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jflo717's review against another edition
I read There Are Distances between Us by Roxane Gay for class. Very good short story utilizing the theme of structure.
janetgraberdc's review
4.5
Still dipping in and out of this. But putting it back in the essays pile.
illy95's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
An anthology of essays that really captures diverse points of view. Wonderful and quick read.
lichenbitten's review against another edition
4.0
Note: I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley.
With the rise of the internet and the subsequent explosion of online publications, the essay has gained newfound importance in the literary landscape. On a daily basis--more than books or short stories or poems--I read essays. Those essays tend to be about pop culture, films, books, and everything in between. So I was intrigued when I came across Waveform. I thought it would be something that I’d like, and I was definitely right.
Waveform collects trenchant essays written by women in the nearly two decades that have passed in this century. No book can be all-encompassing. No book can capture every experience of the age we are living through. What Waveform does well is offer diversity and a good mix of the famous and the obscure. There are the major names--Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, and Margo Jefferson. And there are the names that I, at least, was not familiar with. So Waveform gives us essays we may have already read and also gives us a chance to discover other voices that write about gender, race, and class.
I started reading Waveform after the 2016 election. In my heartbreak, I felt myself in need of feminist company because, for me, feminism has always been salvation. It gives us tools to analyze the world in which we live and it also gives us the ability to envision how else the world could be. Feminism tells the untold stories, it offers alternative narratives. In dark times, we need to think critically. We need writing that is honest and complex, writing that humanizes and scrutinizes. The essays in Waveform are written from a personal point of view but they also, for the most part, engage with larger political issues and realities, like Neela Vaswani’s “Dumb Show,” and Laurie Lynn Drummond’s “The Girl, the Cop, and I,” which both confront rape culture and the trauma of rape. Or Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s stunning “They Didn’t Come Here Cowboys,” which illuminates the injustice and degradation of mass incarceration through the story of the rodeo held at Angola prison in Louisiana where prisoners are forced to perform for spectators. Or Torrey Peters’s heart-wrenching memorial to trans people killed around the world in “Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay.” Peters created the essay from a document that listed all the deaths of transgender people from 2013 to 2014. All of these essays continue to haunt me. I keep thinking about them and I suspect they will always stay with me.
While I did find myself skipping some of the essays in this collection because they either didn’t grab my attention or didn’t seem to be going anywhere, that was the exception not the rule. For the most part, I found essays that spoke to me, that moved me, that made me think, that made me highlight passages. And it’s probably true that some of the essays I skipped might speak to someone else. Furthermore, not every essay is serious. Some were clever and interesting, like Brenda Miller’s “We Regret to Inform You,” which is written as a series of rejection letters from the author to herself, or Kyoko Mori’s “Cat Stories,” which is about Mori’s relationship with cats throughout her life; it’s about how cats helped her and saved her (something I can definitely relate to!).
I found what I was looking for when I chose to read Waveform. I found a collection of essays that spoke to me, that centered voices that have something profound to say about the time in which we live, that offered comfort, knowledge, warmth, rawness, and honesty. In the years to come, I will return to many of the essays I discovered in this collection.
With the rise of the internet and the subsequent explosion of online publications, the essay has gained newfound importance in the literary landscape. On a daily basis--more than books or short stories or poems--I read essays. Those essays tend to be about pop culture, films, books, and everything in between. So I was intrigued when I came across Waveform. I thought it would be something that I’d like, and I was definitely right.
Waveform collects trenchant essays written by women in the nearly two decades that have passed in this century. No book can be all-encompassing. No book can capture every experience of the age we are living through. What Waveform does well is offer diversity and a good mix of the famous and the obscure. There are the major names--Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, and Margo Jefferson. And there are the names that I, at least, was not familiar with. So Waveform gives us essays we may have already read and also gives us a chance to discover other voices that write about gender, race, and class.
I started reading Waveform after the 2016 election. In my heartbreak, I felt myself in need of feminist company because, for me, feminism has always been salvation. It gives us tools to analyze the world in which we live and it also gives us the ability to envision how else the world could be. Feminism tells the untold stories, it offers alternative narratives. In dark times, we need to think critically. We need writing that is honest and complex, writing that humanizes and scrutinizes. The essays in Waveform are written from a personal point of view but they also, for the most part, engage with larger political issues and realities, like Neela Vaswani’s “Dumb Show,” and Laurie Lynn Drummond’s “The Girl, the Cop, and I,” which both confront rape culture and the trauma of rape. Or Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s stunning “They Didn’t Come Here Cowboys,” which illuminates the injustice and degradation of mass incarceration through the story of the rodeo held at Angola prison in Louisiana where prisoners are forced to perform for spectators. Or Torrey Peters’s heart-wrenching memorial to trans people killed around the world in “Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay.” Peters created the essay from a document that listed all the deaths of transgender people from 2013 to 2014. All of these essays continue to haunt me. I keep thinking about them and I suspect they will always stay with me.
While I did find myself skipping some of the essays in this collection because they either didn’t grab my attention or didn’t seem to be going anywhere, that was the exception not the rule. For the most part, I found essays that spoke to me, that moved me, that made me think, that made me highlight passages. And it’s probably true that some of the essays I skipped might speak to someone else. Furthermore, not every essay is serious. Some were clever and interesting, like Brenda Miller’s “We Regret to Inform You,” which is written as a series of rejection letters from the author to herself, or Kyoko Mori’s “Cat Stories,” which is about Mori’s relationship with cats throughout her life; it’s about how cats helped her and saved her (something I can definitely relate to!).
I found what I was looking for when I chose to read Waveform. I found a collection of essays that spoke to me, that centered voices that have something profound to say about the time in which we live, that offered comfort, knowledge, warmth, rawness, and honesty. In the years to come, I will return to many of the essays I discovered in this collection.
whatstephreads's review against another edition
3.0
Will add full review in a few
ETA Review:
I knew I wasn't going to love every entry in this collection because that's what always happens when I read things by multiple contributors, but at least the essays I loved, I loved enough to not give the collection an overall poor rating. I really, REALLY loved the following:
- Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (absolute fave, 11/10)
- Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain by Leslie Jamison (this one was really long and sort of hard to read and really almost came off as pretentious but I decided I loved it)
- Here by Kristen Radtke (this was actually a short graphic essay, which was a nice palate cleanser among all the wordiness)
- There Are Distances Between Us (by the GOAT Roxane Gay)
- Good-Bye to All That by Eula Biss (10/10, what I took from this is that NYC doesn't have to be everyone's favorite city on earth and a lot of people come out of it jaded and it helped me overcome the regret that I never made a Big City Move in my life while I was still a young adult)
- and finally, The Art of Being Born by Marcia Aldrich, who also edited the collection.
Sensitivity Warning for readers - there are a lot of sensitive topics featured in these essays so please read at your own discretion!
ETA Review:
I knew I wasn't going to love every entry in this collection because that's what always happens when I read things by multiple contributors, but at least the essays I loved, I loved enough to not give the collection an overall poor rating. I really, REALLY loved the following:
- Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (absolute fave, 11/10)
- Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain by Leslie Jamison (this one was really long and sort of hard to read and really almost came off as pretentious but I decided I loved it)
- Here by Kristen Radtke (this was actually a short graphic essay, which was a nice palate cleanser among all the wordiness)
- There Are Distances Between Us (by the GOAT Roxane Gay)
- Good-Bye to All That by Eula Biss (10/10, what I took from this is that NYC doesn't have to be everyone's favorite city on earth and a lot of people come out of it jaded and it helped me overcome the regret that I never made a Big City Move in my life while I was still a young adult)
- and finally, The Art of Being Born by Marcia Aldrich, who also edited the collection.
Sensitivity Warning for readers - there are a lot of sensitive topics featured in these essays so please read at your own discretion!
ljbentley27's review
3.0
I like reading essays. I like that most essays I read give me access to a world that I usually have no concept of or have never experienced. This is why I chose to request Waveform from NetGalley. As expected, the essays featured in Waveform opened up doors to the writers minds and let me be privy to events that I didn’t previously have access too.
What I found was that some of the essays were so beyond my ken that I struggled to actively follow along whereas others had be turning the page so quickly so that I could absorb more. I realised that essays, like great novels can be read at any time but there are certain times when a great piece of writing finds you when you need it most. I think that is what is special about Waveform. It is that kind of collection.
Waveform by Marcia Aldrich is available now.
What I found was that some of the essays were so beyond my ken that I struggled to actively follow along whereas others had be turning the page so quickly so that I could absorb more. I realised that essays, like great novels can be read at any time but there are certain times when a great piece of writing finds you when you need it most. I think that is what is special about Waveform. It is that kind of collection.
Waveform by Marcia Aldrich is available now.
rachelmansmckenny's review
4.0
In the preface to Waveform, the editor writes, "This book is not a memorial. Although we need to remember the women writers who have come before, this book is about women writing essays now. The wave is an image that catches the sense and motion that define the current movement, its fluidity and momentum." This essay certainly has momentum-- so much, in fact, that I would sit down to peruse just one essay and find myself dragged into the current of two or three.
A few things to appreciate about the collection in general. First, there is a wide variety of form here. As an educator, I value this and if I find a need to bring in an essay collection in the future for a course, you can bet I'll be looking to this one. Some essays are sandwiched with two images, some forms are restrictive (one for every letter of the alphabet), while some are based around found words (such as the heartbreaking "Transgender Day of Remembrance.") The variety of forms kept me reading.
The variety of stories here, too, showed a wide range of women's experiences-- yes, essays about motherhood, sexual violence, and girls growing up, but also essays about gun ownership, race, and leaving. Some of the highlights for me in this collection were "Portrait of a Family: Crooked and Straight" by Wendy Rawlings, "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain" by Leslie Jamison, "The Girl, The Cop, and I" by Laurie Lynn Drummond, and "Girl Hood: On (Not) Finding Yourself in Books" by Jaquira Diaz.
Honestly, many of these essays touched me deeply, and I felt myself wanting to be a fly on the wall during the meeting at AWP a few years ago when this project (according to the preface) was first envisioned. It's a fine collection, and one I highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review of the book.
A few things to appreciate about the collection in general. First, there is a wide variety of form here. As an educator, I value this and if I find a need to bring in an essay collection in the future for a course, you can bet I'll be looking to this one. Some essays are sandwiched with two images, some forms are restrictive (one for every letter of the alphabet), while some are based around found words (such as the heartbreaking "Transgender Day of Remembrance.") The variety of forms kept me reading.
The variety of stories here, too, showed a wide range of women's experiences-- yes, essays about motherhood, sexual violence, and girls growing up, but also essays about gun ownership, race, and leaving. Some of the highlights for me in this collection were "Portrait of a Family: Crooked and Straight" by Wendy Rawlings, "Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain" by Leslie Jamison, "The Girl, The Cop, and I" by Laurie Lynn Drummond, and "Girl Hood: On (Not) Finding Yourself in Books" by Jaquira Diaz.
Honestly, many of these essays touched me deeply, and I felt myself wanting to be a fly on the wall during the meeting at AWP a few years ago when this project (according to the preface) was first envisioned. It's a fine collection, and one I highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review of the book.
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