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Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'
Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology by Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer
1 review
sucreslibrary's review
3.75
this one took me a bit to get through, but that doesn't mean it was bad. i enjoyed quite a lot of the stories, and there were very few i disliked (a rare thing for me with anthologies!). these stories span many decades, and since a lot of them focus on gender, that means there's quite a bit of transphobia and cissexism throughout. that, on top of a lot of misogyny (used to make a point, not just sprinkled in for no reason), could make it a little difficult to pick up the collection and get through a bunch of stories at once. honestly, after i read 'gestella' by susan palwick i had to take a short break simply because of how much it effected me emotionally.
my fave stories were 'the palm tree bandit' by nnedi okorafor, 'and salome danced' by kelley eskridge (warning for transphobia in this one), 'their mother's tears: the fourth letter' by leena krohn, 'gestella' by susan palwick and 'stable strategies for middle management' by eileen gunn.
'the fall river axe murders' by angela carter, 'boys' by carol emshwiller and 'thirteen ways of looking at space/time' by catherynne m. valente were the weakest for me (though there were portions of the latter that i really enjoyed, half of it was near impossible for me to read and it wore out its welcome very quickly). 'fears' by pamela sargent could have been great but the transmisogyny in it was so extreme that it really soured the whole story. i really thought i'd like 'the evening and the morning and the night' by octavia e. butler but some of the themes present in it didn't sit well with me even if i enjoyed several aspects of it.
it's overall a solid collection and gave me quite a few new authors to look into! i really appreciated the blurbs before each story that gave background on the author as well as the time period the stories were published. it's a solid way of framing an anthology like this and gave good context for each story. i'd definitely be up to reading more anthologies curated by the vandermeers if their subjects caught my interest.
my fave stories were 'the palm tree bandit' by nnedi okorafor, 'and salome danced' by kelley eskridge (warning for transphobia in this one), 'their mother's tears: the fourth letter' by leena krohn, 'gestella' by susan palwick and 'stable strategies for middle management' by eileen gunn.
'the fall river axe murders' by angela carter, 'boys' by carol emshwiller and 'thirteen ways of looking at space/time' by catherynne m. valente were the weakest for me (though there were portions of the latter that i really enjoyed, half of it was near impossible for me to read and it wore out its welcome very quickly). 'fears' by pamela sargent could have been great but the transmisogyny in it was so extreme that it really soured the whole story. i really thought i'd like 'the evening and the morning and the night' by octavia e. butler but some of the themes present in it didn't sit well with me even if i enjoyed several aspects of it.
it's overall a solid collection and gave me quite a few new authors to look into! i really appreciated the blurbs before each story that gave background on the author as well as the time period the stories were published. it's a solid way of framing an anthology like this and gave good context for each story. i'd definitely be up to reading more anthologies curated by the vandermeers if their subjects caught my interest.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny and Transphobia
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