artofkcf 's review for:

Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke

3.0

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Radtke's writing is beautiful and the imagery works in concert with the story. She provides interesting subject matters that remain loosely tied together in how they relate to one another. This is one of the challenges (and maybe positive interventions) of the text. However, this book is receiving polarizing reviews because of Radtke's silence on the relationship of her positional privilege as a white, cis,(presumably) hetero-woman of a certain class whose meditation on loss, decay, and ruin fail to provide a complex understanding beyond her sad emotional state about it. In our contemporary moment, this lack of introspection is fodder for how our social and economic systems reward entitled, rich, white young people as in, they get to make art, have pathways to prestigious scholarly environments and ultimately get their work published and monetized. I guess the question for us as the reader and Radtke as the author/illustrator is whose responsibility is it to connect these dots? I for one, wish she could have included this in the text alongside what she does provide, though as it's presented it is an illumination of how white femininity operates through the realm of entitlement to property, peoples' memories, and places that is in its own way a marvel to behold.