A solid first book for white people to read to begin learning about racism. The hook and focus indicated by the title points towards how unprepared we generally are in multiple senses for conversations about race and racism. In particular, most of us never learn to handle “the smallest amount of racial stress” and so …
First fantasy novel by Ann Leckie, who made her name as an original voice in the sci-fi world with the excellent *Ancillary Justice* trilogy (of which I still haven’t read the final entry). As you might expect from Leckie, this is not typical fantasy. There are humans at a relatively early stage of state formation …
Short, powerful graphic novel. Centred on two teenage Indigenous girls in Winnipeg. Simple, clear storytelling about the relentless pressure of gendered colonial violence and about love, culture, resilience, and survival. Very good. Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.
This is an eclectic collection “written and gathered” (as the author credit puts it) by organizer, facilitator, and writer adrienne maree brown. It contains many, many different kinds of pieces – both newly written and older re-published work by brown herself; pieces by other people, and pieces where other people are in dialogue with her; …
Written to be used while introducing undergraduate students to social theory. Unlike many books used in such contexts, it is about the furthest thing you could imagine from a compendium of chapters organized around “theory X says Y” and “theory A says B.” Instead, it focuses more on introducing the reader to theoretical thinking as …
This book has its origins in an online essay by Nora Samaran called “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture” that went viral when it was first published, and also I think in a direct follow-up that circulated quite widely called “On Gaslighting.” These two essays are included and also augmented by a few …
A chunky sci-fi graphic novel. Picked it up after hearing several people describe it as similar in feel to Becky Chambers’ novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, in that both are space-based gang-of-misfits found-family stories. The trippy graphics don’t necessarily work by the laws of physics but they certainly work for the …
Sci-fi. Set on a planet on which one side is always day and the other is always night, ten or twelve generations after the arrival of a massive ship bearing the remnants of humanity from a dying Earth. Only the narrow strip of twilight between the two halves of the planet is suitable for human …
A short, sharp book exploring what is necessary in Canada, in this era of Black Lives Matter, to transform dominant conceptions of Black personhood – which is to say, dominant denials of Black humanity – and all of the knowledge, imagination, liberal and left political organizing, and fundamental features of social organization that are based …
YA contemporary queer rom-commish hate-to-love story. Originated, or so the rumour goes, as a Rory/Paris *Gilmore Girls* fanfic, and you can see those roots, but it has been turned into quite good YA. I thought one of the central characters (Rachel) felt a bit over-the-top and a bit caricatured early on, though less so as …