Middle grade. Translated from Japanese. A classic that has also been made into an animated film, though I’m not familiar with it. Kiki is a witch. When a witch turns 13, she and her cat must fly on her broom from the town where she grew up to find a new town to be her …
There’s a genre of scholarly left nonfiction which I think of as “capitalism and ____” which is organized around talking about capitalism as understood through some novel lens, with a specific focus, or highlighting some feature with hitherto underappreciated significance. I’ve read my share of these books, and I’m sure I’ll read more in the …
Memoir – I’d even say lyric memoir, a la Maggie Nelson. Not sure I’m using that category quite correctly, but it seems to me that there are two broad areas of writing that distinguish lyric memoir from more conventional life-writing: the artfully (if intermittently) nonlinear flow of ideas, images, events, and reflections, and the play …
Scholarly. Listed as “Indigenous studies” and “health studies”, but also contains lots of important history and at least a little attention to social struggle. Focused on the role that the medical establishment has played in genocide and colonization in Canada – that is, medical colonialism. Written by a pediatric emergency physician who practices in Montreal. …
Novella. Our world but speculative – a bit science fictional, a bit fantastical, it’s not entirely clear, but our violent oppressive world to the core. Starts on the same day as the uprising ignited by the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King, and runs to the metaphorical twenty minutes into the future. …
Scholarly. Edited collection. Pieces from a range of authors examining how people in different social movements and communities-in-struggle have engaged with material and ideas from earlier movements and made use of them in political education and struggle in the present. Read it because I thought it might be useful to something I’m working on. Turns …
Short stories. Speculative fiction. From Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer authors. A range of kinds of stories, writing, and tones in what is a relatively short collection. Most, though, start in one way or another from a recognition that for many the apocalypse has already happened and is still happening, and that survival towards a more liveable …
The last of my current work-related re-reads, so again I’ll keep my comments brief. I originally read this one quite a bit more recently than the others – only about five years ago – and not only did I do my usual review but I actually interviewed the author about this book and related things …
Literary fiction. A family novel focused on a mother and her twin daughters. The mother, for her entire life, is seen by most as not-quite-right or worse, though her own narrative of things is rather different. And the twins, one straight and one queer, are sent on very different trajectories after a “bad thing” happens …
Scholarly. Focused on the work of radical Jamaican intellectual Sylvia Wynter. Includes a lengthy dialogue between the editor and Wynter that explores key elements of her work and thought, and then a series of essays which do a mix of laying out the basics, applying her work in specific areas, and extending it in various …