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A review by lit_laugh_luv
People Change by Vivek Shraya
3.0
I'm in two minds about this one - on one hand, I enjoyed hearing Shraya's personal experiences and their perspective on the world. She has a lot of interesting viewpoints related to change and conformity as someone who exists at the intersection of several highly politicized identities. I almost wish this included more of her personal experiences - for example, her discussions about her gender identity were by far the most interesting to me. It's a stifling trade-off of being expected to represent a certain standard of trans womanhood, as deviations from this can be weaponized to imply confusion or uncertainty. Yet she aptly refutes this by simply stating: "I'm not confused. I am certain - that I want to keep changing".
This lost me a bit because the pop culture analysis felt a bit rudimentary. I don't think the intent here was to make an overtly critical or scholarly exploration into change, but a lot of the analysis felt overly reliant on Madonna as an example and was all fairly straightforward. It is definitely accessible if you're new to these ideas, though!
I also appreciated the brief overview of the negative aspects of change and evolution, but wish these were further explored. Especially within the queer community, it is hard to disentangle assimilation and conformity from true evolution, and so I felt like this glorified change a bit too much at times. Not all change is personally motivated and so much of it is rooted in safety and assimilating to what is necessary for survival.
This lost me a bit because the pop culture analysis felt a bit rudimentary. I don't think the intent here was to make an overtly critical or scholarly exploration into change, but a lot of the analysis felt overly reliant on Madonna as an example and was all fairly straightforward. It is definitely accessible if you're new to these ideas, though!
I also appreciated the brief overview of the negative aspects of change and evolution, but wish these were further explored. Especially within the queer community, it is hard to disentangle assimilation and conformity from true evolution, and so I felt like this glorified change a bit too much at times. Not all change is personally motivated and so much of it is rooted in safety and assimilating to what is necessary for survival.