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Late Wednesday reading
Jun. 26th, 2019 09:41 pmDid you think I forgot? Nope! Just had a graduation ceremony that gave me a 14-hour day.
Finished reading: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon. Okay, can't say I enjoyed reading this one, and I even have difficulty talking or writing about it. I'm glad I read it. But it's difficult in both positive and negative ways. It's a literary memoir of a Cree-Saulteaux-Métis Two-Spirited curator and academic, spanning their childhood, prairie-punk youth, family, chosen and otherwise, and relationships.
When it's good, it's very good. The writing is intense and visceral. And when I say "visceral," I mean it reads like Nixon basically opened a vein and bled all over the page. But that strength is also the book's weakness because it is a mess. It needed an editor but who could edit something like that? It's straight up unadulterated trauma. To edit it would be an act of violence. And yet.
I don't think I'm exactly the audience either, even though at times Nixon addresses a presumably white, queer, punk readership. There's a lot of distancing elements to it, particularly their use of academic/activist language (whenever I see "yt" or "folx" or "fem/masc" it tends to pull me out of the text, though I'm willing to admit that this may very well be a problem with me and not with the book. More problematic, I found, was that largely because of the lateral violence in marginalized communities, a lot of Nixon's anger appeared directed at people with not a lot of social power. True, those are the people most likely to hurt other marginalized people directly, but I found myself going "but not all trans men/indigenous men/non-binary queers" etc.
So would I recommend it? Sure. It's an illuminating read and it's short so not a huge investment of your time.
Currently reading: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse. This is the sequel to Trail of Lightning, which I really enjoyed. It's not great literature or anything—it's post-apocalyptic fantasy starring a kickass hot woman fighting monsters—but Maggie, the protagonist, and most of the other characters, are Diné, and their people survived the apocalypse that wiped out most of America to found a thriving civilization. The worldbuilding is wonderful and Maggie is a badass gritty antihero and I love her. In this one, she goes up against a creepy cult leader who is grafting locust wings onto people and controlling insect swarms and who has absconded with her medicine man not-quite-boyifriend and the child of one of her allies from the last book. It's page-turning and screaming for a TV adaptation (I'm sure someone's eyeing it already).
Would I recommend it? Yes, but read Trail of Lightning first or it won't make any sense.
Finished reading: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon. Okay, can't say I enjoyed reading this one, and I even have difficulty talking or writing about it. I'm glad I read it. But it's difficult in both positive and negative ways. It's a literary memoir of a Cree-Saulteaux-Métis Two-Spirited curator and academic, spanning their childhood, prairie-punk youth, family, chosen and otherwise, and relationships.
When it's good, it's very good. The writing is intense and visceral. And when I say "visceral," I mean it reads like Nixon basically opened a vein and bled all over the page. But that strength is also the book's weakness because it is a mess. It needed an editor but who could edit something like that? It's straight up unadulterated trauma. To edit it would be an act of violence. And yet.
I don't think I'm exactly the audience either, even though at times Nixon addresses a presumably white, queer, punk readership. There's a lot of distancing elements to it, particularly their use of academic/activist language (whenever I see "yt" or "folx" or "fem/masc" it tends to pull me out of the text, though I'm willing to admit that this may very well be a problem with me and not with the book. More problematic, I found, was that largely because of the lateral violence in marginalized communities, a lot of Nixon's anger appeared directed at people with not a lot of social power. True, those are the people most likely to hurt other marginalized people directly, but I found myself going "but not all trans men/indigenous men/non-binary queers" etc.
So would I recommend it? Sure. It's an illuminating read and it's short so not a huge investment of your time.
Currently reading: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse. This is the sequel to Trail of Lightning, which I really enjoyed. It's not great literature or anything—it's post-apocalyptic fantasy starring a kickass hot woman fighting monsters—but Maggie, the protagonist, and most of the other characters, are Diné, and their people survived the apocalypse that wiped out most of America to found a thriving civilization. The worldbuilding is wonderful and Maggie is a badass gritty antihero and I love her. In this one, she goes up against a creepy cult leader who is grafting locust wings onto people and controlling insect swarms and who has absconded with her medicine man not-quite-boyifriend and the child of one of her allies from the last book. It's page-turning and screaming for a TV adaptation (I'm sure someone's eyeing it already).
Would I recommend it? Yes, but read Trail of Lightning first or it won't make any sense.
