A review by angievansprang
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

Did not finish book. Stopped at 37%.
Ultimately, the discussion of cannibalism and it’s supposed “origin” in West African cultures is ignorant and uneducated for a book that so desperately wishes to be pompous, pretentious, and over-intellectualized. I specifically stopped reading at a section where the author/main character discuss william seabrook and his book the magic island which from a quick Google, I am pretty sure paints West African indigenous peoples as not only cannibals but also zombies which is baseline racist to say the absolute least. From reading other reviews, I learned that later in the book, our main character
kills an ex lover named Marco who is Jewish in “kosher style” because he no longer wants to fuck her. I also learned that the book contains an on-page anti-Semitic slur later on as well as a description of the main character’s “intrigue” around her own sexual assault.
Additionally, I found it absurd to hear this author’s discussion of the “unjust” conditions of incarceration as the main character is an extremely privileged white woman *GUILTY OF MULTIPLE CASES OF MURDER AND CANNIBALISM* after recently having read Angela Davis’ autobiography which details the real oppression she faced in the American incarcerate system as a Black woman on no grounds whatsoever. This book certainly strikes me as exclusionary white feminism at it’s core and I would not recommend it. 

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