hey y’all

I am so sorry for the radio silence on all of my social media platforms.

For those of you who didn’t see my Instagram story yesterday evening I’ve been in the hospital for quite a while and I haven’t had access to my phone. I now have access to my phone, but no laptop, which is where I do my editing so I’m gonna do my best to work without it but I’m not too tech savvy with my phone lol so bare with me for a little bit please! I swear it’ll be worth it because I have a lot of giveaways coming up including five copies of Seven Heavens Away which is in the photo here and I am currently reading!

These are some of the books. I am reading right now or have just finished. I’d specifically chosen some of these ones for this post because i’d like to highlight them as they are lesser known and have special meanings to me!:

Red Rain was just given to me by my best pal. It is a memoir written by their close friend/ 2-Spirit mentor. I am only partway through, but it is a story like no other I have heard. It has been giving me a lot of hope specifically at this time in my life while I am in the hospital.

The Autistic Survival Guide to Therapy has been a book. I’ve been working through over a few months, even though it is quite short. It was recommended to me by my previous therapist who is the first ever care worker who have been able to support and connect with me after a whole lifetime of traumatic experiences with clinicians. This book has been a godsend and I can’t believe it isn’t more well known because the information in it is so very important for both autistics and therapists/ care workers and potentially anyone who has a mental health issue and/or goes to therapy. I will be doing a full review on this book once I have processed my thoughts, but I just want to say here that if you have autism and haven’t been able to find professional support, this book might really help you. It is very accessible and has tangible suggestions for you to try out.

The last book I really wanted to highlight is The Flesh Of Ice. This author was suggested to me by Cherie Dimaline, who y’all know is a fantastic storyteller and has also been a good pal to me over the last year. ( I believe she actually mailed me a different one of his books, but I haven’t been home to read it). Anyway, as I move forward on my book content creation journey I have been trying to focus on authors, who I know are just good people trying to do good things. This is what I know about this author (who by the way is two spirited). Although most of his books are not super well known, you might be familiar with one he collaborated on called Tsqelmucwílc. In the flesh of ice, Gary picks up on a previous poetry book he has written, telling stories (traumas) of survivors of the Kamloops Residential School, as well as sharing stories from their descendants. This is a really important collection for folks to read, especially Canadians. The stories shared do not hold back- name are named, horrors are shared, and the ending gives space for these folks to take back their narratives. Please do check out this author, especially if you’re into reading Indigenous, poetry, or are Canadian!

Ps: if you’d love to support my work or just help me out if you’re that kinda cool person please feel free to purchase any of these books from my bookshop! Unfortunately, physical copies can’t be sent to Canada yet, but if you’re in Canada, you could get the e-book version. Physical copies available in the US (and you also get to choose which indie bookstore you want to order from so your supporting the book world in all sorts of ways!!) https://bookshop.org/shop/indigenousbookshelf

Hey y’all

Sorry I’ve been slow on here lately, I had the plague 😷

I just wanted to give a little update on some of the audiobooks I’m reading now or have recently read.

I am going through a bit of a time right now, so I might not be so active over the next week or two. If anyone has any audiobook suggestions to get me through the black hole of my life feel free to let me know lolllll 🥴 (for context I am losing Lulu aka the only reason for my being)

** I couldn’t tag howling woman or misbehaving at the crossroads I think because they aren’t out yet?? anyway they’re available for pre-order! You can check my bookshop.

Thanks no thanks to Dylin Hardcastle for bulldozing their limb through my gut, tearing out my heart and throwing it into a wood chipper

Dylin wrote A Language of Limbs as part of their PhD and it is their debut novel. (How they are ever going to top this - I have no idea!!)

The story is set in 1970’s Newcastle, following two queer youth referred to as Limb One and Limb Two. Spanning three decades, these two lives bring us through moments of collective queer history and culture where joy and grief exist side by side, inseparable. (Australia’s first Mardi Gras, the AIDS crisis, etc)

A Language of Limbs is a collection of lives stitched together with poetry, art, fragments, and feelings. The seemingly little moments carry enormous weight, reminding us how terrifyingly close we always are to a completely different life. The book is about love being policed, friendship as love, queerness lived loudly & quietly, and everything in between. It’s so dang heartbreakingly tragic, and yet sooo deeply hopeful. I cried and cried and cried.

This is an essential queer read. It is going to stick with me for a long, long time. The AIDS epidemic section had me fucking winded, gasping for air and sobbing (literally!!)

Shoutout to the author for their recognition and appreciation of Indigenous peoples, as well as the impact Indigenous liberation movements have had on queer ones. That was super cool of them to acknowledge and I am very grateful for it.

I will (and already have started) gifting this book to everyone I know.

I can’t wait to read more from Dylin!!

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“Let me tell you / my dead friends were so much fun / let me tell you / we had so much fun / let me tell you / it was worth it.”

“I am most free when I am in connection, because I know my liberation is bound up with yours,"

“Grief is not sadness. Grief is the body cut open. Flows of blood and joy and salt and ache and words and memories and memories never made. Grief is undoing. Grief is wanting flesh, yearning for a voice. Grief is fear of forgetting...a face...the contour of a hip...your brilliant red hair...Grief is wondering what could have been made and what could have become. Grief is what if. Grief is endless cycles of why, and I wish I didn't. Grief is the guilt of the living, of my living. Grief is the sobbing into my birthday cake, because I'm older than you, now. Grief is the building of a world without you in it.

Then there’s the less obvious, the part no one writes about. How grief is horny. How I bend myself over the bed head and feel your fingers in my ass, real and imagined. Fried is pining for your touch. Grief is being wet for a ghost. Grief is not sadness, it is a kaleidoscope of desires like white lights refracted through skin. Sadness, it think, is the object. And grief is the negative space.”

“Queering. Queer, as in adjective, as in being, as in I am this. Queer, as in verb, as in doing. As in I queer this. Queer, as in fucking queers. Queer, as in I queer’d this, as in, I made it beautiful.

"Once, you hear a lesbian say I don t believe in transsexuals. And Daphne cries heaven forbid I believe in myself. I believe myself." 

“Against the impossibility of it all, joy persists. [...] I think, look at us. Witness us. In a world that wishes for our annihilation, here are our bodies, spectacularly colliding. [...] Look at our family. Look at our joy, our glorious, glorious joy”

“it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Holding space on this TDoR with love, gentleness, and stillness.

Sending strength and tenderness to those mourning, to those carrying weight.

You are held and loved beyond measure.

You matter

You belong

Your survival is revolution.

Those in your orbit are changed by your existence. May we meet that gift with protection, with solidarity, with care that breaks systems open. Our liberation is tied to one another, our paths woven together. I will always show up for those who are fighting to stay whole.

Today, I am out on the land with my furry pal, connecting with the old growth trees while honouring our grief, our memories, our love in action 🫂🫀

BLEAK.

And tbh not as radical as I was expecting.

I went in completely blind re: the plot, but had heard this was politically poignant. And honestly, I have very mixed feelings.

The writing is undeniably skillful. It’s minimalist, emotional, and existential. The author builds this overwhelming despair without using violence or spectacle. It’s just an entire atmosphere of emptiness - little plot, no action, yet totally fuckin soul crushing. IMO it puts The Handmaid’s Tale to shame. I who Have Never Known Men achieves a deeper horror and sadness through quietness alone. Nothing is resolved or explained, and it still feels whole.

But the more I sit with this book, the more uneasy I feel towards its messaging.

It’s very clear that Jacqueline Harpman was writing from a Jewish perspective. There’s this recurring idea that the guards are also prisoners, trapped in the same invisible system. On first read, it felt like commentary on how power structures replicate themselves, how people end up enforcing the very systems that crush them. But upon reflecting, the framing seems more like absolution than critique. A cop out?? Everyone’s trapped, so no one’s really responsible. And in thinking about the world’s current events I can’t help but wonder if Harpman would extend that same empathy to Israeli soldiers, to colonizers?

Something I didn’t love was the stance on ownership. The narrator never had property, never been taught about possession, but the second she finds stuff it’s hers. She finds a bunker, arranges it, and claims it. And it’s treated as human nature instead of learned colonial violence.

Another thing that cheesed me was the topic of sexuality. As a queer ace person I found it weird that the narrator is immediately attracted to the one young man despite having literally zero exposure to romance, attraction, or gender roles. She’s literally never known men. Her puberty happened in captivity and her development was completely fucked by trauma but there’s still this automatic heterosexuality with no questioning/ ambiguity. Just the default setting. Why?

And lastly, there’s the book’s engagement with death, dignity, and assisted dying. It’s rare to see those topics handled with such acceptance and pragmatism as in this novel.  I respected that the narrator could help people die when they asked. BUT then she refuses to help the one woman who isn’t physically ill????? The narrator has no religion or inherited morals so where’s that line coming from? It seems like the author’s own unspoken values.

SO the more I think about it the more this book feels like a missed opportunity. It’s packaged as radicalism, but sorta reinforces the status quo. But maybe that there is the point after all ????

“What does it mean to have lived, once you’re no longer alive?”

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