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A review by vanmeers
The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch
0.0
The Book of Joan is a story of how an environmental catastrophe forced the surviving (rich) humans to seek out life in space where they lose their reproductive organs (they, quite literally, shrivel up) and as they are now sex repressed must self-harm to produce written porn on their bodies.
There are several aspects of the book that I dislike but it is the authors outdated and offensive representation of gender that I dislike the most and find as the number one reason to not recommend this book. She describes a world where gender no longer exists, however, she makes it clear you can still tell when someone was a boy or a girl because of their shrivelled up genitalia. Additionally,the main villain, a man, is consistently shown as someone who mutilates women's bodies and performs 'genital reassignment surgery' on people who do not consent and in a final twist is revealed to be, in the author's words, a woman and the book then proceeds to describe him with female pronouns until he is killed off
There are several aspects of the book that I dislike but it is the authors outdated and offensive representation of gender that I dislike the most and find as the number one reason to not recommend this book. She describes a world where gender no longer exists, however, she makes it clear you can still tell when someone was a boy or a girl because of their shrivelled up genitalia. Additionally,
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Homophobia, Self harm, Sexual violence, and Transphobia