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A review by half_book_and_co
Tonguebreaker by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
5.0
One hundred forty pages and every single one moved something in me, hit some spot, made me think. This book dedicated to all femmes who struggle is a collection of poems and performance pieces. Here disabled working-class queer brown and Black femmes are centred; their dreams, futures, relationships. This is a book about suicidal ideation and surviving – and also the ones who did not survive. It is a book about queer and disabled ancestors; and a lineage drawn from the ones passed away decades ago to the newly disabled finding their place. This book is a love letter and a prayer.
“Disability is adaptive, interconnected, tenacious, voracious, slutty, silent,
raging,
life giving”
The texts are sorted in six chapters: femme futures, sacrum, bedlife, rust will cut you, ritual payers: performance texts from mangos with chili, cripstory. These chapters sing to each other and echoes can be found throughout the book. And I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this book is so slim but I could write many, many posts about it. I will certainly go back to this collection again and again, rereading different texts.
“When I hear us dream our futures,
believe we will make it one,
We will make one.”
Books I also read by Piepzna-Samarasinha and absolutely loved: “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice” and “Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement” (edited with Ejeris Dixon)
“Disability is adaptive, interconnected, tenacious, voracious, slutty, silent,
raging,
life giving”
The texts are sorted in six chapters: femme futures, sacrum, bedlife, rust will cut you, ritual payers: performance texts from mangos with chili, cripstory. These chapters sing to each other and echoes can be found throughout the book. And I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this book is so slim but I could write many, many posts about it. I will certainly go back to this collection again and again, rereading different texts.
“When I hear us dream our futures,
believe we will make it one,
We will make one.”
Books I also read by Piepzna-Samarasinha and absolutely loved: “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice” and “Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement” (edited with Ejeris Dixon)