A review by pekoparty
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell

5.0

I feel completely cracked open by this. Odell explores time not only in its form as we know it [the clock], but in its existence within nature, in carceral spaces, in public spaces, in our minds, in public, in recording, in spoken language, and most especially as it relates to labor. How it seems no matter how much effort we put in to 'beat the clock', the only true form of leisure can be found not in our bodily experience, but in the expansion of our minds. And that's not just it! It's more than that. And I think what I have really taken away is that my anger is justified; I am chronically tired, in pain, upset or disrupted and all of that can be traced back to colonization and capitalism and white supremacy and the fact that we are all "rise and grind" in benefit of people who are not us. Odell hits on identity intersections of race, queerness, disability, and her sharp observance of the world has peeled me wide and ready for my own expansion. Who can reject time? Who can reject the grind? Who gets to survive this wretched mess of a system?