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blkmymorris 's review for:
Imagine Wanting Only This
by Kristen Radtke
The death of the author's youngest uncle propels her to explore ruins.
It's not good. She goes on these ruminations about what we've done or how we react or search for the past. I don't relate to it at all. The first place she explores is Gary, Indiana. It's not abandoned, but much like Detroit and the other ruins she talks about, it's more about the absence of white people. Gary, Indiana has a black population over 80%. White people left in the 1960s as steel industry declined and now young white people, like the author, explore it as if it's devoid of human life for hundreds of years. That kept me on the outside of this book. Also, in Gary she takes some photos from an empty church and it turns out to belong to a memorial of an artsy young man like herself. She makes this theft about herself and never attempts to return it anyone.
I couldn't help but think of how this book centered a white American perspective without interrogating it, like the ruins and death of Southeast Asia but no discussion of America's involvement in the area since World War 2. The only time she explores how these ruins are man-made is the chapter on the Peshtigo fire and how it connected to how during World War 2 American forces used what they knew to study incendiary devices and chemicals and how it led to firebombing Dresden and Tokyo and napalm. It's only when she looks at abandoned mining towns in Colorado and talk with people that left that she finds now mystery or romanticism, but people that had poisoned their own hometown with arsenic and lead. In the final chapter, she talk about how we fantasize about disaster, but who is this we she is talking about because I didn't agree with her narrative.
Also, the art is simple black and white computer-generated rotoscope-like. It forces you to pay attention to small details because otherwise it could blend together. I feel that it is cold and distances me from the memoir as a reader.
It's not good. She goes on these ruminations about what we've done or how we react or search for the past. I don't relate to it at all. The first place she explores is Gary, Indiana. It's not abandoned, but much like Detroit and the other ruins she talks about, it's more about the absence of white people. Gary, Indiana has a black population over 80%. White people left in the 1960s as steel industry declined and now young white people, like the author, explore it as if it's devoid of human life for hundreds of years. That kept me on the outside of this book. Also, in Gary she takes some photos from an empty church and it turns out to belong to a memorial of an artsy young man like herself. She makes this theft about herself and never attempts to return it anyone.
I couldn't help but think of how this book centered a white American perspective without interrogating it, like the ruins and death of Southeast Asia but no discussion of America's involvement in the area since World War 2. The only time she explores how these ruins are man-made is the chapter on the Peshtigo fire and how it connected to how during World War 2 American forces used what they knew to study incendiary devices and chemicals and how it led to firebombing Dresden and Tokyo and napalm. It's only when she looks at abandoned mining towns in Colorado and talk with people that left that she finds now mystery or romanticism, but people that had poisoned their own hometown with arsenic and lead. In the final chapter, she talk about how we fantasize about disaster, but who is this we she is talking about because I didn't agree with her narrative.
Also, the art is simple black and white computer-generated rotoscope-like. It forces you to pay attention to small details because otherwise it could blend together. I feel that it is cold and distances me from the memoir as a reader.