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A review by frombethanysbookshelf
Sticker by Henry Hoke
5.0
Thank you to Henry Hoke and Bloomsbury Academic for an advance copy in return for an honest review.
Sticker is part of the Object Lessons collections from Bloomsbury Academic, a series of short books teaching about the hidden lives of ordinary objects.
Like many, I have vivid memories of growing up that include stickers - the ones annoyingly stuck to the fruit in my lunchbox, the ones over my school books, the ones that come with sweets, the ones I wasn't meant to stick to the wall but did anyway - and they still appear in my adult life. They somehow remain a constant and despite their age hold an important part in popular physical media.
In stickers, Hoke creates a memoir using twenty different stickers to mark different phases in his life from infancy to adulthood - exploring growing up in a disabled family, racial segregation, queer childhood and living in a heavily facist and neo-nazi environment that fell victim to fatal terrorist attacks, extreme racism and homophobia - Charlottesville, USA. Rather than just a matter-of-fact history of his hometown, this explores deeply personal history and the emotions contained within, branching out into the wider social issues he's either experienced or observed coming from a place of being both priviledged and a minority at once.
At the same time, this collection also had sections that simply filled me with childhood nostalgia - the iconic gold star to the warning stickers on a bottle of bleach - invoking emotions I haven't thought of in over a decade.
In just under 150 pages, this was a very easy read despite some of it's more sensitive content. Hoke managed to curate a style that felt more like a personal, informal conversation with the reader that made the pages turn far too quickly and still remain fully engaging.
Sticker is part of the Object Lessons collections from Bloomsbury Academic, a series of short books teaching about the hidden lives of ordinary objects.
Like many, I have vivid memories of growing up that include stickers - the ones annoyingly stuck to the fruit in my lunchbox, the ones over my school books, the ones that come with sweets, the ones I wasn't meant to stick to the wall but did anyway - and they still appear in my adult life. They somehow remain a constant and despite their age hold an important part in popular physical media.
In stickers, Hoke creates a memoir using twenty different stickers to mark different phases in his life from infancy to adulthood - exploring growing up in a disabled family, racial segregation, queer childhood and living in a heavily facist and neo-nazi environment that fell victim to fatal terrorist attacks, extreme racism and homophobia - Charlottesville, USA. Rather than just a matter-of-fact history of his hometown, this explores deeply personal history and the emotions contained within, branching out into the wider social issues he's either experienced or observed coming from a place of being both priviledged and a minority at once.
At the same time, this collection also had sections that simply filled me with childhood nostalgia - the iconic gold star to the warning stickers on a bottle of bleach - invoking emotions I haven't thought of in over a decade.
In just under 150 pages, this was a very easy read despite some of it's more sensitive content. Hoke managed to curate a style that felt more like a personal, informal conversation with the reader that made the pages turn far too quickly and still remain fully engaging.