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ivi_reads_books's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.75
This book is a good mix of memoir and history and stats on indigenous people in Canada and the US. The author describes growing up with a bipolar mother in precarious environments and how their suroundings influenced their behavior.
The author doesn't tell the reader what to do or think. She rather observes what happens and what doesn't happen. What gets said and what doesn't and thus encourages readers to self-reflect on their own behavior
The author doesn't tell the reader what to do or think. She rather observes what happens and what doesn't happen. What gets said and what doesn't and thus encourages readers to self-reflect on their own behavior
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Racism, and Colonisation
Moderate: Alcohol, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Grief, Abandonment, Addiction, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Violence, Death, Deportation, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual assault, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Hate crime, Pregnancy, Vomit, Alcoholism, Cultural appropriation, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Police brutality
lattelibrarian's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Alicia Elliott is an incredibly talented writer. I read her debut novel first, then this when our library purchased it. Each essay is masterful--especially that in which she weaves Susan Sontag's thoughts on photography with her own experience being photographed without consent by her friends through the lens of voyeuristic and racialized photography. She also has an interactive essay at the very end which blurs the line between abuser and victim as she discusses intergenerational trauma, family histories, and poverty.
Perhaps the most compelling essay for me is the one about lice where Elliott states that her family's crime was not neglect, but being impoverished. They had love and discipline and food. They just didn't have the money to treat the lice that ravaged her and her siblings for years on end.
Elliott also goes into detail about her depression, her mother's bipolar disorder, and her father's forceful institutionalization of her mother. I can only imagine what this must have felt like to finally publish, to "air out" all the family secrets, so to speak. She's brave, but she's also simply telling the truth. I really respect her for that.
Perhaps the most compelling essay for me is the one about lice where Elliott states that her family's crime was not neglect, but being impoverished. They had love and discipline and food. They just didn't have the money to treat the lice that ravaged her and her siblings for years on end.
Elliott also goes into detail about her depression, her mother's bipolar disorder, and her father's forceful institutionalization of her mother. I can only imagine what this must have felt like to finally publish, to "air out" all the family secrets, so to speak. She's brave, but she's also simply telling the truth. I really respect her for that.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Racism, Rape, Classism, Colonisation, Mental illness, and Forced institutionalization
souplover2001's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
despite how many books i read that are similar, i am always so struck by an author's skill and, more importantly, their vulnerability to weave such poignant and informative pieces about bigger political issues with the experiences they go through in their own lives. this is a feat elliott executes beautifully!!
while all good, i found the strongest essays to be in the second half of the book and plan on revisiting "34 grams per dose," "boundaries like bruises," "on forbidden rooms and intentional forgetting," "not your noble savage," and "sontag, in snapshots."
in the same way that book dedications have a special place in my heart, so do book acknowledgements and i quite enjoyed reading the ones here. nya:wen to u too, alicia elliott!
while all good, i found the strongest essays to be in the second half of the book and plan on revisiting "34 grams per dose," "boundaries like bruises," "on forbidden rooms and intentional forgetting," "not your noble savage," and "sontag, in snapshots."
in the same way that book dedications have a special place in my heart, so do book acknowledgements and i quite enjoyed reading the ones here. nya:wen to u too, alicia elliott!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Genocide, and Racism
abbie_'s review
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Had this one on my radar for a couple of years now, finally got around to it and regret putting it off for so long! Elliott has so much to say about living with family with mental health issues, dealing with your own mental health issues, abuse and trauma, colonialism in the past and its ongoing effects today. She toes that line between the personal and political essay/memoir collection perfectly!
I wrote scattered thoughts about the essays that resonated with me the most, so here they are except I didn’t note down the essay titles 😅
- Loved the essay about diversity being a white word and the new buzzword in publishing. White authors feel threatened by BIPOC authors seemingly monopolising all the publishing deals (lol sure) so they do their best to shoehorn characters of colour into their work - as long as they’re writing with empathy, so the saying goes, no harm done. But Elliott argues that unless you’re writing about a particular community with love, it’ll be glaringly obvious and damaging to said community. White authors like Lionel Shriver immediately go onto the defensive, claiming censorship, criticism turned into censoring free speech.
- There’s a hard-hitting essay about Elliott’s sexual assault. During sexual violence trials, it’s the woman’s innocence that’s put on trial, not the man’s guilt. Before choosing to believe a man is *not* a rapist, people do not subject him to the barrage of questions we demand of women to prove they *are* a victim. We demand a woman put her trauma and pain on display, to watch as we pull it apart, put fingers into open wounds, make her perform her trauma again and again before, more often than not, still choosing not to believe.
- The essay about food deserts in North America was amazing, the way the US and Canada have manufactured them, enabled poorer people to become overweight and then ill. Why do people believe that the answer to what is choking us - capitalism and colonialism - is to shove more of those same things down our throats while we choke?
- Essay on photography, voyeurism, colonialism, consent, power, desire - not as strong as some of the others but I liked how she explored white photographers encroaching on communities they don’t belong to to further their and western white society’s stereotypical views of a community
- Essay on lies and fiction (made me think of something else I read recently) where women writers are often conflated with their characters. Men rarely receive this treatment, but people often treat fiction written by women as autofiction
Would highly recommend this collection!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Racism, Sexual violence, Pregnancy, Suicidal thoughts, Colonisation, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Violence, and Domestic abuse
dreamer626's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.75
Please check trigger warnings before reading!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Racism, Emotional abuse, and Child abuse
kchin's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Her voice is strong, writing is clear and brilliant. Everyone needs to read this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Police brutality, Murder, Genocide, Sexism, Sexual assault, Gaslighting, Racism, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Hate crime, and Colonisation
alexxcp's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Rape, Racism, Colonisation, Genocide, and Mental illness
jaan's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
1.25
I don't think that Elliott is a bad writer, but I do think her rhetoric could use a lot of work. In many chapters, I'd go as far as to say that her essay is rhetorically unsound. I'm thinking specifically of the chapter, "Not Your Noble Savage," which, while it doesn't appear in this edition, I read from my friend's copy. I am uncomfortable with some of the behavior she unapologetically admits to, such as touching/feeling her cousins' regalia without their knowledge or consent. In "Extraction Mentalities," she violates Gricean's maxim of relevancy, pulling a "Gotcha!" move on the reader when she asks the reader if they thought her father was the villain of the story. I also just cannot tell what the assumptions girding her work are, especially those relating to her privacy/vulnerability ethics, and that makes me wary of any writer.
I want to note "Forbidden Rooms and Intentional Forgetting" in particular (blanket content note henceforth for sexual assault). In this chapter, Elliot describes intentional forgetting as an active coping mechanism for survivors to help them move on with their lives. She compares it to denial, which is treated as a passive mechanism, and asks the reader what the real difference between the two is. Concluding that there is very little, she advocates intentional forgetting for survivors of trauma, including sexual assault. I am on board with this, as intentional forgetting is a practice I have successfully employed for ~10 years now. However, her description of sexual assault in this chapter is moderate-to-graphic, and there is no warning to her readers that it is coming. It is unforgivable to me that in a chapter wherein Elliott expresses her right to both vulnerability and privacy regarding her sexual assault, including her right to intentionally forget it, she does not include a content warning at the beginning of the chapter. I want to be clear: my issue is not that she wrote about sexual assault without warning. It is also not that she wrote about sexual assault at all. My issue is the hypocrisy: by not including the content warning, Elliott has denied her readers the practice of intentionally forgetting their trauma. She does not practice what she preaches. It is dangerous, in my opinion, to celebrate an writer who is well-liked, well-cited, and well-published who is not thinking critically about the praxis of her theory.
There are some moments I really appreciate in this memoir. "34 Grams is a Dose" is a strong read, for example. My classmates also enjoyed "Sontag, in Snapshots," though I personally did not. Finally, I appreciate the points she made in "Two Truths and a Lie" about the luxury of being divorced from their writing that is enjoyed by male authors. She notes that when women write fiction, it is assumed that the work is more autobiographical—that is, drawn from her real life—than if a man wrote it. Men are allowed to make art; women only ever tell their story.
Worth a read.
I want to note "Forbidden Rooms and Intentional Forgetting" in particular (blanket content note henceforth for sexual assault). In this chapter, Elliot describes intentional forgetting as an active coping mechanism for survivors to help them move on with their lives. She compares it to denial, which is treated as a passive mechanism, and asks the reader what the real difference between the two is. Concluding that there is very little, she advocates intentional forgetting for survivors of trauma, including sexual assault. I am on board with this, as intentional forgetting is a practice I have successfully employed for ~10 years now. However, her description of sexual assault in this chapter is moderate-to-graphic, and there is no warning to her readers that it is coming. It is unforgivable to me that in a chapter wherein Elliott expresses her right to both vulnerability and privacy regarding her sexual assault, including her right to intentionally forget it, she does not include a content warning at the beginning of the chapter. I want to be clear: my issue is not that she wrote about sexual assault without warning. It is also not that she wrote about sexual assault at all. My issue is the hypocrisy: by not including the content warning, Elliott has denied her readers the practice of intentionally forgetting their trauma. She does not practice what she preaches. It is dangerous, in my opinion, to celebrate an writer who is well-liked, well-cited, and well-published who is not thinking critically about the praxis of her theory.
There are some moments I really appreciate in this memoir. "34 Grams is a Dose" is a strong read, for example. My classmates also enjoyed "Sontag, in Snapshots," though I personally did not. Finally, I appreciate the points she made in "Two Truths and a Lie" about the luxury of being divorced from their writing that is enjoyed by male authors. She notes that when women write fiction, it is assumed that the work is more autobiographical—that is, drawn from her real life—than if a man wrote it. Men are allowed to make art; women only ever tell their story.
Worth a read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, and Sexual assault
booksnacks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Racism, and Colonisation
Moderate: Religious bigotry and Sexual assault
Minor: Suicide attempt