The First Bad Man by Miranda July: This book is a delightfully weird experience. Full of cringe moments, bizarre fantasies, and the ugly magic of an un-extraordinary life. This book explores the weird, embarrassing, deeply funny moments of being a person through the eyes–and the overactive imagination–of this eccentric, queer, lonely woman. The Liar’s ClubContinue reading “Brief Book Reviews”
Category Archives: bookworm
Fallen Fruit and the Portal to New Knowledge
Stoppard’s Arcadia considers the role of gender in the quest for knowledge and the ways human nature resists a fully deterministic model of the universe. The play uses the symbol of the apple to connect the two women, their thirst for new kinds of knowledge, and their theories about the ways nature and mathematics reflect or resist each other.
Dissolution of True Knighthood: Queer Identity and Trauma in Calvino’s _The Nonexistent Knight_
The narration of Italo Calvino’s novel The Nonexistant Knight explores the aftermath of trauma in the queer body through the repeated use of mirrored images, contorted doubles, and illusion. In this translation by Archibald Colquhoun, the character Bradamante embodies elements of a non-binary gender identity through her status as a knight within Charlemagne’s army. InContinue reading “Dissolution of True Knighthood: Queer Identity and Trauma in Calvino’s _The Nonexistent Knight_”
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi: Book Review
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is a queer coming-of-age novel like no other, exploring trauma and its aftermath within an earthly body full of gods. The story centers on a young Nigerian girl named Ada, but is narrated largely by the Ogbanje—a swarm of Igbo spirits that come from the womb of the python deity AlaContinue reading “Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi: Book Review”
honey gaze 