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A review by savvylit
Blueberries by Ellena Savage
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Ellena Savage is absolutely brilliant. She's astute, wry, and persuasive. Like with other titles in the memoir genre, it's difficult to find the words to review these essays. Why try and summarize this work when the author writes their own stories so well? Thus, I'll leave you with some quotes to see for yourself.
"Sadness is not always a terrible illness. Sadness is, perhaps, the most honest response to living."
"Politics is not removed from the way the sun kisses your neck at the hour before sunset. Politics is the pleasure in the body and the imagination, too."
"This idea, that the normative domain of 'politics' is just suffering without style (or humor), comes, I suspect, from the notion that exposing 'the truth' of injustice will go some way to correcting it. And that the truth will be immediately discernible: it will be the ugliest thing; the thing we most want to turn away from. As though the individuals who make up a society are only complicit in any given injustice because 'the truth' has been hidden from them."
"Because this is what agency is: it is doing what you can do with the circumstances you are dealt. It is choosing to do, even and especially when your parents or your superego or the law disapproves."
"Love shows us that the certainties we accept are arbitrary, flimsy paper bits. An entanglement of love-struck, horny auras interrupts the sense of urgency otherwise governing a person's existence in the world."
"Is 'self-care' a neoliberal scam promoting individualistic coping strategies in the absence of broader social obligations or the possibility of radical structural change? (Well, yes, I say to myself as I slip into my fourth late-night bath of the week, thinking about my next semester of unemployment.)"
"Sadness is not always a terrible illness. Sadness is, perhaps, the most honest response to living."
"Politics is not removed from the way the sun kisses your neck at the hour before sunset. Politics is the pleasure in the body and the imagination, too."
"This idea, that the normative domain of 'politics' is just suffering without style (or humor), comes, I suspect, from the notion that exposing 'the truth' of injustice will go some way to correcting it. And that the truth will be immediately discernible: it will be the ugliest thing; the thing we most want to turn away from. As though the individuals who make up a society are only complicit in any given injustice because 'the truth' has been hidden from them."
"Because this is what agency is: it is doing what you can do with the circumstances you are dealt. It is choosing to do, even and especially when your parents or your superego or the law disapproves."
"Love shows us that the certainties we accept are arbitrary, flimsy paper bits. An entanglement of love-struck, horny auras interrupts the sense of urgency otherwise governing a person's existence in the world."
"Is 'self-care' a neoliberal scam promoting individualistic coping strategies in the absence of broader social obligations or the possibility of radical structural change? (Well, yes, I say to myself as I slip into my fourth late-night bath of the week, thinking about my next semester of unemployment.)"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Abortion