Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels by Katie West, Jasmine Elliot, Kristen J Sollee

4 reviews

boopointeshoes's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

I liked most of the stories, but there were two or three that just weren’t for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Ableism, Mental illness, Addiction, Alcohol, Genocide, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Dysphoria, Chronic illness, Classism, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual violence, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Transphobia, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Violence

faeriekit's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

This book was hard for me to read though-- anthologies usually test my patience. Sometimes I failed to see the connection between all the stories, but that was mainly because I couldn't connect to all of them at once. That's not the book's fault. It still made for an odd reading experience, though. 

As far as the witchcraft goes, I can see some connections, and I miss others. That's fine. Not every craft is like mine, not every magic matches what I know. As far as the Queer and Disabled community connections go, though, the intertwining of knowing your exiled status and looking in from the outside was something that tied the majority of stories together in ways that the individual contents of each piece didn't. 

I do think this is a deeply interesting book. It brings many undervalued voices to light in a community that often sees gender roles as spiritual, and an unmovable facet of the divine. It's nice to see the reminder that the human failings of prejudice have to fall away in order to see the full breadth and scope of what witchcraft, magic, and ancestral love can look like. I would recommend finding a copy to read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Antisemitism

Moderate: Ableism, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

There are slurs used! FYI! In the context of people using them for themselves, but just so you know.

lilkstew's review

slow-paced

2.75

Meh. This book was fine. The premise is super cool, but I felt that the essays fell flat. Some of them were real knock-outs (particularly "Garden," "Buzzcut Season," "The Future Is Coming for You," and "Ritualizing My Humanity"), but so many others were not that great. Many were dull. Several were trite. 

A lot of the essays felt repetitive, which isn't unheard of for an essay collection, but it felt poorly edited. After the seventh nearly identical essay on beauty, I was bored. The essays also contradicted each other to a strange degree. Again, this isn't uncommon for essay collections; after all, many different authors contributed. It's good to show multiple perspectives and counterpoints, but it didn't really work with this collection. Let's take the subject of beauty for example. A bunch of essays talked about beauty, but they all used the same talking points. One essay would talk about how beauty isn't empowering, the next would claim that beauty is empowering, and then the cycle would repeat. The essays didn't bring up a lot of new points; the main points of an essay on empowering beauty would be the counterpoints of the essay about beauty not being empowering. The essays lost freshness and bite and insight; they were predictable.

The editors did a great job explaining and including content warnings, though.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Transphobia, and Violence

apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual content

Minor: Rape