This All Come Back Now is a powerful act of mob sovereignty. It is a reclamation of mob knowledge too often appropriated by gubbas who label it as Fiction and Their Totally Original Ideas. 
It perfectly fulfils Mykaela’s intended purpose – being a mixtape, a little taste of so many different worlds of possibilities. I am so very excited to see what further doors this book opens for the world of mob spec fic.

This book absolutely lives up to the hype it’s received. And then some. It is so so so beautiful. It is also, however, truly harrowing. From start to finish.
 
It’s not (for me, at least) one of those books where you sob uncontrollably all the way through it. I cried a bit at one point. But it mostly just left me feeling completely hollow. Like a trauma response – a dissociated ‘freeze’ state. The book doesn’t offer a release from this emotional purgatory – which I assume is very intentional. To provide any relief would be disingenuous, because the pain this book articulates is still so raw, so real, so relevant. 
 
Vuong doesn’t try to offer the reader insights into Little Dog’s experience – little morsels of wisdom – like you’re watching him through a window or on a TV screen. He brings you right into it. Right into Little Dog’s remembering; his pleasure & his pain. You don’t get to just consume his story as a fun lil trauma porn fix and then walk away from it unscathed. It sticks with you. Like Gorilla Glue, that super heavy-duty stuff that’s a real bitch to get off.
 
If discomfort and tension are not things you look for in a read, then this book probably isn’t for you. However, even if you do enjoy those things, I would still highly recommend emotionally preparing yourself before reading it. I’d also recommend following it with something light-hearted and fun. Otherwise, you will just feel pain. Indefinitely. 
 
My personal storytelling practice usually seeks to destabilise comfort, not reinforce it. I often write in the hopes that people will walk away with questions, with a renewed awareness of the messy, unresolvable, undefinable nature of the world – not answers, conclusions or relief. This book does all of that. Times a thousand. And I feel honoured to have been hurt by it.

(Review originally posted on Instagram)

Initially, I wasn’t sure I’d finish this book. The first contribution, ‘The Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex’, was so dry, inaccessible, and impenetrable. (Kind of ironic since it critiqued the academic industrial complex.) It was so bad, in fact, that there was one sentence I counted that was more than 300 words long! It made some good points when I could tell wtf it was saying, but honestly, I have no idea why this piece was put first.
 
The book gets significantly better after the opening piece. However, there are some gaps in its analyses that I was left desperately craving consideration of.
 
For e.g., I would’ve loved to see a stronger disability justice lens applied. There’s one contribution with a disability focus, ‘Pursuing a Radical Anti-Violence Agenda Inside/Outside a Non-Profit Structure’. In it, the author raises that accessibility is a) rarely prioritised, and b) often very expensive, meaning access-focused collectives are regularly having to choose between pursuing funding, or sacrificing access.
 
I think this is an important point, and I would’ve loved to see it taken further. What are the broader implications of this for disabled communities and organisers? How does this play out in other contexts, e.g., in disabled folks being forced to rely on (or more often, being denied access to) state resources for supports they need to survive? How do we reconcile some of the expectations of community organising with the fact that some people, particularly multiply marginalised disabled people, have less of a choice in divesting from the state than others?
 
I still found this book invaluable, though, and don’t expect it to cover all ground. It’s a fantastic starting point, and is not meant to be the be all/end all of NPIC analysis.
 
One final observation: While I’ve always had some awareness of it, this book gave me a much broader and deeper understanding of how I’ve been groomed for the buffer zone my whole life. It was an important learning, but a very confronting one, nonetheless. I think Run the Jewels put it best when Killer Mike said, “you really made it or just became a prisoner of privilege?”

(Review originally posted on Instagram)

Dropbear is staunch as fuck, hilarious, vulnerable, caring, & so whole. All these things and more, wrapped into one brilliant package.
It is a wonderful loving ode to Kin & Country, and a wonderful scathing critique of colonial logic & culture that doesn't skimp on nuance.
I particularly implore every gubba who has a snugglepot and cuddlepie tattoo to read this book. 

This book is wonderful. Very tender. Very nourishing. I felt held by this book. Felt safe in this book. I particularly adored every expression of Blak queer love.
The way Jazz confronts and articulates the complex relationship with her father also resonated with me in a way I’d never experienced. They tell of it with candour, & without fear of what can’t quite be adequately captured or articulated, because it deserves to be expressed regardless. 

This anthology, for better or worse, is nothing if not true to its title (ALL ways butch and femme). It really does encapsulate a diverse array of experiences.

I really enjoyed that there were many contributions that weren't just the standard cis, white, middle class analyses that dominate butch/femme expressions and discussions.

Some of my favourite contributions included:

* Never Be Hungry Again by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
* Home/Sickness: Self-Diagnosis by romham padraig gallacher
* Brother Dog by S. Bear Bergman
* Embodying Hunger and Desire with a Fistful of Bliss by Laiwan
* Split Myself Apart by Redwolf Painter
* Rogue Femininity by Elizabeth Marston
* Futch: Thoughts from the Borderlands by Elaine Miller
* Female Masculinity, Male Femininity, Feminine Masculinity, Masculine Femininity...? by Prince Jei and Misster Raju Rage

The downside to the diversity of this book was that there was…in my humble opinion…way too much limelight given to TERF ideologies. And to a lesser extent, SWERF nonsense, too. 

Overall, there were many contributions that I absolutely adored, and I still found value in most of the ones that I didn't really care for, too. The only piece I would recommend giving a miss entirely is the one by Victoria Brownworth. 

That aside, this book really does have something for everyone to find themselves in. And for that I am very grateful.

(Review originally posted on Instagram)