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Reviews
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
lesbrary's review
4.0
I feel like I am totally unqualified to talk about this book. It's like someone cracking open her ribcge and showing you what's inside, while fixing you with a glare like vulnerability is the most badass and resilient thing you can do.
zlibrarian's review
5.0
It’s not easy to explain, but this book feels alive. Excellent, poignant, and memorable. Piepzna-Samarasinha beautifully captures the inner and outer environments of life, love, and learning in queer communities of color and the world. Her vivid descriptive style appeals to the senses, making one want to reach for a blanket while reading about a coatless Toronto winter. At other times, you can feel yourself dancing or falling in love. Anyone who has lived through similar experiences during the era she describes will remember the close link between personal and political struggles, and how people lived it instead of just talking about it. She also handles complex, painful family relationships honestly, listening between her parents’ words to hear the things they won’t -- or can’t -- say. This valuable historical perspective makes this more than a coming-of-age novel. A more appropriate term, to borrow from Audre Lorde's ZAMI, would be 'biomythography'. This isn't to question the veracity of DIRTY RIVER, rather to praise it and try to describe it power and depth. Throughout the book, Piepzna-Samarasinha depicts the changing realities of living between cultures: not fully accepted as South Asian among Toronto’s queer communities, but finally defining her identity and thriving in communities that are as brilliantly diverse as the real world itself. As a librarian, I’d recommend this to faculty and students of English, Creative Writing, Gender and Women’s Studies, and perhaps History and Politics too. Have already requested purchase. Highly recommended.
holdenprobably's review
5.0
This memoir took my heart, tore it to shreds, and put it all back together. Leah takes all of her most vulnerable identities and memories and tells of the way it hurts, of how identity isn't born into a person, of how community brings you into yourself, and of how trauma doesn't just disappear when it is no longer actively happening. You know when you start reading a book and it hurts because it resonates with you so much but you know you need to keep reading because the hurting isn't the end? And you know there's healing to come? Yeah. For the first time in a long time, it feels like I'm allowed to not know things about my ancestry, and not know how being mixed fits into the rest of the world, and not understand how to navigate my own racial identity. It feels like I can piece myself together, and work with my communities to build myself and my community up. And it feels like it's okay for me to be starting out like this.
I recommend this book to any and all of my friends, especially those in marginalized communities, living with intersecting identities, who don't know how they fit into the puzzle yet. Activist and survivor friends: this book is chock-full of other titles to read, if you ever need more.
I recommend this book to any and all of my friends, especially those in marginalized communities, living with intersecting identities, who don't know how they fit into the puzzle yet. Activist and survivor friends: this book is chock-full of other titles to read, if you ever need more.
thecolourblue's review
3.5
This is an important book in terms of representation, but the writing is a bit uneven - it feels like an author still honing their craft. Some places feel rushed, and others drawn out, and the prose seems to be refining itself by the end of the book as if we have seen some of the development of Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing skill as we go. When it's great, it's really great though.
I can however appreciate the thought process of someone who makes decisions because the choice is “all lit up”. I also pick things in the moment because they are shiny.
I can however appreciate the thought process of someone who makes decisions because the choice is “all lit up”. I also pick things in the moment because they are shiny.
soupwitch86's review
5.0
This book spoke to my heart. Part poetry, part memoir, part stream of consciousness. All raw, all flawed perfection, all queer disabled brown femme. She writes about trauma and emotions boldly but without sentimentality, so some lines slap you in the face and keep going.
clementinemorrigan's review
5.0
This is a beautiful and important book. The rich descriptions of Toronto are a bonus.
books_and_cha's review
4.0
I read this book as part of my women and gender studies/English class. I took the class simply so that I could read books like this - true stories of people from the LGBTIQ community, but Leah Samarasinha's story is more than that.
When I first began reading the book, I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, but before I knew it, I was absorbed and moreover - I found myself attached to Leah. Not only because I could relate to her love of books, and with her being a feminist, but because even though she's very different from me, and has lived a wilder and more dangerous life than I have, beneath all her toughness, there is vulnerability that endeared her to me - not to say that her weaknesses was what made me like her, but the opposite: it was the raw and transparent way she presented herself that awed me. Because writing this book and sending it out into the world must have required a great sense of courage - and that's what I admire: her journey, and the courage to tell her story.
Samarasinha has a beautiful voice - she draws you in with her warmth, with her bravery, with her toughness, her humor, and most of all - the deepest, richest parts of her mind. I am honored to have been there with her as she recounted her life. Thank you for writing this book.
When I first began reading the book, I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did, but before I knew it, I was absorbed and moreover - I found myself attached to Leah. Not only because I could relate to her love of books, and with her being a feminist, but because even though she's very different from me, and has lived a wilder and more dangerous life than I have, beneath all her toughness, there is vulnerability that endeared her to me - not to say that her weaknesses was what made me like her, but the opposite: it was the raw and transparent way she presented herself that awed me. Because writing this book and sending it out into the world must have required a great sense of courage - and that's what I admire: her journey, and the courage to tell her story.
Samarasinha has a beautiful voice - she draws you in with her warmth, with her bravery, with her toughness, her humor, and most of all - the deepest, richest parts of her mind. I am honored to have been there with her as she recounted her life. Thank you for writing this book.