A review by red5ryan
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Did not finish book. Stopped at 63%.
As a transgender person, I am all for seeing more representation in media, and I think showcasing more authors like Ryka Aoki is super important. But as authors of marginalized identities become more prominent, something we must remember is while we may be comfortable with slurs hurled at us over the course of our lives, others may not be. And this book is RIDDLED with every homophobic and transphobic slur imaginable, as well as several ableist and racist slurs. Slurs are a source of trauma for many queer people and people of color. Some of those terms (like the aforementioned, "queer,") have been reclaimed by their communities, but I speak as a queer, neurodivergent person when I say that the slurs used in this book and the context around them, even when coming from a writer of these identites, were deeply unsettling. I hope not to come off as a young queer person who has no idea what their elders went through when they were my age. I am well aware of what happened to the queer community of the past and how the rhetoric highlighted in this book resulted in their demise. If anything, it is an awareness of the generational trauma my community has experienced that makes reading this book so difficult. Transphobia has carried itself into the 21st century, and I struggle at times to assert myself as an out and proud non-binary person. Seeing that play out in this book has been rather painful and I find myself unable to continue forward. Highly triggering content aside, this was a fantastic book. A bit hard to follow at times but intriguing nonetheless. It is a book that I regret being unable to finish. (Also one of the main characters kind of grooms another, which is a major plot point. She supposedly abandons that goal but it was still unsettling while it was happening. That also made me kind of uncomfortable.)
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