By Toronto-based writer and performer Kai Cheng Thom. Essays interspersed with poems. Smart. Thoughtful. Challenging. Names not just the violence of the mainstream but its more insidious correlates within communities that style themselves as being of marginalized belonging and/or of resistance. Less ornate in its writing than I for some reason (perhaps because the author is a poet?) expected, but that is not a problem with the writing just with my expectations. A couple of pieces that felt weaker, but it’s mostly important, insightful stuff. The first essay, for instance, has a welcome brash willingness to knock over tables and name harmful dynamics that permeate radical spaces (and that you will recognize if you have spent any time in such contexts), but was ultimately a little dissatisfying and left me feeling like there was more that needed to be said. More what I’m not entirely sure, but perhaps more of the careful thoughtfulness that I appreciated so much in most of the rest of the pieces and their nuanced explorations of things like consent, abuse within queer communities, mental health and suicide, and life as a trans woman of colour. A particularly useful book, I think, for anyone thinking through dysfunction in communities that claim visions of justice and liberation, though it doesn’t necessarily have answers for you.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.