emergencily's reviews
116 reviews

We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics by Kay Gabriel, Andrea Abi-Karam

5.0

• a stunning, massive collection of poetry in more shapes and forms than you could imagine (including mixed media poems, literary prose, excerpts from books like "stone butch blues," and a transcript of a sylvia rivera speech) by trans artists. there is so much raw emotion, bodily sensation, eroticism and style crammed into this collection that there will be something here for any reader
• bulk of the poetry is highly experimental and postmodern. presented in such a large quantity together, it was sometimes hard to get  through one after the other (but im also a less experienced poetry reader). overall, you should take reading this slowly and in small sessions over time so you can really savour each piece (imo)
• my one complaint: ofc, it must have been difficult to find a way to organize such an massive collection of pieces and authors (70+ authors?!), so i understand why they chose to go for alphabetical order.  but i do prefer when anthologies have more of a rhyme & reason to the order and presentation of pieces

""Poetry isn’t revolutionary practice; poetry provides a way to inhabit revolutionary practice, to ground ourselves in our relations to ourselves and each other, to think about an unevenly miserable world and to spit in its face. We believe that poetry can do things that theory can’t, that poetry leaps into what theory tends towards. We think that poetry conjoins and extends the interventions that trans people make into our lives and bodily presence in the world, which always have an aesthetic dimension. We assert that poetry should be an activity by and for everybody."

Green Frog by Gina Chung

4.0

• short story collection that spans a few genres (sci-fi, folk tales, surrealism) focused mainly on the experiences of korean-american women
• most stories were okay, with only a few standouts to me:
  • "human hearts" - a folk tale about kumiho and a coming-of-age fairy tale (kumiho are female fox spirits, known as seductive tricksters who eat men's hearts)
  • "the arrow" -  a woman's unplanned pregnancy forces her to confront the changes in her contentious relationship with her emotionally abusive mother
  • "love song of the mexican free-tailed bat" - an emotional tale that struck close to my heart about a woman dealing with her estranged father's unexpected death and the complicated legacy he leaves behind
• the sci-fi stories ("presence," "attachment processes") were especially weak to me. their premises have been done 100 times over, and the stories had nothing new to say, even with the addition of an asian woman's POV

Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction by Bao Shu, Gu Shi, Ma Boyong, Zhao Haihong, Wang Jinkang, Tang Fei, Jiang Bo, Regina Kanyu Wang, Han Song, Anna Wu, Nian Yu, Hao Jingfang, A Que

3.5

• a collection of sci-fi short stories translated to english from a diverse range of chinese authors
• as with any collection of stories, some hit high notes and some hit lows. but overall this collection has more mid and low points. some of the stories are pretty basic sci-fi premises and don't offer anything interesting to say about the world beyond what's immediately obvious
• the foreword discusses the editor's hope to represent chinese women authors in sci-fi through this collection; this makes the inclusion of a few stories with very old-school, trite misogynistic tropes extra irritating in retrospect!
• standout stories:
  • tombs of the universe - a reflection on the evolution of human funerary practices in the age of space travel
  • rendezvous 1937: a time travelling story about the atrocities committed by japan in nanjing during WWII
  • flower of the other shore: an apocalyptic zombie story about a zombie falling in love. quirky love story, reminiscent of "warm bodies"
  • starship: library - a love letter to libraries as the community spaces & living archives of humanity

On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Kim Bo-young

5.0

• collection of sci-fi short stories musing on humanity, aliens, Otherness, evolution, and transhumanism
• first story in the collection is a bit of a tired sci-fi premise and doesn't go far beyond it, but the rest -- while resting on some familiar premises and concepts -- all turn what you expect onto its head, or at least shift your perspective
• standout stories in the collection:
  • the titular story "on the origin of other species" (and its followup story) are outstanding. in a future earth long after humanity has died out and been forgotten, a robot civilization rules the world while a lone robot researcher attempts to prove the existence of life, sentiency and "humanity" outside their society's preconceived norms, setting off an explosive chain of events.
  • "stars shine in earth's sky" is a reflection on disability, normativity and alienation. written as a letter from an older sister to her younger brother, it's filled with so much tenderness & hope & humanity it aches

Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet: Ten Queer Stories by Zi'en Cui

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

• collection of short stories by queer chinese filmmaker cui zui'en
• a frank presentation of all that is nasty, taboo and queer, presenting pure love & sexual perversion and violence alike without condemnation or uplifting of either. we all have to go to the public toilet equally
• the  stories in this collection are definitely not the typical hallmark-esque queer tales of seeking and finding acceptance within normative society
• the longest titular story in the collection, more of a novella, is fascinating but too drawn out and could do with some more editing down. interesting ruminations on the public toilet as a microcosm of society and a transgressive space to explore taboos
• some standouts were:
  • "uncle's elegant life," a tender tale of familial love told from the POV of a child examining his complex relationship with his gender non-conforming uncle amid strict gender & social norms
  • "silent advent of the age of sexual persuasion," about a man's relationship with his giant dick boyfriend and beating back other men who want to hop on his giant dick boyfriend, among other things (im not kidding)
  • "men are containers," a college coming of age story of sexuality & rivalry between young men who seek to fill each other & be filled (biblically and otherwise!)

"The city is the container of men because the city holds men's pasts. Men are the containers of other men; therefore men hold other men's pasts. One man can be the container of many men; a group of men can also be one man's container. One or many, many or few, it's not important; what matters is that men can contain each other."

"Based on the aforementioned understanding and position, the four of us suggest changing the global capital, Beijing, into a gigantic toilet, and let everyone spit, shit, piss, kiss and make love anywhere at will."

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Pedophilia, Rape, and Sexual assault

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

4.25

• a collection of gothic feminist re-interpretations of classic fairy tales that bring the themes of sexuality, violence, taboos and perversion inherent to classical fairy tales to the surface
• really beautiful and richly descriptive prose......very decadent & sumptuous imagery. usually a treat to read but occasionally crosses into overindulgent. angela just say what you mean sometimes!
• as with any story collection, some shine more than others. personal faves: the bloody chamber (gothic retelling of bluebeard), puss in boots (the sole light hearted story in the collection), the erl king, the company of wolves (retelling of little red riding hood)
• preoccupation with virginity & menstruation is a reoccurring theme in these stories that can come off biologically deterministic to a reader in 2024, but maybe its also a reflection of how these old tales were obsessed with teaching lessons about girls' virginity & purity/impurity?

Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany

3.5

• a very loving study of online fandom & fangirls and their imprint on popular culture, from the mouth of a fangirl herself. a mix of pop culture journalism and personal anecdote with sprinklings of academic references, this is a book that gives fandom its flowers instead of condescending towards it, but also doesnt  glorify and or breeze over its pitfalls (overidentification with consumerism, parasocial relationships, racism in fandom, etc.)
• buttt was basically only about 1D fandom, with only brief attention paid to general fandom history (e.g. star trek fangirls pioneering fanfic & fanzines in the 60s, anne rice fanfic lawsuit debacle, censorship of nsfw content on various fan platforms, etc). and all those beats are so critically important to understanding fandom history and the internet today, so this feels incomplete. i kept waiting for when it would move past using one direction as an example, because the book's intro implied it would, and it never did
• i prob wouldnt have minded that as much if i had been a 1D fan, and i never was LOL. this is probably more appreciated by someone who’s had a 1D phase

Circe by Madeline Miller

4.0

• i think the writing style & prose was stronger in this book than her other one (song of achilles) and it felt a little less YA 
• an interesting retelling of circe's story with a feminist slant that expands her character beyond the "evil temptress witch" trope and interrogates how gender roles & power dynamics in greek mythology shape her origins as a powerless nymph under her father's patriarchal thumb, and her transformation into a powerful, defiant witch cast out to the fringes of society grappling with her ostracization & new motherhood

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

4.0

• a retelling of the iliad with a focus on the relationship between achilles & patroclus, told through patroclus' POV
• some really beautiful & moving lines within the book, but at times the prose can lean towards the melodramatic and come off as “tumblr prose.” It overall has a YA novel vibe that feels like some quotes were made to be posted on tumblr
• i know it's from patroclus' POV, but i wished for a bit more insight into achilles to flesh out his character. so much of what we see of him and their relationship is through patroclus' loving gaze, and this devotional skew ends up flattening the development of their relationship in the first half of the book
• achilles' greatest flaws are his hubris and quickness to anger. these qualities are brought out by the war, but his escalation into willfully cruel arrogance, no matter the cost to human life, feels too abrupt without enough enough groundwork laid out earlier throughout the book
• The last part of the book is the strongest, when you finally see some friction in their relationship as achilles is drawn into his vain pursuit of glory and as patroclus becomes his own person, forming bonds and a purpose outside of achilles. it's also when achilles begins to feel more believable as a nuanced, flawed person, and you get a sense of his emotional state and deep attachment to patroclus that feels tangible
• ultimately this is a moving love story that will scoop out ur insides

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”
“Perhaps,” Achilles admitted.
I listened and did not speak. Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.

Human Acts by Han Kang

5.0

• a set of interconnected stories revolving around different characters as they live through the bloody gwangju student uprisings & subsequent massacres in 1980, and the aftermath of its grief and trauma throughtout the decades. 
• extremely visceral & raw, with a focus on bodies -- examining the marks of both physical and intangible violence left on the body, what we do with the bodies of the dead (washing & dressing, family burials, dumping in mass graves), and how we remember those bodies. there's a chapter told from the perspective of a corpse as the soul watches its own body being dumped into a mass grave and beginning to decompose
• all about emotion, memory, grief and loss. the book really makes you feel the loss of these young protestors and the emptiness they leave behind in the lives of their loved ones and in the collective nation

“After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.
Oh, return to me.
Oh, return to me when I call your name.
Do not delay any longer. Return to me now.
After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.”

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, and Police brutality