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holdenprobably's reviews
196 reviews
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
5.0
An honest and emotional memoir about Roxane Gay's experiences with trauma and how it manifested in her body; how she built her body to protect her from a cruel world, and how difficult it is to live in an unruly body in a world that was not built for a body like hers. She deals with fatphobia in the world, internalized fatphobia and how hard it can be to care for a body that is not cared for by others, how terrifying it is to try and conform to others' expectations, and how inaccessible public spaces are. Reading this book feels like an intimate conversation, one that hurts and teaches and opens you up to change. If Roxane ever sees this, thank you for everything
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
5.0
This memoir took my heart, tore it to shreds, and put it all back together. Leah takes all of her most vulnerable identities and memories and tells of the way it hurts, of how identity isn't born into a person, of how community brings you into yourself, and of how trauma doesn't just disappear when it is no longer actively happening. You know when you start reading a book and it hurts because it resonates with you so much but you know you need to keep reading because the hurting isn't the end? And you know there's healing to come? Yeah. For the first time in a long time, it feels like I'm allowed to not know things about my ancestry, and not know how being mixed fits into the rest of the world, and not understand how to navigate my own racial identity. It feels like I can piece myself together, and work with my communities to build myself and my community up. And it feels like it's okay for me to be starting out like this.
I recommend this book to any and all of my friends, especially those in marginalized communities, living with intersecting identities, who don't know how they fit into the puzzle yet. Activist and survivor friends: this book is chock-full of other titles to read, if you ever need more.
I recommend this book to any and all of my friends, especially those in marginalized communities, living with intersecting identities, who don't know how they fit into the puzzle yet. Activist and survivor friends: this book is chock-full of other titles to read, if you ever need more.