sariandtherevolution's reviews
141 reviews

We, the Heartbroken

4.0

emotional reflective medium-paced

Thank you, Gargi (always): for opening your broken heart to us and allowing us to see ourselves and each other in it. Our wounds will show us the way to liberation.

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

Lola Olufemi

5.0

hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

Everything about this book deserves 5 stars: experimental writing, themes of radical (re)imagination, revolutionary love and hope. Lola Olufemi is a brilliant thinker and writer.

Oranges amères: Un nouveau visage de l'esclavage en Europe

Gilles Reckinger

2.5

A Decolonial Feminism

Françoise Vergès

3.5

informative reflective medium-paced

Introductory text to decolonial feminism. I probably would have found it more interesting if I hadn’t minored in Gender & Diversity or was pursuing a master’s in Postcolonial Studies.

A Tempest

Aimé Césaire

3.0

fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

The Argonauts

Maggie Nelson

4.5

emotional reflective medium-paced

This book is much more than a simple narration of the transformations Maggie Nelson experiences during her pregnancy, when giving birth, and at the start of her husband's hormonal replacement therapy. What she gives us, as she calls it, is a memoir in drag: she is in drag as a mother, and she is in drag as a married person in a straight-passing queer relationship (Vice, 2018). She writes about bodies and becoming, specifically about bodies, objects, lives, and ideas being replaced bit by bit until they constitute something different. The author, thus, daringly speaks of and analyzes experiences and feelings of mergings and separations.

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Susan Sontag

3.0

informative reflective medium-paced

It is insightful to learn about the history of illness metaphors to be able to unlearn culturally and socially acquired harmful thought patterns that lead us to act and react in extreme ways: totally disregarding prognostics and medical advice due to fatalistic framings of illnesses. The book limits its analysis to the (white Christian) European and North American contexts throughout different historical periods. The author only briefly mentions a generalized idea of "the" (and not "an") African metaphorical framing of certain viruses and illnesses such as AIDS, syphillys, TB and cancer; failing to underline a variety of culturally contextual and relevant responses to deseases. It would have also been interesting to read about how the infected/ill patients resist(ed) such metaphors. For example, I think Susan Sontag should have spent time explaining how queer communities organize(d), mobilize(d) and educate(d) people (and each other) to free them(selves) from metaphors that contribute to "othering" which then leads to slow death.