racist books that are more academic or broader in their scope. Caesar-Chavannes’ personal experiences are worth listening to, because “I don’t see these problems” and “I didn’t know this was going on” are not acceptable statements from us white folks.

Let’s talk gender. I like that she points out the discrepancies between how her parents treated her and her brother from an early age. While some of this might seem obvious, especially to cis women readers, again, I think the very personal and thorough ways in which Caesar-Chavannes explores these ideas creates such a compelling case for institutional sexism and misogyny (not to mention misogynoir, that is, discrimination specifically against Black women) in a way that people who avoid more academic books on feminism and racism can’t miss.

One message she hammers home: representation matters, but access to representation matters more. It isn’t enough to have Black people and Black women in particular in positions of power and responsibility. They need to be accessible to younger Black women so that there can be mentorship and connection. This is something I will take from this book and think about, in my positions of power as an educator—how can I facilitate this within my sphere of influence?

Let’s talk learning from your mistakes. Really, this is the theme of the book. Caesar-Chavannes carefully articulates how important it has been, throughout her life, to listen to herself and to honour the lessons from mistakes she has made. In particular, I like that she reminds us to make space and let ourselves rest in between projects. Don’t dive right into the next thing because you think you owe it to yourself or others to be productive. Give yourself time to rest, time to recover, time to regroup. You deserve that.

My one critique, honestly, would be that I wasn’t a huge fan of Caesar-Chavannes’ voice as it comes across in her writing style. It’s quite straightforward, with a few flourishes here and there—and it might be just that the strict adherence to chronology feels very confining at times that I want her to burst out with an anachronistic comment or aside. So it took me a while longer to warm up to this book than I would have liked. Nevertheless, I walked away from it with the lessons I hoped.

Accessible, thoughtful, hopeful, courageous—I could list a bunch of generic adjectives that apply. What Can You Hear Me Now? comes down to though is honesty. This is not a book that panders to our white supremacist society’s idea of what a Black woman who is a business owner and was a politician should say about her experiences. She isn’t moderating her tone, isn’t going to follow the narrative. Celina Caesar-Chavannes tells her story the only way she can: personally and with deep, humble honesty that reflects the limits of her experiences and the limitlessness of her ambition.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 In my Grade 11 and 12 English class for adult learners, I always try to do at least a week on media literacy. We talk about bias and stereotypes, particularly as they relate to race, gender, and disability. One of my favourite activities regarding gender stereotypes involves examining ads and asking students to identify stereotypes present in those ads. It always provokes enlightening and interesting conversations from them. The hypersexualization of women as sex objects, and the positioning of men as sex subjects, is indisputable no matter where you turn. So I was definitely interested in reading The Pornification of America: How Raunch Culture Is Ruining Our Society (what a clickbait title) and appreciate the review copy from NetGalley/New York University Press.

I did go into this book with some reservations. The last time I read about raunch culture, I didn’t much enjoy the way the subject was evaluated and the conclusions drawn. Indeed, this book is in some ways a spiritual successor to that book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, by Ariel Levy—Barton mentions the book a couple of times in the introduction. Whereas that book was a journalist’s dive into raunch culture as a phenomenon, Barton’s focus as a gender studies professor is more sociological and attempts to bring more data to the party. In that sense, I like this book much better. Levy’s approach to the topic felt heavy-handed, whereas Barton approaches the topic with much more nuance. And of course, this book is as up to date as it can be, including some of the emboldening effects that the Trump presidency has had on raunch culture.

So I started to feel more comfortable and optimistic with this book’s approach to the subject. Let me be clear: raunch culture is absolutely a problem. I just find some analyses of the issue to be far too fraught with generalizations. For example, a lot of blame for raunch culture is (rightly) laid at the feet of porn (hence the title of this book). And I always get nervous when feminists start discussing porn in an entirely negative light, because then we’re veering into anti–sex work territory in general. So to my relief, Barton’s analysis is far more nuanced. She establishes herself as sex-positive out of the gate (and offers a great explanation for how raunch culture has co-opted the language of sex positivity without actually being sex positive, particularly for women). 

Her condemnation of the negative consequences of easier access to increasingly violent, absurd Internet porn is balanced with the acknowledgment that porn is not going way, and that some people use porn in healthy ways as part of their sex life. Barton says, “What we need in place of internet pornography, or at least alongside it, are more conversations about women’s sexual pleasure.” Yes, so much this!! Blanket condemnation and calls to ban porn disguise the issue. Unlike Levy, Barton acknowledges that “feminist porn” exists, but she makes the excellent point that you will never see it unless you seek it out—it is the structure of the porn industry, and the discoverability of it online, that is the problem. If porn were more centred on women’s pleasure, and if it weren’t relied upon for sex education because schools are too moralistic to talk about that stuff, then it would not be as large a contributing factor to raunch culture.

In a similar vein, Barton approaches numerous topics with sensitivity and an eye for teasing out the actual relationship between the topic and raunch culture. She does this through quoting from numerous interviews, citing studies, and supplying personal anecdotes from her teaching experience. As a result, the book builds up this overall picture of the ubiquity of raunch culture within American society. This isn’t just a porn problem or an advertising problem or a political problem: it’s everywhere.

In the final chapter, Barton tries to offer, if not solutions, than a framework that could help us dismantle raunch culture. I appreciate that she admits to the limitations of her work here. Confronting raunch culture is a difficult task and one that must be furiously intersectional and anti-capitalist to succeed (earlier in the book, Barton observes that raunch culture is closely tied to white people in particular, and it is likely an outgrowth of white supremacy’s hegemonic role in our society). This book is quite depressing at times with the picture Barton offers us, but it is also forthright and honest.

A couple of critiques before I go!

First, a correction: Barton says that Twitter employees created Tay, an AI bot released on Twitter that was supposed to learn from its interactions with Twitter users. In fact, Microsoft created (and subsequently … decommissioned) this ill-fated experiment. This error has no substantive impact on Barton’s analysis.

Second, Barton’s cozying up to radical feminism made me uncomfortable at points. It was one thing to say, “You know, the anti-pornography feminists had a point,” earlier on in the book—I understand and can appreciate that perspective. Much later, though, Barton proudly recounts a time she challenged a friend for using the term TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) because she views it as besmirching radical feminism. Which … yeah. I get it, and I admit the term TERF isn’t great—not because it reflects poorly on radical feminism, but rather because if your feminism is trans-exclusionary, it ain’t feminism. This just seemed like a very unnecessary digression that caused me, as a trans person, to bridle. I am going to continue to “trash TERFs” all I like, thank you very much, because they literally do not want me to exist.

On a similar note, this book is quite cisnormative. Barton does interview a non-binary person. However, acknowledgment of how raunch culture affects trans people as a category is absent from this book. We are mentioned only a small handful of times, and usually in passing, such as this sentence from the conclusion: “Despite a loud and at times violent backlash, trans and non-binary people are changing the culture….” From this I can conclude, thankfully, that Barton is not herself a TERF and is quite supportive of trans people and willing to include us in this discussion. Rather, this feels more like an oversight—either unintentionally as a result of cis privilege, or intentionally out of the idea that, as a cis person herself, she shouldn’t be the one to speak on these issues. If it’s the latter (and I want to assume the best intentions), I wish at least some kind of disclaimer had been made to this effect—but more importantly, cis people need to stop “it’s not my place” as an excuse to erase and ignore us. Yes, it is true that cis researchers should not make trans issues their primary area of focus. But Barton could easily have interviewed more trans people, just to help round out her sample, for instance. Raunch culture affects me so much as a trans woman, because of its relationship to ideals of femininity and sexual expression, but my experiences are nowhere to be found here.

Anyway, I needed to bring that up, but I also don’t want you to think this is a deal-breaker for me. On the whole, The Pornification of America turned out better than I expected. I appreciate that there is a more academic look at raunch culture, updated for this decade, that we can refer to as we unpack and attempt to dismantle this aspect of our patriarchal, white supremacist society. Barton does good work here, even if I have some critiques of it. In particular, I recommend anyone who hasn’t read a lot about this issue, but wants to learn more, to dive into this. Its overview is thorough, thoughtful, and comprehensive.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.