Book Review: Until the End of Time

Image: The cover of the book is a time lapsed photo of a landscape showing the movement of the stars across the sky. The bottom third of the image is water with dark through light blue reflections and a single yellow white light shining down right of center from a light on the horizon. Above that is a mountain rainge of dark blue with black upper edges. Behind that is the sky with hundreds of thin lines moving in a circle around the center. In large white capital letters across the top is the author's name, below that in much smaller letters is "author of The Elegant Universe." Below that, in large letters again is the book title. Across the bottom is the byline: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe. There is also a white sticker reading "large print" on the lower left side.

Brian Greene is by far one of my most favorite science writers and speakers. You can always tell that he is extremely passionate about education and trying to make very difficult to understand concepts more accessible to the layman, and more fun. His books often have a range within them where  readers can skip around to an extent based on their education level. "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" has a similar formula, but is different in some major ways. It is by far Greene's most philosophical book that I have read and includes the most diverse range of subjects and discussions. Sometimes it works for him, but it pains me to say that sometimes, it really doesn't. I was very excited when I saw that Greene was putting out a new book. It has been 9 years since his last (which I also enjoyed) and I was looking forward to all of the scientific discoveries and updates that have happened since then. He does do a bit of this in gratifying ways. If the book were cut down to about the size of a novella, it would have been great.

The book starts off strong, the first few chapters capturing concepts that you expect from the title and description of the book. It is accessibly written and it made me familiar enough with things like entropy. This allowed me to understand what another reviewer meant by their witty comment that the book unfortunately increases in entropy as it progresses. The book becomes an odd sandwich where the beginning third and end section are in line with what the book promotes itself to be. In the middle, we get Brian Greene's musings on different subjects that interest him outside of his field of expertise. Some of them loosely align with the book's focus and demonstrate some understanding of the topics, others do not. The most enjoyable parts are Greene's writing style and his expressions of passion and wonder about the world. The biggest flaw in this section is that it is not well researched enough.

I can't fault anyone working in academia too much for this. Requirements for more and more specialization and the sheer amount of information out there makes it very difficult to adequately consume enough about other fields. This is why I wish Greene would have left these sections out. Other reviewers with a different education than me expressed issues with his discussion of evolution and other topics, so I am going to focus more on one I have read a ton about. I have both scientific issues and issues of mere disappointment in Greene's discussion of other animals. Greene is an ethical vegan who went vegetarian as a child and then vegan after a visit to Farm Sanctuary in NY. Now, there are plenty of ethical vegans who still struggle to understand other animals, often viewing them all as a uniform group of innocent voiceless children, which is far from the vast and complex realities of other animals lives and experiences. I guess I expected someone with Greene's intellect and ethics to give us a bit more in his discussions of nonhuman animals. I think he's either the kind of vegan that doesn't care if anyone else is or he is afraid- like many vegans- of coming off as the crazy, preachy, mood ruiner. Nonvegans often respond by shutting down or attacking vegans- even the most polite, passive, and educated ones. This might throw a wrench in the gears of his intention to make his books accessible to as many people as possible. But, when I saw him veering off into other directions, I really hoped he would approach discussions of other animals with more care and use his platform in a way that was more in line with his ethics.

So, what exactly did I take issue with? He refers to other animals as "it" which is very common in speciesist human language, but I still always try to point it out. His discussion of animal language and communication shows a very outdated understanding of the subject. It is true that human language is unique. What he missed is more recent information, a long history of research, newer theories, and an expansion of the definition of language suggest a likelihood that many other animals do have language, we just aren't adept at listening to or understanding it (despite some of them actually learning our languages.) Some of his quotes from long dead scientists are ancient and even downright demeaning. He also highlights extremely cruel nonhuman animal studies from the past with excited passion while making no mention of the ethical horrors or the point of view of the animals tortured and killed in said studies. From the average science writer writing a very specific type of book, I may expect this. But, in something this philosophical written by an ethical vegan, I wanted more from him. I kept waiting and waiting and the moment of gratification never came. I could write a ton more on this in detail, but I've already digressed enough.

The last third-ish of the book gets back to his area of expertise, which was more enjoyable. It was still a bit more disorganized than he usually is, but it still taught me a lot and I made a lot of highlights. It is also the most difficult to understand section for a layman. He packs a lot of information into a small amount of space which left me wishing that he used the space in the center of the sandwich to elaborate more on what was at the end. 

Overall, I don't regret reading this book by any means. It's just definitely not his best. So, if you are new to Greene, don't start here. Even if his older works have an outdated section here or there, you'll still learn a lot more from "The Elegant Universe" than you will from this book. If you're familiar with Greene, you may want to skip around a bit.

This was also posted to my goodreads. 

Book Review: Tongue Tied

 Image: The cover of the book is a light sky blue. Across the top in two lines taking up almost half of the cover is the title "Tongue-Tied" in a tangled pink bubble like script font. Below that is a white dialogue bubble with the point to the left of the upper title. Inside in black letters with cracks resembling a cracked window is "Breaking the language barrier to animal liberation." In the bottom right corner is a white thought bubble with the smaller bubbles decreasing towards the lower corner. Inside is the author's name in small pink print.

Going into Hạnh Nguyên's "Tongue-Tied: Breaking the Language Barrier to Animal Liberation," I expected a book that would lean to the academic side of things. While it does have academic aspects, it is clear that Nguyên intended to write this book for a wide variety of audiences- including those who may be new to the idea of animal liberation. While I am pretty far away from my pre-vegan days, I do think Nguyên succeeded in this. This is no easy feat. Quite often I will find a book is all introductory or all highly specialized discussion. Yet, Tongue-Tied manages to pack a lot of information for several audiences into a small space. I suppose one could even call it a well-researched manifesto on the importance of language and inclusion of who she calls other-than-human animals. Nguyên's writing style really appealed to me and I found myself breezing through what could easily become a cumbersome topic. This book manages to make very strong, direct, unapologetic statements about these subjects without assuming that the reader has a PhD in animal studies. I am sure that, as a 14 year vegan who has read a lot on these themes, I may grasp it better than someone new to it all. But, I do think a wide variety of people could read and enjoy this. Even before I had finished it, I decided I was going to add it to my repertoire of books that I recommend to those new to the ideas of animal and collective liberation.

Nguyên starts us off with some history about herself and a brief linguistic and philosophical history of human interaction with other animals. Here and throughout the book, she effectively argues the extreme importance of language in the fight for animal liberation- including humans. Humans can and have weaponized language against other animals, allowing us to obscure who they are by labeling them as products, possessions, fashion accessories, test objects, entertainment attractions, and other forms of exploitation and oppression they face. Nguyên also discusses how animality has been used in conjunction with other methods in order to oppress marginalized humans on the basis of disability. gender, race, class, national origin, and other facets. The author herself is a Vietnamese American "third culture kid" who has unique experiences in both USAmerican culture and Vietnamese culture. She utilizes this well to discuss many human-other animal interactions and relationships that aren't often highlighted in texts about animal liberation and linguistics.
 
Nguyên is also adept at discussing how both animal rights or other advocates for animals AND those who don't follow this path hold speciesist views, use speciesist language, and make many mistakes regarding interaction with other-than-human animals. Because I bookmarked about 1/3-1/2 of the pages in this book, it would be impossible to add all of the quotes I admired to this review. This one captures an important point for those who seek to ally themselves with other animals: "Other than human animals are the owners of their experiences; they are the protagonists of their stories... When we stop characterizing other animals as "voiceless," we can properly reposition ourselves as their allies." When we refer to other animals as a homogenous voiceless group, we take away their already existing collective and individual voices. She explains how doing things like describing animals by instinct and reproduction erases their relations with one another. We often describe the same behavior in humans as completely devoid of choice and emotion and other animals- a huge pet peeve of mine when I read books about other animals written by journalists or scientists who obviously have not seen other animals as much more than things. She also makes a very important point about fighting "animal cruelty." In fighting only the most severe forms of cruelty, we still support the idea that the exploitation itself is defensible provided it is "humane," which often just means "slightly less horrible." Non-advocates and welfarists are known for doing this, but many other more radical animal advocates contribute to this idea as well.

The author explains very well her reasoning for using language about other animals that emphasizes their individual personhood. While she is direct and firm, she does not beat the reader over the head with things. The book inspires critical thinking, questioning, and experimentation. She is also very aware of the shortcomings of humans interpreting for or writing about other animals, even when we do try to implement these things:

"Each person's story is known to them, if no one else. It is a rather unsettling realization: that human perception and understanding are not required for an other than human person to exist and persist or for their subjective experience to be extraordinary - that without any need to be seen and known by a human or validated by human constructs of reality, other than human animals continue to live with meaning and purpose."

Nguyên wraps the book up with an excellent summary of her thoughts and arguments. This book was fairly short, but has given me an immense amount to think about regarding my interactions with and how I think about other animals. There is so much more than is in this review and it was very difficult to choose which quotes to select or what to focus on because the entire book is full of fantastic, thought provoking, and important information.

This summary is followed by an unexpected set of portraits of other-than-human animals she has encountered throughout her life. It took me off guard as I looked through the images of everyone from animals at sanctuaries to her personal companions. I found myself in tears, practically sobbing by the end of the images when we meet a rat (or possibly a mouse) without a name who has sacrificed so much and that the author expresses desire to have known. I am currently providing end-of-life care to a rat with an advanced pituitary tumor while I was reading this book, have lost one other rat and dog of about 15 years within the past year, and have been exposed to massive amounts of loss, cruelty, and exploitation of other animals. Those undoubtedly played a part in my emotional response. At the same time, I found this to be an extremely creative way of approaching a conclusion. It really brought everything full circle- the individual personhood of other animals, their inherent existence for their own reasons, the important places they hold in our lives, the effects they have on every aspect of humanity, and how very serious and urgent an issue this is. It can be quite overwhelming when we try to wrap our heads around numbers in the trillions of animals killed per year for food alone. But, when we look at each individual, our human minds can grasp who this is happening to and this creates an understanding that is critical.  

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is fairly accessible, informative, passionate, well written, rational without being cold, emotional without being hyperbolic, and most importantly, it brings new ideas to the conversation.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Note: I made the mistake of writing this review first in blogger instead of a word processor. As a result, while editing, I lost a large chunk of my review and blogger autosaved the draft. I tried to rewrite it, but it's still shorter and pieces are still missing. I will update this review if I can remember them.

Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Image: The cover of the book is a graphic illustration with bold colors composing the trunks of trees or possibly vines with small, short, pointed branches or thorns sticking out of them. The 10 lines making up the trunks are mostly of similar size. 6 are all black and 4 are pink on the bottom and black on top. The background is a cerulean blue. On the second tree from the left, in small script, is the worlds "a novel" in white. The next trunk over has "drive your plow over" in larger white letters. The next two lines have "Olga" and "Tokarczuk" in capital black letters on the pink sections and "the bones" on the white section. The next over has small pink letters too small for me to read. The next trunk has "of the dead." There is a gold nobel prize stamp on the upper right corner.

It will be difficult to review Olga Tokarczuk's "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" without giving spoilers, but I am going to do my best. I chose this book because I saw others on my feed rating it highly, but I went into it only really knowing that it was a small Polish town murder mystery. I didn't know ahead of time that the author was a vegan feminist. I was pleasantly surprised, as the book progressed, to see speciesism, sexism/mysogyny, ageism, ableism, and other oppression as themes central to the novel. They are themes pleasantly smashed into bits by the novel's protagonist. It feels somewhat odd to call a murder mystery "pleasant," but this book was truly a joy to experience.

Not only did Tokarczuk include feminism, animal liberation, etc in her story, her story was well researched. I enjoyed the mentions of the very long and interesting history of consideration for animals within social and legal realms going back centuries. Most people don't know about this history. There were times were certain animals were given (likely quite unfair) trials and appointed attorneys (and sometimes won) their court cases. There have been a large variety of ways that humans have interacted with various species over time. I think we often learn about animals suffering immensely in current society and captivity and we tend to think it has always been that way. Some even think things have gotten better for animals over time which, in the big picture (most mammals in the entire world for instance, are farmed animals, followed by humans) they have certainly not. The history is more complicated, ever changing.

The biggest things that stand out in this novel for me is that the murder mystery is only really a small part of the story. It is mostly about our vegetarian astrologist narrator, Janina and her musings on the world. She is a not-young woman (to be honest, I never know what words to use anymore, but basically she is old enough to be called an "old woman" pejoratively often.) She suffers from chronic illness, much of which as a mystery, echoing the worldwide issues with womens healthcare. She is outspoken about her beliefs but also has the cooperative nature of someone living in a small town with rough, cold terrain. She still uses some animal products throughout the book, but seems like the type of vegetarian that would go vegan (in whatever ways were possible and practicable for her) in a heartbeat after having a conversation with someone who explaineddairy, egg, down feather, etc sources to her. She is human and imperfect like all of us, but immensely likable, relatable, and interesting. She has an appreciation and adoration of other animals that she expresses widely to the people she interacts with. Most of all, it's about Janina not being taken seriously, especially by the men around her. She is called crazy and dismissed due to her gender, age, love for animals, and outspoken nature. We eventually learn that the community refusing to take her seriously and see her as a valuable member of their community (despite her constant care taking and helping others) is one of the main reasons they can't solve the case. Janina helps us figure out and understand what happens over time, and the big reveal in the ending is very rewarding.

I adored this book as a vegan feminist but also as someone who enjoys good writing. Many books include great themes, but lack decent plot or writing. Some books with wonderful writing have horrific mistreatment and misunderstanding of marginalized people. This book excels in both arenas. I will definitely be reading more from this author.

This was also posted to my goodreads. 

Book Review: Catch and Kill

Image: The cover of the book is a black background with blocky, solid illustrations and letters in white and/or red. Across the top is small red letters it says "new york times bestseller." Under that in very large white letters, each word on a new line, is "Catch and kill." Next to that in small red letters is "Lies, Spies, and a conspiracy to protect predators." Under and to the left of the title is a large cutout of a red hand that is sewing shut a pair of cutout white and grey lips. Below that is the author's name- Ronan Farrow- in white letters and below that in smaller red letters is, "winner of the pulitzer prize."

Content warning: this review has many direct mentions of many kinds of sexual and other violence, but no graphic descriptions.

I followed many of the sexual misconduct news stories around when the events in Ronan Farrow's "Catch and Kill" took place. The words "sexual misconduct" feel inappropriate to use as they make it seem more acceptable than it is. I understand the use of these words both as a method to cover a wide range of offenses and also perhaps to reduce the triggering effects of more intense words like rape. It is difficult to know exactly what words to use. I know this may seem like I am getting hung up of words, but this book taught me how serious words can be in these situations. Catch and Kill chronicles not only a movement to expose sexually violent men in media industries, but also just how rampant and terrifying interwoven sexual violence, power differentials, intimidation, stalking, libel, and other ways of literally destroying the careers and lives of women is a central part of many media industries. 

I knew that the vast amount of rape and other forms of sexual violence and intimidation at the hands of Harvey Weinstein and others like him were horrific, widespread, and hidden for a long time. What I did not know is what they and those who tried to expose these things went through after the initial events of sexual violence. It is infuriating and terrifying just how hard Ronan Farrow had to work to get these womens stories out there. While Farrow constantly repeats that he wants the story to be about the women and not him, it is clear that compassionate reporters must also be included in the pile of victims of these powerful, criminal men and all the men (and some women) who fight to protect them. It is clear that a great many reporters before Farrow were never able to publish their findings due to pay offs, intimidation, stalking, threats, and a climate of terror that was created by rapists and their protectors. Farrow himself mentions going into the fight thinking it would be stressful, but laughing it off when an informant told him he should consider getting a gun or some form of protection. By the end, he was no longer laughing. The sheer amount of harassment, intimidation, homophobia, misogyny, stalking, threats, loss, and everything else Farrow had to power through just to get this story out is immense. I kept asking myself, "How many more women did this happen to after every survivor, whistleblower, and journalist was intimidated and threatened into silence? How many artists did we lose? How many women could have become more prolific in their fields had they not been privately and publicly destroyed by these campaigns to silence them after they experienced sexual violence?"

I am not going to list everything that happens in detail for a couple of reasons. The first is that so many things happened that I don't think I can accurately summarize it in a review that remains reasonably short enough for its purposes. Second, I want everyone to read this book. It not only contains important information, but it is written and presented very well. I found myself completely immersed in the same ways I would reading a well written thriller or watching an exciting series. Not only do we get to dive deep into the occurrences around a long history of attempts and failures to expose sexual violence in and around media industries, we get to be entertained in the process. I use the word "entertained" because I couldn't think of another, but let me be clear. I don't mean that this is a fun read. I mean that it is an immersing, well written, exciting and terrifying account of real events.

Despite how well composed and exciting the book was, it was incredibly difficult to get through at times. Farrow manages to highlight these womens struggles in ways that were so realistic and accurate. So often in stories of sexual violence, there is an image created of the perfect virgin Mary type of victim and the horrible evil love wolf perpetrator because human beings tend to like binaries and black and white representations. They like stories that are easy to comprehend and they like villains that seem to be of a world outside their own. The problem is that these false representations make it all that much easier for people like Weinstein to use all of his resources to malign his victims publicly. Oh, this woman was possibly a sex worker and this woman had a lot of sex and this woman was flirtatious and this woman acted like this and this woman is just plain crazy. The truth of the matter is that rape and sexual violence happens to people- real people with real diverse struggles and histories. It happens at the hands of people we love, know, trust, and look up to. In fact, most violence happens at the hands of people we know, not strangers. 

Some survivors of sexual violence do everything in their power to find some way to avoid what happened being real. This can result in a variety of responses including continued association with the aggressor. Furthermore, when someone's entire career or their life itself is dependent upon her silence, then it is not surprising at all that she may remain silent. Those things are coping mechanisms of people facing aggressors without the kind of resources and power Weinstein had. Adding the power into the mix makes it all the more terrifying. The women who chose to come forward astounded me and undoubtedly saved many women that could have come after them. Now, I want to be clear, victims are not at fault for any victims that may suffer after them (unless they voluntarily become a honeypot or something.) But, one survivor of sexual violence at the hands of Matt Lauer mentions that many women before her likely fear for the women to come after them and that she felt the same about women that could be hurt after her. It captures the reality of how the actual aggressors and ones with the most power not only get away with sexual violence, but they also manage to place all responsibility for their actions onto their victims. Not only are survivors of said violence struggling with the violence itself, they rack their brains looking for what they did wrong and what will happen as a result of their actions. This is one of the ways that sexual violence creates a particularly vast power dynamic. 

I could go on and on about this topic, but others have said many things I could say already. I want to also echo Ronan Farrow in hopes that the womens struggles and stories will remain at the center of this story. The greater the power dynamic, be it socially, physically, financially, professionally, or in other dimensions, the more possibility there is for struggle and damage. This story involves extreme events in a setting that completely normalized them to the point that some people, mostly but not all men, saw it as just a necessary facet of the industry. Through the courage of survivors and related people who came forward knowing they could or would lose everything and the journalists like Farrow that were willing to go against intimidation by almost everyone they knew, a vast realm of abuses was exposed and consequences finally took place. It was not and will never be enough to make up for what happened. But, there are successes and when people can fight, they can win. As far as I am concerned, Catch and Kill should be read by everyone- both for the story itself and the far reaching implications of what happens in stories like this. I don't have a witty sentence to end this with as my mind is still reeling. Just go read it.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

 

Book Review: Underland

 

Image: The cover of the book is a brightly multicolored illustration of a tunnel like shape surrounded by trees. The end of the path is yellow moving back into red, and then multiple layered chaotic colors. The top half is covered by leafless tree silhouettes. Each tree silhouette is a different bright color. The ground is a painterly mix of black, reds, greens, and yellows mostly whereas the sky is a mixture of blues and purples. Across the center of the book is the word "underland" in large block white letters, divining the word in half on separate lines. Below that in small letters is the byline. Below that in slightly larger letters is the author's name. Below that in very small letters is a reviewer quote too small to read. Along the right side of the cover is a red stripe with white letters saying "national bestseller."

We are living in a time where a great many of us worldwide are physically distancing ourselves from the rest of the world if we're not forced out as an essential worker. (About that: I already believed food/service workers, delivery persons, medical staff, and so on were critical to my existence, but now I hope we'll do something to honor these people for being damned superheroes out their risking their lives to literally save ours.) Those of us taking the pandemic seriously- as we should- are all likely feeling at least some of the deep loneliness pervading our world, even us introverts. I mention this because "Underland: A Deep Time Journey" by Robert Macfarlane was truly a journey to places most never get to go. It is a poetic exploration of not only the science, but of the psychology, culture, and experience that go into exploring and studying the most inaccessible and unfamiliar parts of our world. It took me out of my house and out to locations that were fascinatingly immense and vast.

Macfarlane is a very talented writer as he beautifully captures the emotionality of each of these experiences in which he accompanied experts to visit the underlands of the world. Some of his descriptions of things that I already knew about made me think and feel differently in immense ways. Regarding the unknowns, he brought a well-rounded and accessible understanding. This is the kind of book where you learn quite a lot without needing a PhD to be able to read it. Some of the biggest wow moments for me were finding out that scientists look for dark matter using dangerous underground mines, French anarchists have built a liberated zone for themselves in the abandoned catacombs below Paris, the understanding of tree and fungal networks has been regularly disrupted by authoritarianism and capitalism being forced onto what is more comparable to a mutualist structure, that the ice of glaciers is constantly moving and morphing in ways that are still baffling to this day, and more. The author also captures the serious nature of the histories of many of the locations visited such as the constant danger to workers, a history of war and suffering of an area, and the impact of radioactive toxic materials with half lives of billions of years sitting throughout the world.

We also meet lots of interesting people that are very well captured by Macfarlane. He captures these peoples personalities and interests well and manages to share his thoughts and assessments with us in ways that don't come off as leading or heavy handed. The book made me wish I was physically able to travel to these very difficult to access locations and brave enough to go on these journeys. However, for most of us, it is far safer to live vicariously through Macfarlane in this book. He definitely takes us on the journey promised in the title and I appreciated the chance to leave my house- at least in my head.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Environments of Empire

Image: The cover of the book is a light tan background with a very light grey partial illustration of the leaves of a plant extending across the upper left section. In the center of the cover is an old illustration of a pygmy hippo facing to the right side. They are standing on a tan ground sparsely populated with light green grass patches. Their flesh is a reddish brown. Across the top of the cover in reddish brown is the title of the bbook in capital letters, the word "empire" being larger than the others. Below that in smaller blue-green letters is "networks and agents of" in capital letters and "ecological change" in italicized text. Across the bottom are the editors' names in smaller, black, capital letters of the same font.

There is a very specific audience targeted by Environments of Empire: Networks and Agents of Ecological Change. This is not necessarily unusual for an academic text, but I found this one had an exceptional amount of specificity in its focus. I am not an ecology historian PhD and I felt that while reading this book. I found that many of the essays would be far better understood by someone with an already longstanding, comprehensive understanding of worldwide colonial history. I do not. This does not make the book automatically bad. It was just not for me, and I do read academic works semi-frequently that are outside my field of education. It did not meet my expectations of the information I expected to find until the very last section.

My interest in this book came from wanting to know more about how imperialist colonization affected animals and others in various regions of the world. This book does make it clear that European imperialism and colonialism have resulted in environmental change and damage via the introduction of non-native and invasive species. It was just presented in a very Eurocentric manner. One of the writers reminds us that not everything can be defined by Western colonialism. Yet, I found that this book was defined by it. This could be from my own lack of education, so take that opinion with its source in mind.

What was not clear from the blurb is that this book is a collection of papers first presented at a 2015 conference at the University of Kassel, Germany. As I said, very specific. The authors are overwhelmingly white (passing, at least) and I am not sure if any of them are indigenous people. This may or may not be the reason that I found most of the essays to center the imperialist colonizers- often focusing on a single man's travels- rather than centering those negatively affected- the native people, nonhuman animals, and native plants- by said colonizers. The first two sections fall into this category whereas the last section- Animal Agency- finally started giving me what I came for. The rest were a slog to get through and the book reads far more like a journal than a book. That is not to say that there isn't huge overlap there in academic texts. But, most academic books I have read do not feel as if I am reading a periodical in sequence.

That said, once I got to the last section in the book, I did find myself interested in what the author's shared. "Animal Skins" details how colonialism and exotic animal trades negatively affect both indigenous human and nonhuman animal behaviors and populations. "Adapting to Change in Australian Estuaries" manages to make the intersection of settler colonialism and oyster prevalence interesting. "Brumbies as Colonizers" offers an example of how a non-native species can be more ethically accommodated and viewed after being non-consensually introduced into a non-native environment. I found all of these interesting and closer to what I was hoping to learn from this book.

Overall, this book is for academics with a very specific focus. It was not composed or written with a wide audience in mind- especially not the layman. On top of that, it is very specific in its sources both in author demographics and the original presentation of the papers at a single conference 5 years ago. That is not to say that the book is not necessary nor useful for those it is targeted at. It simply did not work very well for me.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: The Return

Image: The cover of the book is mostly a hot pink and black version of a black and white photo. It is a view of a hallway with vertical striped wallpaper that goes halfway up the wall. On the back wall, two fancy light fixtures sit partly obscured by the hallway's end. To the left at the ent of the hallway is an upholstered dining chair and next to it on the floor a dark shadow of a person can be seen standing there. Across the top in large black letters is the title. Above that in small letters it says "her friend disappeared, a stranger came back." Across the bottom in large pink letters is the author's name: Rachel Harrison.

I won a copy of this book from goodreads giveaways. I don't often enter fiction drawings unless I know the author, but I admittedly judged this book by it's excellent cover and decided, "Why not?" I feel that I can describe The Return by Rachel Harrison with a food analogy. If I am eating french fries from a frozen bag that I baked at home, I know they are not fine cuisine, but they're still fun to eat. This book is not a book I would say is written well and parts of it lack much originality. Yet, I found myself generally immersed and enjoying myself while reading it much of the time. It follows 4 female friends as they go on a vacation and a bit of a friendship reunion. One friend has recently returned after being missing for 2 years with no recollection of what had happened. It's a horror novel, so, you can imagine that things don't go very well on this vacation.

At first while reading the book, I almost gave up. It was just not drawing me in and mixed with the writing and organization, I thought I was wasting my time. I decided to stick with it anyways and did get pretty into it, especially during the middle, most suspenseful sections. One of my biggest issues though even with this section was how poorly written the most supernatural scenes were. To avoid spoilers I won't give details, but Harrison creates a decent amount of suspense and unease and then at the times where what we are waiting for happens, it's as if she rushes through them. They could have been created as longer, more eerie and unnerving scenes but every single one fell flat. When I reached the ending, I was disappointed again. I will, again, avoid spoilers. But, let's just say that the tropes involved were unoriginal, tired, and not at all in line with what I was hoping for from this cast of women characters.

Would I read something else by this writer? Likely not, unless the next book showed promise of being much better than this one. But, Harrison is a new novelist and many first novels have lots of issues. She has some creativity and ability that can be honed into something better. So, I am open to seeing what comes next, but won't be holding my breath.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Homesick

Image: the cover of the book is a graphic design image of minimalistic shapes creating the appearance of waves moving up the book. They begin as a light teal at the bottom and get darker towards the top forming a dark teal or green. On the top wave is the title of the book in large, uneven, capital light blue letters, partly obscured by the wave. Below that is "stories" in smaller of the same letters. Scattered across the rest of the waves are mustard colored cutouts of a house. On the bottom wave is Nino Cipri's name in black letters and under that to the right side is a mustard colored cutout of a house key.

Homesick: Stories by Nino Cipri is an extremely versatile, creative, and enjoyable collection from the author. One of the things that really sets this collection apart from others of its genre is the diverse formats and genres the stories take on. There are some that are your run of the mill medium length short stories and some that read like plays. "Dead Air" in particular is one I would love to hear performed as a podcast. There are some stories that are scifi, some that are supernatural horror, and some that are just very very Queer. I actually found myself enjoying the stories with supernatural elements the most, even though the other realms are often more what I lean toward. The aforementioned "Dead Air" as well as "Presque Vu" were two of my favorites.

A diverse cast of Queer and/or trans characters show up throughout the book in a variety of ways. I am a Queer and trans person who doesn't particularly have a taste for stories where the whole thing is about someone's Queerness or transness. I do think there are a couple of places where Cipri explains too much for my liking. But, that's a personal thing. I imagine a cishet* person reading may appreciate the explanation of something someone like me understands from experience. There are plenty of stories though where the characters' identities are woven throughout seamlessly. This is the way I like to see LGBTQ characters written. Many of the characters are relatable in both their identities and their flaws and virtues. 

A variety of themes are explored throughout the book including obviously gender and sexuality as well as race, class, colonialism, personhood, and species. The novella that makes up the last third or so of the book follows a group of researchers who have discovered an ancient species with human-like intelligences. The discussions of academics and museum curators long history of colonialist grave robbing were perfectly placed. It's true that we don't see the dead bodies of pilgrims in museums, but to this day there are the corpses and bones of Inuit, Egyptian, and other Indigenous people whose graves were robbed as well as dead (and often alive) animals who were wiped out by colonialist collectors of dead creatures. It makes it difficult to attend museums and not either be angry the entire time or be indoctrinated into the othering and exploitation of the marginalized to entertain our fascination with the unknown.

There is some exploration of personhood and species membership relative to nonhuman animals, but I do wish Cipri would have taken it a bit further to include more present day species. There is discussion of "intelligent" species that exist today, but I really could have used that final push for the researchers to understand that all animals have their own intelligences, many of which far outshine our own. There is loving discussion of zoos and eating animals in this story that I can't help but noticing when reading. This is not to say it's not a well constructed and accurate picture of a group of researchers in a story like this. We all know that being a scientist or academic most assuredly does not make someone knowledgeable about everything in the world. If anything, the extreme specialization and focus increasingly required in graduate studies isolates people from wider knowledge of the world. Plenty of scientists who admire one species are cruel to vast numbers of equally sentient others due to their own interests and prejudices. But, I would not be a good animal lib proponent if I did not mention that I would have liked these particular researchers of intelligent weasels to also recognize the other intelligent rodents that make up most of the animals in laboratory cages (with no protections by law to boot.) I would have liked recognition that more recent research argues that many species have advanced communication and languages, not just humans (or fictional prehistoric weasels.) I'll step off the soapbox now. Do not let this repel you from reading this story. It is an excellent novella with an interesting premise, believable and relatable trans characters, important discussions of indigenous peoples and colonialism in academia, and many great discussions about species membership and personhood, regardless of if they met my high bar. It made me think a lot while reading it and I enjoyed it greatly.

I tossed a few criticisms out in this review, but I am still giving this book a high rating and recommendation. Many of my arguments here are things that good speculative fiction inspires us to think about. Homesick is an excellent introduction to Cipri's wide range of talents and creativity making it another book on my shelf by a QT author that I definitely look forward to more from.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

*cishet means cisgender heterosexual. Cisgender people are those who identify with the sex and gender assigned to them at birth, aka people who are not trans. 

Book Review: The Deep

Image: The cover of the book shows a light blue seascape. In the foreground near the center is a mermaid. She has dark brown skin and long black locks and float behind her head. The bottom half of her body is a dark blue shark-like body and there is webbing between her fingers. Behind her is a large whale and smaller fishes and whales in the background. Across the top is the title of the novel. "The" is in dark blue and overlaps with the word "Deep" in almost white blue. Across the bottom, in white capital small letters says "Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs William Hutson Jonathan Snipes."

When I first saw that Rivers Solomon was putting out a new novella, I immediately added it to a top priority book to read. I had the chance to read and review their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and it became one of my favorite science fiction books. I admit, fantasy is not usually my realm of choice for reading material. But, given my love for this author, I was excited to give this a go anyways.

I first want to say that this book gets an A+ and 5 stars for effort and creativity. The process of an author collaborating with musicians is a really interesting and cool idea. Solomon took a song and turned it into a larger story while giving credit to and including those who created the song. Great care was taken so that everyone was given attention for their work which is also something I like to see. That said, the story itself was about average. Solomon is a beautiful writer and I adore the way they take important and painful political and historical themes and include them in their writing. My issue with this book is that it seemed unfinished. It reads a little like an initial draft of ideas before the characters and world building were fully fleshed out

One of my biggest issues with the book though is this: I would have preferred to be more surprised by parts of the wajinru's (the mermaids) story. Our protagonist- Yetu- is a historian, forced to live through a painful origin history of her people via memories over and over. There is a reason I am being vague and not revealing much about the wajinru. The way this was written, the reader would have slowly realized where the wajinru came from. It could have been a real wow moment for me. But, going into the book, I already knew because the blurb gives it away. That said, the information in the blurb is a huge draw for the book. So, I see why they decided to reveal so much. But, I would have preferred to find out in the book itself.

There are some really cool parts of the book that, if fine tuned a little more or expanded upon, could have carried it further. There are LGB/I characters and interesting discussions of the differences between the wajinru and the two-legs (humans, of course.) There are interesting discussions of how home and history can be both destructive and critical to preserve, always under threat. There is so much potential in this novel. I wonder if some day, they will come back to it and make it a larger book. I also wonder, as I said before, if my general preferences got in my way. Fantasy is not my forte and this is a very fantastical book.

Even though I have not given this book a perfect score, I still encourage people to read it as much as I would a 5 star book. The creativity, writing style, and collaboration are really interesting and great reasons to give it a try anyways. Being a novella, it's short. So, you can experience it in a short amount of time. The story itself is still interesting and entertaining despite it's flaws. I will forever keep an eye on Solomon's work and am very excited for what they do next.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: In the Dream House

Image: The cover of the book is a surrealistic painting of a two story greenish beige house on the backdrop of a dark, cloudy sky. The front of the house faces the reader with a chimney on the right side of the roof, a porch and balcony with white fence-like barriers, long brown reeds growning from the front yard, and the black silhouette of a person standing in front of the front door in the center of the bottom floor. On the upper floor, there is a large section cut out with fabric-like layers of drab red, blue and green that lead to the center of the hole where there is a face of a woman. She has light brown skin and black hair and stares directly into the camera. Across the top, slanted diagonally in large capital white letters is the title, with "a memori"  next to "the" in small written script. Across the bottom of the cover, in front of the reeds, is the author's name in white capital letters.

Carmen Maria Machado's memoir In the Dream House stands out for a great variety of reasons. The book has been heralded as an important foray into the life of someone in a queer abusive relationship, which it is. Machado captures very well the horrifying nature of psychological and emotional abuse. There are physical and other aspects to it, but she focuses predominantly on the former. One of the reasons this is so important is that most abusive relationships center around this psychological and emotional aspect. We often think of abusive relationships as a man physically and/or sexually abusing a girlfriend or wife. Yet, most abuse victims even of this caliber speak of how their abuser controlled their mind and how this is/was one of the most painful parts of their ordeal. Machado draws the reader into her experiences, allowing us to witness the feelings that range from the constant unease of walking on eggshells to the absolute fear that one may have to die to escape the ordeal.

Stylistically, Machado's work continues to stand out among all memoirs I have read. Her story is told through a series of short, poetic vignettes, each giving a small but intense look into a short period of her life. These little pieces all make the reader feel like they are right there, experiencing the whole horrid thing with her. Those of us who have ever been in a queer abusive relationship will likely relate. The way your stomach drops out when it first turns bad has a unique twist to it which Machado captures well. Aren't we supposed to be safe here? Unfortunately, LGBTQ people are human. Full of human flaws and human virtues, capable of doing great harm and of being harmed. By pretending that we all are inhuman beings, we not only are harder on ourselves and each other, but we also tend to ignore when a predator or toxic conflict is in our midst. Many of us have seen our communities turn the other cheek while being silently torn apart by serial abusers, even while fighting against the more common ones.

Through this memoir, Machado really captures the internal process of someone going through this. There is a great isolation in being abused. Not only does the abuser often control or forbid the person from being in touch with others, but the gas lighting and aggression causes the victim/survivor to retreat into themself. There are so many feelings that go into exposing what is happening- big among them being fear and shame. The shame is especially strong in feminist and queer communities as we tend to believe we should have been able to see this coming and get out of it. The truth is, when it comes to abuse, we're just as vulnerable- if not more vulnerable- than other communities. Machado also includes research of hers and reading recommendations on the topics of abuse in LGBTQ communities. These discussions have been existing for a long time, but still remain hidden.

There is a lot more I could say and analyze about this book, but I am going to stop here and encourage the reader to go out and read it. It is very difficult to put down, but please take care while reading, especially if you have any personal history with these subjects. Take breaks and take care of yourself. This book is very worth reading, even if one may find parts triggering. It is far more than a catalogue of occurrences. It is a work of art.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Beyond Survival

Image: The cover of the book has a denim blue background with many silouettes of leafed vines crawling up from the bottom and down from the top in solid colors of light blue, hot pink, and bright yellow. They change colors where they overlap. In the upper left corner are the editors' names in small, white, illustrated capital letters. Across the center in large stenciled letters is the title of the book. Below that in smaller letters is the byline.

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from The Transformative Justice Movement is definitely one of the most important books I will read this year, if not this decade. Edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, the text expands upon information offered by previous texts like The Revolution Starts at Home. As the editors state in the introduction, TRSAH was the "why" and Beyond Survival is the "how." This is severely needed because, while various transformative justice tactics and techniques have been used by communities over time, the process is almost always labor intensive, draining, and sometimes leaves everyone feeling worse off before they went in. That is not to say there have never been successes. This book includes many examples. But, many writers state that even the failures have something to teach and that rigid purity politics do not allow us to make mistakes and to grow. This book also tackles many different types of conflicts and events that may require accountability and transformative justice practices. Entries range from what many people think of when they hear TJ- sexual assault and intimate partner violence- to creating safer spaces for youth, LGBTQ parties, sex workers, and others.

Couched in between a beautiful foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and poetic afterword by adrienne marie brown is a slew of information from many wise voices. What struck me the most about this book is how kind, grounded, and realistic the ideas, stories, and strategies put forth were and how everyone presented these things with great humility. These are not people living in a fantasy world where suddenly the police can be avoided in every scenario. Rather than saying "don't call the cops, period," they say things like, "here are many things you can do instead, and if all else fails, here's how to deal with the cops if they arrive."

In the first section, "Making the Road by Dreaming: Stories of Accountability," we get a little bit of the "why" of transformative justice. This and many other parts of the book make it readable regardless of if you have read "The Revolution Starts at Home." As we progress through this section, we hit an excerpt from "Black Queer Feminism as Praxis" where we are told with brute honesty that it ain't gonna be pretty. These processes can suck and they cannot erase harm as if it never existed. Also included in this section is Kai Cheng Thom's "What to do if You've Been Abusive," which explores the reality that we are all capable of causing- and have caused- harm to others. Rather than reinforce cancel/callout culture's victim/perpetrator for life binary, Thom asks that we be kinder, gentler, and more realistic. "Doesn't the feminist saying go, 'We shouldn't be teaching people how not to get raped, we should be teaching people not to rape'? And if so, doesn't it follow that we shouldn't only support people who have survived abuse, but should also support people in learning not to abuse?" I want to be clear, Thom is not claiming that everyone is a rapist and a rape victim, but more like someone who rapes someone may also have a history of violent abuse from a parent that influences their decision making. Someone who survives rape may have also been abusive or toxic towards a partner in the past and may be afraid to come forward both because they were raped and because they are afraid of their past. Someone who pushes past boundaries at a party may also be struggling with alcoholism and PTSD. Someone whose boundaries were violated may be overwhelmed by memories where they violated others' boundaries. It is almost more exhausting and shame inducing to try to be only one thing on either side of that coin. By healing everyone, even though revenge feels very good in fantasy land, we are able to create safer environments for everyone, especially when they are victimized.

How many of us have called for the abolition of prisons and police through one side of our mouth while branding someone for life as forever boiled down to the worst thing they've done out of the other? I know I've done it. Many of these writings had me repeatedly asking myself, "Do I want to be righteous or do I want to be effective?" This is not to say that we remove room for survivors' pain, anger, revenge fantasies, and so on. Multiple writers discuss how venting (and "vent diagrams" of) our frustrations and kill-your-rapist fantasies in healthy ways can be quite healing. This is also not to say that many people who have done harm don't automatically respond with defensiveness and refusal to be accountable. There are stories of this in the book. What is being said is that many of us can and want to do better. Philly Stands Up discusses in their entry how often people came to them to confess that they'd done something harmful and wanted to be accountable and prevent it from happening again. Basically, if we truly want to transform our communities with as little police and prison involvement as possible, then we have to also leave room for those doing harm to be human, to change, to heal, and to be accountable.

The next section of the book, "We Got This: Tool Kits and Road Maps," is full of entries by various people and groups who have learned quite a lot through their trials in transformative justice work. All of the entries in this section had a ton of useful information to offer, but a few really stood out for me personally. These were: Fireweed Collective's, "When it all comes crashing down: Navigating crisis," Oakland Power Projects', "Maybe you don't have to call 911: Know your options," Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Mijente, and Puente Arizona's, "Excerpt From Community Defense Zone Starter Guide," and Safe OUTside the System Collective and Audrey Lorde Project's, "Excerpts from the Safer Party Toolkit." There are so many reasonable and creative ways that these groups and communities have come up with to prevent, manage, and deescalate conflicts. But, as this book makes quite clear, activist groups are not the only ones doing or capable of doing this work. These practices have been going on particularly in marginalized communities long before the words 'transformative justice' began being applied to them.

This leads us into part three, "We didn't call it TJ, but maybe it worked anyway? Messy, real stories." I have to say, I found these messy stories to be remarkably organized. It is in this section that we get to hear from sex worker and anti-violence proponents and what they have learned from their pratices to keep themselves and their communities safe. Sex workers have a ton of interesting and creative ways of doing this in a world where there is danger at every corner from both those intent on doing harm and those who claim to help. My favorite entry in this section was "Facing shame: From saying sorry to doing sorry," by Nathan Shara. This is another entry that really opened my eyes to the ways that all of us contain a massive amount of experiences where we have harmed and been harmed. Thinking of things this way seems to really invite healing from and for all parties. Slow, slow healing. Shara states in the beginning, "Solving violence is rarely as much about the moment at hand as it is about everything else the preceded it." And, "If we cannot reveal what we have done and what has been done to us without being seen as inferior, damaged, tainted, broken, monstrous, irreparable, and so on, then out of a core human drive toward dignity, we will not do it." Now, reading this review, I know some people may bristle and these quotes out of context. It may be difficult to think about some of the people who have harmed you or your friends as being deserving of kindness. Please consider still reading the larger texts before making a judgment based on ideological purity about what accountability and healing must always look like. In another favorite in this section: adrienne maree brown's, "What is/isn't transformative justice," where she discusses callout/cancel culture and asks, "Is this what we're here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherance to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us?"

The final section, "What did we dream then, what do we know now? Movement histories and futures," we hear from "TJ Old Heads" about what they have learned in their work over the years and decades. The interviews with Shira Hassan and Mariame Kaba really stood out for me here as exceptional. Hassan offers all kinds of advice and information, including something I have discussed many times in my own circles. Regarding what she would like to see an end to in Transformative Justice: "There's this thing of everyone thinking all forms of violence are the same. And that all the tools we have are also the same. And they're actually really different for lots of reasons... where I think it gets tricky, and I think we're afraid to have these conversations, is that it's so important that everyone is validated in their experience of survival, and that my experience of sexual harrassment can dislocate me for years, and that is still different from someone else's experience of childhood sexual abuse."  When Kaba is asked why she wants to do fewer trainings, she states, "I don't think this is a work that is about experts. I want this work to be work that anyone and everyone who wants to try to do it does... I don't want people to feel that this work is something you have to get some certification in in order to be able to do." There is so much more wisdom in this section that I would have to copy the entire book to portray it. What I will say is that, once again, the common thread is humility, care, humanity, love, and an understanding that while "hurt people hurt people," it's also true that "healed people heal people.*"

*I did not invent this phrase. I saw it on a beautiful banner held by Let's Get Free.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

Image: The cover of the book is an illustration of a city street as seen from the top of a tall building. The buildings are stylized in cool colors with hints of yellow. A light lavender street stretches through the center with the silhouette of a person running down the middle. The sky taking up about 1/3 of the background fades from light blue to pinkish lavender with pink clouds. There is a very large light tan colored moon taking up about half of the visible sky. Across the front of the cover in 4 lines reads "EVERYONE ON THE MOON IS ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL" in large white capital letters. In the center, on top of transparent stripes of blue, pink, and lavender states, "STORIES: Juliann K. Jarboe" in yellow lettering.

I am so grateful that Julian K. Jarboe's debut collection, Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel came across my goodreads feed one day. Described on the publisher's page as being a "collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age... (in the) field of queer fabulism," the stories in this book are composed of many things from many places. I have never read anything quite like it. It is undoubtedly one of my favorite books with the category "queer fiction" slapped onto it. 

I hate to say it, but sometimes I have a lot of trouble with "LGBTQ" literature, even when it is written by queer and trans people. Sometimes the stories are all about being queer and trans, sometimes being queer or trans is not part of the story at all, and sometimes queer and trans characters are used purely as tokens, written with terrible ignorance. The problem with the last one is fairly obvious, but the first two are often accepted as great examples of LTGBQ literature. We are so starved for representation that we sometimes settle for that which is mediocre. It is not that some of the former fictions are never exceptional- quite a few are. It's just that, often, stories that approach characters and topics this way end up being one dimensional, unrealistic (and I don't mean from a scifi/fantasy perspective,) or even harmful. What makes Jarboe's story collection stand out in this realm is that they write stories surrounding the lives of many different kinds of queer and trans characters that are so well rounded that one cannot help to become completely immersed. Some of the stories are like poems and only one page long, yet they still drew me in. Jarboe writes stories that are about these characters without their LGBTQ existence being the ONLY thing about them. Yet they also don't attempt to use identities only in passing. Like actual life, it is part of who they are and part of their lives and experiences along with everything else in the world. I was able to see myself in so many of these characters including the ones that were of somewhat different demographic arrangements than I am. This is unfortunately rare.

Another thing that I really enjoyed about this book is how uniquely it spans so many different genres. Yes there is some science fiction and some LGBT fiction, but it is much more than that. It ranges from dead serious to laugh out loud funny. It includes great sadness and extraordinary satire. Their writing style is incredibly poetic and they show a great range across stories. Some stories read as if an author wrote them 100 years ago and others read with style from the future. The book is genuinely great fiction on top of having great representation. I can honestly say that I would read a full length novel based on any of these stories. The titular story- the longest in the book- is well deserving of its use in the title. Witty and satirical with hints of cyberpunk and space opera, it offers a look into another world.

I hope that this is only the beginning for Jarboe. They are truly a unique and talented voice in the wide ranging genre of fiction in general, not limited to LGBTQ or Science Fiction. This is definitely a book I see myself returning to and I can't recommend it enough.

This was also posted to my goodreads. 

Book Review: Afterlife

Image: The cover of the book is a mustard yellow background with an abstract line painting of a tree. The trunk and branches of the tree are black and also form the profile of a human face halfway up the cover. The leaves of the tree are thick, short paint strokes of green, light blue, and dull red that sparsely cover most of the cover. The top of the book says, "author of the international best seller in the time of butterflies" in white. Below that in large, white, capital letters is the author's name- Julia Alvarez. Along the bottom in large white letters is the title. Below that in small white script it says, "a novel." Below that is a reviewer quote that is too small to make out.

Afterlife is author Julia Alvarez's first adult novel in 15 years and is also the first book I have read by the author. I won this book via goodreads giveaways and had entered because the story seemed like something I would like and would tackle themes that are exceedingly important in the world we are currently living in. Unfortunately, to get right to the point, the book was just not very good. I had to force myself to finish it.

The writing style does remind me somewhat of an author who tries to switch from writing young adult style novels to regular adult literature. I am not sure if that is what the blurb meant by it being her first adult novel in 15 years. But, there are plenty of authors who succeed in this realm and Alvarez didn't deliver. The whole book is very flat and lifeless. I felt like I did not really get to know the characters nor the atmospheres around them well at all. The prose felt very shallow and forced. It does hit on themes of immigration, citizenship, police misconduct, loss, and mental health but in very shallow, often tokenizing ways. The representation of mental health and bipolar disorder in the book is particularly exploitative. The character struggling through a mental health crisis is portrayed as a villain purposely screwing up the lives of her sisters. Some of the things she does aren't even bad or things I would necessarily consider requiring treatment. They definitely punish any weirdness or eccentricity and the way it is written seems to suggest that this is completely fine. The way her story ends, I will avoid spoilers, is written in this same exploitative way of a person's struggle used as a plot point to help the other characters move forward rather than as a journey for the disabled character herself.

Another issue with this book is the organization and style of it. It is written in the style where no quotations (or paragraph breaks or much punctuation at all) are used when people are speaking. I have read some books where authors are able to master this quite well and it works out. It did not work out in this book. I was constantly asking myself: Who said that? Was that someone talking or was that someone thinking? Was that part of the story or a quote? Then there are other sections where she randomly uses quotation marks. Why? If the story was going to have this much dialogue, why did the author nor the editor push for more punctuation or a different style?

The organization of the book is also all over the place. Once again, I have read many books that have this whole stream of consciousness way of writing and it can be done well. But this one just jumped all over the place and rushed from thing to thing. It seemed almost like a first draft of something. The book is 256 pages, but they are small pages with large lettering. So, at least it was short. I finished it because it interested me enough to know what was going to happen. In the end, I wish I would have put it down and picked up another book. Perhaps this author was just out of practice. It looks like she has written some really great novels. This was not one of them unfortunately.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: This View of Life

Image: The cover of the book is white a large multicolored arrow composed of small symbols of human bodies. It is more concentrated at the top and gets sparser as it goes down. It is on the right side. On the left side, in large black letters says "This view of life, completing the Darwinian Revolution, David Sloan Wilson."

Normally, I don't post reviews of items I only read small sections of. But, I post everything from publishers on my blog as a courtesy and I received a copy of this in the mail even though I did not request it. I don't know if it was an accident or if I had reviewed something else for them and they thought I would like this.  The last book on a similar topic that I read was one I also gave one-star to without finishing. I am overall a completionist and try to finish most things even mildly worth reading. I decided to flip through the book and see where in my queue I wanted to put it. Imagine my dismay when I get two two pages showing tortured hens in battery cages- where about 99% of those on this planet misused for eggs and flesh spend their short, miserable lives. This guy uses an experiment where someone tries to make the chickens as "productive" as possible while keeping them in horrific conditions as some amazing feat in science and as a model for how to create a better society. I think, "surely, a man claiming he has the answers to creating a better society would disparage the practice keeping sentient individuals crammed together in a rusty cage the size of a shoebox stacked on top of one another in an ammonia and feces filled shed." But, no, he barely scratches the surface.

Image: A photo of part of the page of the book showing a black and white image of a battery cage. Several suffering hens are shown with almost no feathers inside a cage approximately the size of a shoebox. You cannot see it in the photo, but the study describes most of the chickens in the cage being dead, presumably under foot of the live ones.

He not only uses the study as an example, he calls them "a beautiful example of within group and between group selection." He uses an image of a group with better breeding selection as an example of the wonderful merits of eugenics in farming. Look! These animals sitting on top of each other in these cages have slightly more feathers and pecked each other slightly less. What a lovely thing. He claims that the reason they attack each other is purely from genetic selection that increased a heritable trait of bullying. Could it possibly have anything to do with their nightmarish conditions of captivity? A non-scientist layman could easily draw such a conclusion. He calls chickens murderers and psychopaths because they attack each other as they go mad in these hellish conditions. I guarantee that if you stuff 8 people into a portajohn and leave them there their whole lives, they're going to fight and suffer immensely regardless of their genetics.

Image: Another photo of a page of the book showing another photo of battery hens that the author seems to think is a positive outcome. At least 8 hens are now shown crammed into a battery cage and they are only missing part of their feathers.

He has little to say about those who put them there aside from claiming he'd pay more for "free range" eggs but again sticks to blaming the hens for fighting in that environment rather than the people who put them in such a terrible place. He seems to know nothing about chicken behavior when they are given a healthy environment that meets their needs. Many sanctuaries have taken in fighting roosters- abused to be the most aggressive and thought to be beyond help and far more dangerous than battery hens- and not only rehabbed them but helped them to live with other fighting roosters in harmony. How? I can guarantee it has nothing to do with eugenics, battery cages, and "free range" sheds.

More perusing of the book led me to find that he also encourages nonhuman animal testing for human disease in ways that are not accurate in predicting human response even outside of the massive ethical concerns. He really seems to want to defend social darwinism, claiming that his type of social darwinism is different than the kind people use to celebrate and justify inequality. There's a lot of "this thing was really bad when (the nazis, etc, insert horrifying tragedy in history) did it, but I know a much better way to do it."

Here's an in depth review by someone with more scientific education in this field than me.

If I wanted advice about how to create a better society, this is one of the last people I would ask.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: When Animals Speak

Image: The cover of the book is a black background with a very close up image of part of an octopus. Their dark eye is near the center of the screen, lidded with a circle of flesh, and their body extends outside the upper right corner of the cover. A few of their legs curl in front in view and also cut off at the right side. Across the top in small, white, capital letters is the author's name. In large letters, with one word on each line at the center of the book is the title. Across the bottom in small white capital letters is the byline, "toward and interspecies democracy."

When Animals Speak by Eva Meijer is an extremely important academic contribution to animal studies and to the world at large. With an astute examination and interpretation of a vast amount of literature, case studies, experiments, philosophy, and other means, Meijer takes our current conceptions of others animals' abilities to communicate, behave, organize, and act to a new and very necessary level. I read a lot of books centering other animals from the more popular and political side to the very academic and scientific sides and thus, am sometimes underwhelmed by newer books on these subjects. This one, however, brought a lot of new information into my psyche and has had me thinking hard about the topics therein ever since. While I am sure she is not the only person to come up with these ideas and conclusions, as she includes the words and citations of many others, she definitely collects quite a lot of information into one place.

Due to it's academic nature, this book can be really repetitive at times. It seems to be written with the intention that someone could possibly read one chapter alone and out of context from the rest. This is not unusual in academia, but since I read it cover to cover, I often found the same things said repeatedly which could get tedious. That said, it is very well structured and organized. We always know where Meijer is going before she tackles the details and she always summarizes where she ended up.

One of the features of this book that really stood out for me was Meijer's discussions of anthropomorphism. The idea of anthropomorphism is misused by people who cannot bear the idea than other animals are more than objects for their exploitation and is a frequent rallying cry of those with a direct relationship to nonhuman animal exploitation. Some animal researchers, for instance, will often claim that any attribution of emotion, suffering, cognition, communication abilities, etc to their research captives is the dreaded anthropomorphism phenomenon and that this somehow makes what they do to animals excusable. These same people are happy to discuss the ways other animals are similar to us when it fits their occupation and hypothesis, but that quickly goes out the window when their abuse of power is taken into consideration. Meijer uses the concept of anthropormorphism as a vehicle to actually center other animals rather than to erase them. She stresses the importance that we not assume other animals are like us in every way, nor should we assume that they are all like each other. Expanding on this point, she discourages thinking that forces other animals into a human box in order to grant them consideration. Instead, differences within and between species should be acknowledged and centered in order to improve our relationships with other animals. Other animals should not have to be "like us" in order to deserve appropriate treatment and consideration. I hate to say that this is one of the first times I have seen someone discuss it in this way.

The central topic of the book, evident in the title, is that of communication and interaction with and between other animals. I began this book believing other animals had sophisticated communication, but had always heard- even other animal advocates- claim that none of them had actual language. This always seemed unlikely to me, but since I am not a linguist I figured that maybe there are many rules for something to be considered a language and that perhaps I just did not understand that. Meijer includes a lot of literature and research that is showing that other animals do indeed have structured communication that can be called language and the problem is that we are not sophisticated enough to understand it. There are well-known instances of animals learning human language (Koko the gorilla, Alex the parrot, etc) and vice versa (Jane Goodall,) but I did not realize that there was so much new research showing language being present in other species. I also felt challenged in the best ways by how far these observations went. Meijer includes studies of nonhuman primates and birds (which many people are accepting have advanced cognitive abilities,) but also addressed the abilities of other animals like bees and even worms who people as far back as Darwin have observed the ability to learn and work together in.

Reading this book helped me realize how stuck in the past a lot of my thinking about animals was. One of the more interested ways this happened was how Meijer discussed ways that other animals can be political actors in that they can take intentional actions that influence policy and actions of humans. She included the works of Jason Hribal, Aph and Syl Ko, Sunaura Taylor, and other favorites of mine and then expands upon the wisdom they have offered. She encourages us to uproot many of the ways we interact with and think about other animals. Even in animal rights and liberation communities, there is a huge problem with the unacknowledged power dynamics between humans and other animals. This can even be reinforced in harmful ways through rescue efforts in which people see themselves as saviors of the animals rather than as people working in solidarity with them. For example, the phenomenon of a stray dog being taken off the street, only to die, "unadoptable" in a shelter when s/he was actually content with the struggles of the street. We must redefine our relationship with other animals from one in which we "save" them and they are one-dimensional, innocent, voiceless beings into one in which they are seen as complex beings with varying needs and desires like us.

Meijer encourages us to not only better communicate with other animals, but to use what she calls "interspecies deliberation" to negotiate relationships that work best for everyone involved. She encourages solutions that serve both humans and other animals best rather than those which only favor one group's needs and interests. Her main point is that we are going to have interactions and relationships with other animals no matter what. As a result, positive and mutually rewarding relationships will develop and also conflicts will arise that need to be resolved. Meijer encourages cooperative actions with other animals in ways that benefit both the humans and other animals. She uses a variety of means to offer ways how we can do this, but it of course will never be easy.

Overall, I really appreciate the knowledge this book gave me and I will continue thinking about it and hopefully implementing it in my life and relationships with other animals. I definitely think anyone could benefit from the information in this book, but I think it should be critical reading for those who have intimate or frequent interactions with other animals.

This was also posted to my goodreads.