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sinceremercy's reviews
45 reviews
Beowulf: A New Translation by Anonymous
5.0
Absolutely delightful translation of Beowulf. I have not had this much fun or gotten this much enjoyment out of a turn of phrase in a long time. This translation employs modern slang extensively but not exclusively (there is plenty of archaic vocabulary also), but it doesn't use it purely as a novelty. From the very first page it is extremely clear what register the story is meant to be read in, but the story isn't dumbed down to make it more modern sounding. Absolutely something I can imagine being told to a group of drunk friends and extremely entertaining.
The Revolution That Failed: Reconstruction in Natchitoches by Adam Fairclough
5.0
Rarely have I read a more important book. It's astonishing how as a person who lives in Natchitoches, who is interested in this subject, and who indeed has worked in the archives here, so much of the information in here was completely new to me. It is as if there has been a complete cultural erasure of the political struggle that existed in Natchitoches, and a sense that it always has been and always will be a conservative area-- not that there were powerful Black men who held power here in the 19th century until they were forcibly and violently opposed by a white supremacist counter-revolution. We know about the Colfax riot nearby, but "nothing like that happened here."
The book is well crafted, well written, and well researched, and is entirely comprehensible even to someone who does not know a great deal about Reconstruction already.
The book is well crafted, well written, and well researched, and is entirely comprehensible even to someone who does not know a great deal about Reconstruction already.
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
2.0
I really *wanted* to like this book a lot more than I actually ended up doing. It came to me highly recommended. There are so many interesting concepts here, and some wonderful side characters (in particular I loved May Belle and Sarah).
However, I was a little disappointed. The first two sections especially feel very hazy and confusing, in a way that seems at least somewhat international but that personally doesn't work for me. The main character Rue is the weakest character for me. So often she is just an observer when she should be a more active character (when Sarah calls her because Bean is sick, and then she checks his temperature and leaves the room until he stops breathing struck me as an egregious example). What we do get as core elements of her personality change throughout the novel, but without my "feeling" the change. Her fear and revulsion of childbirth and especially Bean changing to a powerful love for Bean (and maybe eventually her own child, though I could have done without that plotline entirely) could have been very compelling if I were able to feel the actual transformation more. Instead the change just kind of... Happens? Similarly I never really bought the change in her opinion of Bruh Abel.
Varina takes up so much narrative space during the "slavery/wartime" portions of the novel. Rue is set up as connected intrinsically to her, a connection which I thought at first might be romantic, but does not appear to be. However she all but disappears immediately after "freedomtime". The reveal that Varina was in fact alive and hidden took so long to emerge, but her absence during parts of the narrative in which she really should have been more present doesn't make sense. If Rue was feeding her, making clothes for her, and so on, when she couldn't even afford to eat for herself, that should have played a larger role in her thoughts. Even the cover art of the story emphasizes the duality of these characters, but it's Varina's half-sister Sarah who is her true counterpart. In a way I wish that Sarah had been the main character.
However, I was a little disappointed. The first two sections especially feel very hazy and confusing, in a way that seems at least somewhat international but that personally doesn't work for me. The main character Rue is the weakest character for me. So often she is just an observer when she should be a more active character (when Sarah calls her because Bean is sick, and then she checks his temperature and leaves the room until he stops breathing struck me as an egregious example). What we do get as core elements of her personality change throughout the novel, but without my "feeling" the change. Her fear and revulsion of childbirth and especially Bean changing to a powerful love for Bean (and maybe eventually her own child, though I could have done without that plotline entirely) could have been very compelling if I were able to feel the actual transformation more. Instead the change just kind of... Happens? Similarly I never really bought the change in her opinion of Bruh Abel.
Varina takes up so much narrative space during the "slavery/wartime" portions of the novel. Rue is set up as connected intrinsically to her, a connection which I thought at first might be romantic, but does not appear to be. However she all but disappears immediately after "freedomtime". The reveal that Varina was in fact alive and hidden took so long to emerge, but her absence during parts of the narrative in which she really should have been more present doesn't make sense. If Rue was feeding her, making clothes for her, and so on, when she couldn't even afford to eat for herself, that should have played a larger role in her thoughts. Even the cover art of the story emphasizes the duality of these characters, but it's Varina's half-sister Sarah who is her true counterpart. In a way I wish that Sarah had been the main character.
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
4.0
I'm not sure how else to describe this book except that I think it's really special. Though it's framed as a fable, the philosophy behind it is extremely earnest. It plays with gender and identity in a way that I really enjoy; identity is fluid and frequently changing, sometimes (as the book describes) deliberately to confuse the "men". Reading the book as an experience felt like immersing myself in a sense of community and solidarity. Overall, really enjoyable.
"The faggots once called themselves the men who love men. But they discovered that they did not love men, they loved only other men who loved men which was not that many of the men. [...] The men who hate others hate the men who love men. And this hatred is so strong that it turns the men who love men into the faggots."
"The faggots once called themselves the men who love men. But they discovered that they did not love men, they loved only other men who loved men which was not that many of the men. [...] The men who hate others hate the men who love men. And this hatred is so strong that it turns the men who love men into the faggots."
Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching by Crystal N. Feimster
4.0
Sort of a dual biography of Ida B. Wells and first female senator Rebecca Latimer Felton— but perhaps even more so the "biography" of the women's club movement and the beginnings of women's politics in the United States. Feimster handles the complicated material sensitively, particularly Felton's complicated and sometimes-contradictory politics— always a white supremacist and yet vacillating between criticising white men and wishing to extend protection to poor white and black women, and throwing her lot in with white men to increase the political power of white women.
It sheds a lot of light on the racial and sexual politics of Reconstruction through the early 20th century in the American south. I'd very much like to follow up on and learn more about the female lynching victims, white and black, and the pervasive climate of violence against women at this time (perpetrated mostly by white men). It provides some in sight, as well, into the ways white women operated in a world which simultaneously did them incredible violence and strictly controlled their behavior, and yet also offered them more power than they'd ever had before.
The subject matter is heavy and sometimes disturbing, but the book itself is deftly written and not at all the depressing slog I worried it might be at first.
It sheds a lot of light on the racial and sexual politics of Reconstruction through the early 20th century in the American south. I'd very much like to follow up on and learn more about the female lynching victims, white and black, and the pervasive climate of violence against women at this time (perpetrated mostly by white men). It provides some in sight, as well, into the ways white women operated in a world which simultaneously did them incredible violence and strictly controlled their behavior, and yet also offered them more power than they'd ever had before.
The subject matter is heavy and sometimes disturbing, but the book itself is deftly written and not at all the depressing slog I worried it might be at first.
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