Reading memoirs by people in their twenties makes me feel old (and I am only thirty-three!). Fortunately, Clarkisha Kent makes up for that because her writing is intense, rich, and thoughtful. Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a memoir, yes, but I also love that framing of manifesto as well: Kent is bringing forth a type of energy that she wants to see in this world. I received a review copy from…
-
-
Four years ago, after a particularly brutal winter and some damage from ice dams, pigeons took up residence in a section of my house’s eavestroughs. It was unpleasant, to say the least. My bed abutted the exterior wall where they were roosting, and my house is small enough that I generally heard their cooing throughout a quiet Sunday indoors. Eventually, at great expense, I had my eavestroughs redone and the pigeons were summarily evicted. Pests,…
-
The idea of free speech sounds great on paper, and it’s one of those nebulous concepts that most people, if you asked them if it sounded like a good idea, would generally affirm. But that hasn’t always been the case until very recently—more recently, in fact, than one might think. Dennis Baron explores this in You Can't Always Say What You Want: The Paradox of Free Speech along with a robust look at free-speech debates,…
-
Despite loving podcasts, I have never listened to Sarah Costello and Kayla Kaszyca’s podcast of the same name. Nevertheless, I was drawn to Sounds Fake But Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else because, hey, asexual and aromantic over here! It feels very fitting that I’m writing this review at the end of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. Thanks to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for the eARC.
…
-
You know, I don’t really think I ever asked myself this question after the one sleepless Sunday night I spent wrestling with it. I jest, of course. Kind of. I think for me my understanding of my transness was sneaky. It kind of grew in my subconscious for years until it burst forth, fully formed, and once I accepted it, everything else happened all at once. Nevertheless, Am I Trans Enough: How to Overcome Your…
-
Even though I don’t have TikTok, some of the best content always escapes that platform to find its way to me. Such is the case with Cody Daigle-Orians, purveyor of Ace Dad Advice. I remember watching some of his videos and thinking exactly some of the sentiments he shares later in I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life, such as “it’s so nice to see an elder ace!” Lol, we’re so…
-
Money is kind of a big deal. I don’t particularly like this fact, but I would be a fool not to acknowledge it. For the majority of my life, money has been more digital than paper-based, even though a fully qualified digital currency in Canadian or US dollars still has yet to materialize. I have never owned a paper chequebook in my name, and almost all of my payments are online or through a chip-and-pin…
-
Nothing has changed since George Floyd. This year opened with another high-profile murder of an unarmed Black man—Tyre Nichols—by police. While it’s true the officers have already been indicted for Nichols’ death, the commentary continues to privilege the idea that this violence is the result of isolated actions, of inadequate training, of something—anything—other than ongoing systemic racism. Some coverage emphasized the race of the police officers—they, too, are Black—and seemed to say, “How can this…
-
This is a great example of a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up solely on my own recognizance. However, it’s the January pick for the Rad Roopa Book Club, and I was intrigued. Well, actually, I wanted to know how to kill a city, should the need ever arise. That’s what P.E. Moskowitz covers in this aptly named book—though I get the feeling they are more interested in fighting against gentrification, and I suppose…
-
Cryptocurrency has long fascinated me because it’s mathematics made manifest. Although our economy has long been digital, the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies codified a cashless digital economy through arcane mathematical precepts that nevertheless gave rise to trillions of dollars of worth—even if that value is volatile at the best of times. It’s not surprising that enterprising criminal minds would try to use cryptocurrency for their dealings, and it’s not surprising that others would…
-
Mean Girls was a formative movie of my youth for so many reasons, to the point where it was the first movie I purchased on DVD (at the same time that I bought my first DVD player). It was released in 2004, the same year I started high school, so I was of the generation it depicted. I also loved math. Indeed, my strongest Mean Girls memory is of my AP Calculus course in Grade…
-
As I’ve noted in other reviews, perhaps most recently Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, being ace (asexual) in our society is no picnic. While I won’t deny there are benefits to opting out of the compulsory sexuality of our society, the fact that we must, indeed, opt out is problematic. In particular, I think that many a-spec people have a hard time figuring out their labels—partly because asexuality encompasses a lot of overlapping identities, but also…
-
This was the December pick for the Rad Roopa Book Club, where we read books aligned with social justice and antiracist thought and praxis. Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics is an overview of the history and politics of the twentieth century and first two decades of the twenty-first century as they pertain to attitudes towards Palestine.
As a child of the 1990s, as a non-Jewish person growing up in Canada, this has…
-
This is one of those questions that gets asked of you at a certain time in your life. Sherronda J. Brown introduced me to the term chrononormativity when I read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, and that made a lot of things click for me. So When Are You Having Kids?: The Definitive Guide for Those Who Aren't Sure If, When, or How They Want to Become Parents is a practical guide for addressing a very…
-
Let’s just get this out of the way: yes, that title is brilliant.
Butts: A Backstory is a deep dive into our cultural fascination in the West with butts, and specifically women’s butts. Heather Radke—a curvy, queer white woman—wanted to know why we’re so hooked on butts, and because she’s a journalist, naturally she wants all of us to know why too. Frankly, I’m glad. Thanks to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press for the eARC…
-
This book was the November selection for the Rad Roopa Book Club in which I participate, but it was also one I just really wanted to read soonish (and I’ve purchased a copy as a birthday gift for a friend!). Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives was an important book for me a few years ago. I haven’t read anything from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, but her words here proved just as significant. Rehearsals for Living is…
-
This was the October selection for the Rad Roopa Book Club, a small, virtual gathering of educators founded by the very rad Roopa from Twitter! I suggested this book last year and was delighted to get to read it for book club. Fairest is a fair memoir. Meredith Talusan challenges us to dislike her, to judge her, to question her choices, and I really liked that.
Talusan was born in the Phillipines. Assigned male at…
-
Where do I start? Do I lament sheepishly how I’ve slept on bell hooks my entire adult life, and it is only now, at thirty-three, now that she has passed, that I’ve made time to read even one of her books? Do I confess that this was a revelation, that it was exactly the book I needed here and now? This review will be purely encomium, for that is what I feel about All About…
-
Shout out to CBC Radio’s Spark for their episode on protecting our intimate data, which interviewed Danielle Keats Citron. That’s how I learned about The Fight for Privacy just ahead of its release date and managed to snag an eARC courtesy of NetGalley and W.W. Norton Company.
This book is primarily US-focused, which probably shouldn’t be surprising. That being said, Citron references South Korean examples quite a bit, along with a smattering of other…
-
Philosophy of the mind has always been one of my favourite realms of philosophy. I love thinking about how we think. About why we think. Consciousness, sentience, intelligence—how did these traits evolve? How do they even work? Patrick House explores Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness (literally what it says on the tin) and tries to address these questions. As he admits in the introduction, he doesn’t have all the answers—none of us do—but…
Showing 21 to 40 of 352 results