Book Review: Borderline

Image: the cover of the book is an off white background with a pointilized ribbon of black descending down the page. In the middle in red letters is borderline. Below that inside a mustard circle with black letters is "the biography of a personality disorder." In the upper left in red is "Alexander Kriss, PhD."
 

This book was an interesting surprise. Usually going into any sort of pop psychology book I have somewhat low expectations. Part of this is because dominant culture is often woven throughout so much that it becomes frustrating. Part of it is that complex medical systems that are already problematic even at the academic level are simplified down too much. Part of it is that we sometimes get way too much of the author's bias or unethical oversharing.

The latter part ended up being a lot different than it usually is in this case. Borderline is a foray into history by Alexander Kriss that is composed alongside (mostly) a single case study. I often feel nervous about these sorts of things being shared even when identifying information is claimed to have been removed because psychological care should be 100% private. In this case though, it comes across that this was done quite thoughtfully and with consent and input from the patient whose case is at the center. There's even a clear discussion about the power dynamics at hand and if a patient can consent properly to something like this. I think the reason it works in this case is because the author is a psychoanalyst of the more classic type that spends multiple days a week over an extended period of time with their client. This results in a level of connection and intimacy that is inescapable. I found the accounts in this book to be honest in this regard as much as I can tell from the writing. The author was also open about his thought processes, mistakes, and shortcomings.

As much as my former advisors and professors would probably be disappointed, I love psychoanalysis. I love its fantastical focus on the unconscious and all of the things that we can't possibly measure. I love that it's near impossible to quantify and study like biopsychology or cognitive neuroscience, which is what most of my education was based on when I went to school for psychology.

I would say that this book is not really a biography of borderline personality disorder such that a complete beginner could pick it up and learn about it. I saw it as more of an expansion on the rather one-dimensional way that the disorder is viewed by many today. Kriss weaves together the long history of maladies attributed to women and argues that hysteria and related diagnoses of the past are older names for the same syndrome now known as borderline personality disorder. As a result, I think it will work better for folks with a foundational understanding of the current definition and manifestations of bpd diagnoses.

One of the best parts about how this book does history is that Kriss discusses the social position of the psychologists and theorists he is focused on. I went through years of school and psychology classes learning about dead men and their thoughts on the womens brains without ever learning which ones of them were slavers. We never discussed how Sigmund Freud being Jewish affected his place in the field and how he approached topics. We never discussed how American capitalism would be used to shape the direction of psychology when certain ideas arrived from overseas. There was rarely any discussion of patriarchy or privilege. Freud as a name was always attributed to Sigmund, not Anna, despite the latter having far more accurate and grounded beliefs albeit still problematic. I felt that I learned so much more about these various theorists by understanding their position in the world at the time.

One of the most surprising things to me is that Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, and others were actually closer to reality in the beginning of their theories about why women are suffering (sexual abuse and exposure to trauma) before Freud decided to go extra misogynistic and buried his own history and Ferenczi's work. Through all of these histories, Kriss makes it pretty impossible to deny how current day treatment of borderline personality disorder isn't a whole lot better or more evolved than the treatment of Hysteria in the past. It might even be worse in terms of predicting the ability to heal because at least in the past it wasn't assumed that the patient was doomed as soon as the label was slapped on them.

Kriss also covers more modern day manifestations of care for borderline personality disorder and disorders related to traumatic experience. He has more favorable yet still nuanced takes on dialectical behavioral therapy and treatments around post-traumatic stress. He discusses as well the ways in which psychoanalytic concepts such as splitting were redefined as if they were new concepts with labels like multiple personality disorder. There is a case study he is careful to discuss with someone I would argue was manipulated by an internet "friend" into believing they have "dissociative identity disorder" and played the part. Kriss seems to argue more that people all have varying degrees of splitting into other personalities in one way or another, some of which are dysfunctional and some of which are just normal. It's more complicated than that, but that would make this a very long review.

Kriss has a lot to say about the DSM and modern day psychology centering it. Rightfully so. Something I learned in particular from this book was that PTSD being entered into the DSM was the first time that a disorder symptomology included an external event being the cause. Everything else is about problems with the individual. That is bananas to me. I knew this problematic aspect of diagnostic practices but had no idea that the environment was that absent from the DSM.

I will share one quote that stood out to me regarding how many paradigms claim we must create a new self while mourning the old one we somehow lost to a trauma or illness:
"We always add, never subtract. All the way down to the psychotic core, we can only be ourselves and the things that happen to us, that make us ill, also have the potential to serve as sources of empathy and ideas that challenge a toxic status quo."

Overall I really liked this compassionate psychoanalytic foray into the previously unknown to me long history of borderline personality disorder. I hope it will foster more empathy toward those with the label and lead to better outcomes for them and the world that we share.

 This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Blueprint

Image: the cover of the book is a yellow background with light grey rectangles repeating in toward the center. Weaving in and out of the rectangles is an illustration of olive colored bird entangled in the grip of an orange and yellow snake. On the upper left in black is "the blue print" and across the bottom is the authors name - Rae Giana Rashad.

It's difficult not to invoke The Handmaid's Tale when talking about a book like Rae Giana Rashad's The Blueprint. There are many pieces of it that resemble popular texts that came before it. However, given that one of the main criticisms of books like THT, despite Atwood clearly saying that she never meant it as a depiction of something that had never happened, is that they often focus on oppression of white women that has already been enacted upon Black women and others throughout American history. The Blueprint is somewhat of a cyberpunk adjacent dystopia taking place in an alternate history, present, and future- told from alternating time periods in different chapters. Chattel slavery was not abolished but instead shifted to a system where Black women in particular are still purchased and abused through a high tech system involving an algorithm which assigns women to men based on their social class and profession among other dystopian characteristics. The book is told both from the point of view of the protagonist and her biography of her enslaved ancestor, making evident the myriad of ways in which the two timelines collide.

I found this book to be beautifully written and the world building to be immersive. The book is extremely dark, but it did not feel pointlessly so or like trauma porn. The stage felt real and the characters were all believable as people. Part of this is likely because they are also messy just like real life. There is a lot of focus on intercommunity dynamics and how oppressed groups of people can mistreat one another when individuals are grasping at and holding on to any little bit of power they can get when the rest is taken from them. There were lots of themes about Black love, hurt, expectation, suffering, and liberation. There were discussions of power dynamics and at what level power prevents love and respect from being able to occur.

I admit about 2/3 of the way through I felt myself less engaged with the book, but I can't quite pinpoint why. It may have been the shift in focus to specific relationships. It's interesting because at other less dark times I found myself thinking, "why is everyone focusing on creating this relationship drama at this moment?" and then remembering that in any situation I have been in no matter how dire, there is always relationship drama going on. So, it's not necessarily a poor creative choice.

The best part of the book is Butters sharing her wisdom, but I won't say much more than that in order to avoid spoilers. I look forward to more writing from this author in the future as she expands on these genres in skillful and engaging ways.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph. 

Book Review: New Adventures in Space Opera

Image: The cover of the book is an illustrated outer space scene with a blue-black background and a speckled sphere in the center with light hitting it from the the lower left creating a crescent appearance. There are several cream and orange colored lines going through the center and a line of circles of different shapes and sizes going through in another direction. In orange letters across the top is "new adventures in," followed by large white letters for "space opera" on the top and bottom of the cover. In small teal and orange letters surrounding the planet at the center are the names of all of the contributing authors.
 

New Adventures in Space Opera first caught my eye due to the sheer number of excellent contributors that I was already at least somewhat familiar with. Even with this excitement, I tend to go into anthologies with below average expectations as I can often run into as many duds as I do excellent stories. This book surprised me by how solid it was across the board. Even the stories that genre-wise were not my cup of tea, were still well written enough to be entertaining. Some of the authors I already enjoyed brought their A-Game, but I was also introduced to a few others whose work I will be seeking out after having read this anthology.

As Jonathan Strahan discusses in the intro, the definition of what constitutes the "space opera" genre, like pretty much all scifi and fantasy, is debated. Though, there is often a common thread and that is that some see it as a lesser form of science fiction. A bunch of legit nerds like us scifi fans pretending anything we like is cooler than anything else is silly to me, but it is human nature I suppose. This anthology has a wide range of styles and subgenres well complemented by its talented authors, making it difficult for anyone to argue that space opera is lesser in any way.

I read the book cover to cover and one thing I really liked is how long many stories were. One of my biggest issues with short fiction is that I often feel like it's cut off before I am even invested in the story. These entries are still short, but with enough length to settle into. There were some stories that I would describe as war stories, spirituality themes, or space fantasy, that were not my taste (but as I mentioned, not poorly written.) The rest though, ranging from what I would describe as adjacent to cyberpunk, satire, and general space scifi were totally up my alley. The stories that were my favorites were Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee, A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime by Charlie Jane Anders, Immersion by Aliette de Bodard, Planetstuck by Sam J Miller, and The Last Voyage of  Skidbladnir by Karin Tidbeck with Miller and Anders being tied for the top spot. 

Representation in the book was also above average with many stories surrounding characters of demographics and nationalities that we don't often see centered in English language scifi. This was also a great pride month read. If you're familiar with many of the authors, you may already know that. If not, then I will tell you that many of these stories are wonderfully gay and spectacularly queer. I also tend to go into anthologies expecting otherwise, but since I was familiar with some of the authors, I knew they'd deliver.

Overall, New Adventures in Space Opera is a great collection of stories that both add new elements to the genre and celebrate its long and beloved history among non-pretentious science fiction lovers. Its inclusion of a wide variety of styles and topics means there's likely something in it for everyone. It's a great edition to any shelf for those who love scifi, and maybe many who don't yet realize that they do.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: (R)evolution

 

Image: the cover of the book is acloseup of gary numan staring into the camera. He is a pale skinned person with black hair falling onto his face and is wearing messy black eyeliner. He is holding his hands adorned with ripped nylon information of his face. Across the top in gold scribbled letters is revolution and in printed gold across the bottom is his name. Under that in smaller script is "the autobiography."

Before writing a review of Gary Numan's memoir, (R)evolution, I decided to catch up on his later releases. To be honest, my interest in this memoir was due to knowing him as a great electronic and goth/industrial adjacent pioneer. But, unlike many who, as detailed in the book, always wanted him to stick to the early hits, I found some of his early stuff a bit too upbeat for me. The saxophones and backup singer style are just not my cup of tea. I've come to find that most of what Numan released after the mid 90s is right up my alley as well as more of his earlier stuff than I realized. He's put out a massive amount of music throughout his career.

Numan discussed his process for many releases, describing some of the later stuff (from Pure onward) as darker and that is certainly the case. I'd also go as far to say that this is his best material. The sound is much more evolved and shows a maturity with electronic media as well as the ability to grow with the technology. I also just love the darkness that comes with a lot of artists' later work who started from a more pop place (Kite comes immediately to mind.) Now that I've started from the end, let's get back to the beginning.

(R)evolution is an interesting memoir and one I chose to listen to as the author himself was reading it. It stands out from many musician stories, especially that of pop stars, in how he chooses to gloss over many of the more wild days and instead focuses on family and career. I don't know if that's just what is most important to him now, or if he is deliberately choosing not to highlight things he's admittedly embarrassed of. I can't help wondering what he meant when he said he was a bad partner or what he was ashamed of when he and other stars interacted with groupies. I get it, though. He also discussed a documentary team doing their best to agitate him in interviews and focus on a small part of his career for entertainment value. I can't blame him for resisting that portrayal, but I would totally read a memory from his former partner.

Based on this memoir, Gary Numan is a nerdy scifi fanatic on the autism spectrum (he uses the term Asperger's,) whose creative expression was truly unique and individual, composing his own material, moreso than many famous pop artists. I never realized how many scifi stories he wrote before then writing songs and albums based on those stories. I love it. I also loved hearing about how gay clubs were a haven as they were when I was a young rivethead/goth kid long before I understood my own gender and sexuality. This sort of crossover always makes me happy even though there can be conflicts and problems with straight folks in gay bars. Perhaps the difference is coming together over subculture and performance rather than the spectacle or exploitation that comes with cishet bachelorette parties or other voyeurs seeking comedic entertainment which is something both lgbtq folks and dark subculture folks deal with.

Something baffling to me is how bad he was with money. I know it's common for people who get a lot of money and fame quickly to screw it up. But, my dude, maybe don't buy a castle if you're in so much debt. I was a little frustrated by how he spoke about his money troubles, maybe because I'm poor and meticulously plan every cent. But, there's also a reality that you could never pay me enough to be famous. I would rather die. So, I know it costs a certain amount to have any privacy or life once you're in it. Also, many of his struggles with money were because of his creative and elaborate set designs for live shows, which seems very wholesome as it's clear that he always wanted the fans to have the best possible experience.

A lot of the book is about things I find boring like trying to have kids, Gemma (his wife) and his endless struggles with IVF, as well as both of their multiple plastic surgeries. It was unexpected again because of my own biases of what I think musicians must be like. Me finding them boring is irrelevant to the books value, just personal taste.

He has interesting takes on mental illness, particularly depression. I liked seeing a middle ground take on the often polarized debates around mental health drugs. In his eyes, depression is curable with a course of meds, but you can also become dependent on the meds and turn into someone you're not. I don't agree with this across the board (some people recover better with no meds, some with lifelong meds, some never recover despite all efforts and hard work, etc) but it's a valuable perspective.

There are sections where he mentions musicians he either worked with or who covered his stuff and generally does not have anything negative to say (with the exception of Bowie who deserved it for acting like a giant baby which he apparently later regrets.) But, some of them like Marilyn Manson have since been outed as serial predators and I felt a little frustrated that there was no mention of that. There also was some glossing over discussions of racism around not liking hip hop despite earlier in the book being flattered by some artists crediting him as inspiration. On public social media Numan has been supportive of BLM and pride along other things, so maybe he doesn't know the details or just made a creative choice not to talk shit.

What I really enjoyed was his discussion of how he processes music. He thinks of music with every possible sense, as a multidimensional exercise. Each album was composed not just for how it sounds, but how it feels, how it looks when performed, how he would move when performing. He discusses wanting to be a pop star from a young age but also having crippling stage anxiety. He partly credits his Asperger's for how he decided to perform as well. Watching him, you would not know, but he would basically think of how things should be and practice movements and expressions he thought were supposed to go along with it. Perhaps this sort of thinking is why he was able to become one of the early electronic music pioneers despite being told that synths were going nowhere, which is hilarious to think back on given the state of music today- most of which contains at least one synth instrument or computerized processing of some sort.

Overall, I enjoyed this peek into Numan's life, career, and creative processes as well as the experience of a multi-decade time capsule. I'm also glad that it inspired me to add a slew of great albums to my music library.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: The Sexist Microphysics of Power

Image: The cover of the book is a collage of pieces of newspaper and magazines that create an image of a woman shown from the chest up with chin length hair and dark eyes looking back over her right shoulder. Along the left side is a white strip with "the sexist microphysics of power" in black letters. Across the image are other white strips at various angles. One says, "The Alcassar Case and the Construction of Sexual Terror." Another has the author's name: Nerea Barjola. The third has the text, "Translated by Emily Mack. Foreword by Silvia Frederici."

When I see people ask each other what their guilty pleasures are, I immediately know what comes to mind as my own, even though my experience with it is often far from pleasurable. Crime media. I am an anarchist that loves crime dramas, even as I watch them complaining to myself about the overt and insidious copaganda. I am also attracted to documentaries including those that include true crime and violence against women. To say I "love" them would be incorrect. I often have a terrible experience watching/listening to/reading about them. I believe that, as a person who tends to run towards things as a coping mechanism, it's a mix of trauma as well as my unadmirable attraction toward human spectacle as a former student of psychology. I know that this is not an uncommon thing, but I often sit there as I binge watch horrible docuseries going, "why am I doing this to myself?" When I saw the blurb for Nerea Barjola's book, The Sexist Microphysics of Power- particularly the line, "A groundbreaking feminist text that frames our obsession with true crime as a form of sexual terror," I knew I had to read it. 

I am no stranger to feminist and anti-authoritarian critiques of true crime and as a result, this book at times did not bring many new things to my consciousness. As an academic text, though, it must properly set up the entire scene in order for the argument to make sense. This makes it more accessible to a person new to many of these ideas, but it still falls into the realm of academia, and thus will be read predominantly by people in a field where many things therein are agreed upon. It's very academic but not offensively so- there is a point to it and all of the jargon. It is also very specialized around an event that I had never heard of. The author does not tell us exactly what happened until around 60 pages in, so in the beginning I did feel a little lost in understanding what some of her arguments were pertaining to. That said, to create a critique like this is to walk a very fine line. How does one write about this spectacle without doing further harm? How does one create this narrative without using information that was so gratuitously used for entertainment purposes by the media being critiqued? I do not envy Barjola in this task. 

As you may have already guessed, this is a rough read. I took frequent breaks. The abuse and murders of Miriam García Iborra, Antonia Gómez Rodríguez and Desirée Hernández Folch occurred in 1992 and were subject of abhorrent media spectacle which included exploitation of survivors, displaying of gratuitous imagery, sharing of unnecessary horrifying detail, amplifying of misogynistic critique and punditry, and the crafting of a narrative that furthered the trauma of the event far outside the initial victims and placed blame in all of the wrong places. Barjola's decision to only name the girls in the beginning and end is one I understand but disagree with. She discusses in the epilogue the inability of media to share the girls' stories without being flawed, but I found the lack of naming to actually contribute to their objectification in ways the author wanted to fight. Outside of this though, Barjola painstakingly details the ways the media took a horrific event and turned it into an even larger cultural trauma.

Barjola details and critiques the myriad of ways that the media exploited and reframed the narrative to place blame on the girls and on deviation from heteronormative society (in terms of the murderer.) Much of this was obvious to me, but a couple of her assessments really stuck out and gave me that aha! feeling. One was her collection of interviews with local or adjacent girls and women and their discussions of how the events and coverage affected them. We know that these events of course create fear and the media coverage of that affects how that manifests. But, these interviews, more than any analysis in the book, really showed how abhorrent and irresponsible coverage of violence can literally traumatize and create victims far outside the inner circle. I don't have the answer as to what perfect coverage looks like, but I know what it doesn't look like. This book details that and the interviews wrap it up. 

Another point Barjola made that really grabbed me was in her discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding the coverage. 1992 was nothing like the internet age we have today, but the media coverage and discussion of these events still birthed plenty of conspiracy. The idea of snuff was one topic that came up, and Barjola state what in hindsight should have been obvious to me. The media is the snuff film. The way true crime media in general, but especially in this case displayed the suffering of these girls while finding ways to blame and humiliate them (and in turn all girls and women) is far more affecting and terrifying than the idea of an under the table VHS of violence. We are watching snuff when we watch this footage. This part of her argument meant a lot to me and I will be using it when asking myself in the future what kinds of media I want to consume and how.

In the epilogue added to this edition, Barjola discusses the Netflix docuseries on the case which I did not see myself. She discussed the very interesting interplay of what might be called neoliberal feminism true crime or something of the sort, where a woman creating a show like this sees it as a feminist act despite being similarly exploitative. Barjola did not take part despite being invited- if one can call it that given that they weren't actually going to feature her- as it became clear that the series was another exercise in exploitation. She discusses the importance of counter-narratives to combat the flood of violence-against-women and women/girls-as-victims media coming at us from all angles. However, while there was a short section of the book discussing some women reclaiming things like hitchhiking, going out at night, and so on, I was also left wondering how this book itself fit into the spectacle. Barjola considers it a counter-narrative, but my experience of reading it did not quite match that. I did not leave it with images of happy women and girls in Spain going out together at night or of feminist resistance. I left it with a horrible story, an anger at so many (especially men) involved, and a question of how academia plays into true crime. Perhaps that says more about me than the book, though. I do not know.

It feels as if this book is both necessary as an exposure of the horrible ways in which media can create and amplify trauma as well as another chapter of true crime media. I do not know what the answer is to how to do this "right" as I do not think there is one. Barjola seems to believe the same thing in her discussion of using the girls' names. There is no way to perfectly write about misogynistic atrocity. But, there sure as hell are ways not to. I think this book is an important exercise in exposing those mistakes and also for the reader to think hard about the media they consume. I will be asking myself more going forward what things will do to me if I choose to venture into another episode of unpleasurable guilty "pleasure" that is crime media.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Birding While Indian

 

Image: The cover of the book is a lime green background with birding while Indian in large white letters in the center on the top and bottom are two opposite facing illustrations of crows with wings held our in black and teal with red eyes. I'm the upper left corner in blue is things c Gannon's name and in the lower right corner is a mixed blood memoir.

I love encountering books that span genres and cultures, especially in the nonfiction realm. Birding While Indian by Thomas C Gannon is one of those books. Labeled as a "Mixed Blood Memoir," I expected less birding than there was in it. I was pleasantly surprised at how much of the book functioned as sort of a birding travelogue divided by species with philosophical and political commentary mixed in. He mentions the impossibility of discussing birds without being political- something I wish far more birders understood. I am frequently frustrated by the boring or even insultingly one-dimensional ways many writers discuss other species.

Gannon was kind enough to join us at VINE book club where I learned that the publisher really wanted him to lean in more to the memoir side of things when editing down a much longer initial draft. Based on my own experience and that of other reviewers, this seemed an odd choice on their part since it seems most of us wanted the birding/philosophical/political stuff and more of it! That said, the memoir outside of birding adventures was very interesting and engaging. The life Gannon has led is immensely interesting and often harrowing. This memoir shows how birding and nature can truly save us from the struggles of life that may otherwise destroy us. I can't express how much I relate to the idea that birding- and in relation, the existence and importance of the avian world and their sharing space with us- as being a life and sanity saving venture.

At the book club, Gannon mentioned his surprise that he received little critique on the structure of the book since to him it sometimes felt like a first draft. I had already spoken a lot, so I didn't get to mention in group that I would have liked a bit more structure. I would not say it reads like a first draft, it feels more organized than that. But, the book does jump from one category into another often by paragraph. This made things hard to follow or left me thinking, "Wait! Finish your thought on that," or, "I wanted to hear more about that." I would have liked it to be divided by chapter rather than hopping so quickly between paragraphs which, for instance, could go from experiences of childhood familial and boarding school abuse to a birding walk.

I also have criticism, as I do with 99% of birding and nature books, of Gannon referring to other birds as "it," even when they are dimorphic and very easy to refer to as s/he/they. He has valid criticisms of humans pushing systems onto other animals, which I generally agree with. But, I believe calling birds "it" is still pushing objectivity onto them rather than acknowledging them as living beings.

Gannon overall though navigates the complexity of his own identities and beliefs as well as that of his family and others around him deftly. There are no surefire, set in stone analyses in this book. He dwells in the contradictions and asks more questions than are answered, which to me, shows great self awareness and honesty often lacking in memoirs.

Something I thought of a lot was how he relates being a "lister" birder like myself to his other life experiences and beliefs. It's something I think about constantly in my own life. The book offers excellent analysis of colonialism and animality among other things. The discussions had about this in the book club were enriching as well. How do we as birders justify our exercise of a hobby which was in part highly designed or influenced by colonizers and slavers? Can we be more in touch with indigenous interpretations of birds without abandoning birding? At what point are we, also, as animals in this world, simply living in and experiencing these environments and when are we taxing resources or causing more harm than good?

A final side note: I was quite surprised to see so much Pittsburgh area action in the book! The book begins referencing a local birder, Frank Izaguirre's excellent labeling of the lifelook and fantastic cover designer- Melissa Dias-Mandoly who I had to Google- is Pittsburgh based as well.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading about Gannon's life and his travels birding across many locations. This book would hit the spot for both birders and people interested in memoirs and thoughts about indigeniety, identity, and the greater than human world. His analyses were engaging and refreshing even when the structure was a bit tough to follow. I hope that he pursues more writing and I look forward to reading more from him in the future.

This was also posted to my storygraph and goodreads.

Book Review: These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart

 

Image: the cover of the book is a pixelated and scrambled image of a feminine person from the neck up made of jumbled pinks, purples, and blues. The center of the face is very dark making it tough to make out their features. In large yellow letters going down word by word is the title of the book. I'm the center in small pink letters is the author Izzy Wasserstein.

Izzy Wasserstein's debut novella, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is what I would call a great start. It's a book I wanted more from, but there is something here worth expanding upon.   

The cover and title really caught my eye, both are great. The description sealed the deal- cyberpunk with an anarchist commune. The thing is that I believe this book had to be novel length to build the technothriller world the author wanted to create. Wasserstein's previous work is with short fiction, so it makes sense that she'd stick to a method she's familiar with. But, more time seemed to be spent on the political attributes which felt more real to me.   

Whenever I see a debut novel with a trans author and trans characters, I admit that I really want it to be good in a more personal way than other texts. I wanna give other trans folks praise, but I also don't write fake reviews. Luckily this book was at least giving me something to work with even if it wasn't perfect.  

 As other reviews have stated, Wasserstein makes the same error that many new writers do in not implementing the "show don't tell" aspect of good fiction writing. This is not the worst example I've seen, but I did frequently feel a rollercoaster of being immersed in the story then pulled back out by the telling aspect. I think, for instance, we could have understood the workings of the commune and corporations by what they were doing and how it felt to experience it rather than being told what they are and what they do and why like a pamphlet some of the time.   

There are lots of common cyberpunk noir themes that were executed ok enough to be enjoyable. But, they could have been expanded upon and meshed better with the world. I liked the juxtaposition of the commune life against the world of corporate rule though, it felt genuine.  

I liked the way being trans was used as a plot point in ways I won't expand too much upon to avoid spoilers. She might have gone a little too heavy on pre transition references (I heard more about the pre-t main character more than the present.) There is an interesting nature/nurture thing going on that also allows for choice rather than biological determinism (as should be our right) which I like. I like the idea of being faced with what others wanted us to be and learning to love all versions.   

I really did not like the sexual relationship that developed. If the book were not so mired in radical politics even in the ways character flaws were portrayed, it could have fit into high tech low life cyberpunk. Instead, the book portrayed something that was an inappropriate power dynamic at best as gee golly good and I felt a bit sick reading it.   

I found the afterword, written from the actual authors pov, to be somewhat off putting for this reason. It takes the tell over show thing to an even higher level by further analyzing her own story in language that is pretty academic when read right after the book. It then goes on to explain why said sexual relationship had to happen. I think the book would have been much better if a caring, platonic only relationship replaced it. Our culture always teaches us valid relationships have to be sexual.

I really do think this book has a good foundation though. The closing paragraphs before the afterword were very affecting. I really felt the last few melancholic sentences on a very intimate level. I wish it had ended there. I think this would be a great outline for a comic book or video game that has other media to help with world building. I think with some more time and practice that this author could put out a novel that really captures the world she has devised in her imagination.   

In the end, this book is short and imperfect, but interesting enough to give a chance especially given its length. I would definitely read the authors next book if it is written with things she learned from writing this one in mind and more time is spent with world building and show over tell.  

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Constructing Worlds Otherwise

 

Image: The cover of the book has an watercolor landscape background with hills, mountains, and forests at the very bottom and the rest made of an orange-cream colored sky. In front of the landscape is an illustration of a woman using highly saturated colors so that her skin appears a rich red-orange, her hair a dark violet. She is looking to the right and perched on her shoulder is a large monarch butterfly. Behind her head is a large orange circle looking like a halo made of a sunset. In the same color as the circle in large letters is the title of the book "constructing worlds otherwise" across the cream colored sky. Above and below the title in smaller violet letters is the author's name- Raúl Zibechi and the byline "societies in movement and anticolonial paths in latin america," "translated by George Ygarza Quispe."

Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America, written by Raúl Zibechi and translated by George Ygarza Quispe is a welcome window into the worlds of many radical movements and autonomous communities of resistance in Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Bolivia, as well as some non-latin America locations. Zibechi places much of his focus on movements that center indigenous resistance, womens liberation, Black liberation, and other such struggles. While he does also include the words and experiences of bigger name revolutionaries whose groups may have been more patriarchal in nature, he makes sure to discuss and include why the centering of women, Black, and/or indigenous people is not only ethically critical, but is strategically so as well. 

Let me first say that the translation by Quispe is quite good. I have not read the original as my Spanish is quite limited by what I have learned alone from duolingo and online classes, but I have read many translated texts from all over the world. One can often tell when a translation is dry, inaccurate, or simply a word for word reproduction that doesn't quite make sense to the new audience. Translation is an art form in both words and culture and I believe the passion of Zibechi was conveyed very well in this book. The book grips you from the start. 

I also like to inform the reader of my very unofficial assessment of the text's difficulty in terms of academia. On a 1 to 5 scale where 1 is "8th grade reading level" and 5 is "inexcusable big word crotch measuring contest," I would nestle this book somewhere around a fair 2.5. There are some words or referenced movements that a complete beginner may be unfamiliar with, but it is navigable with attention and effort.

I really enjoyed learning so much non-eurocentric history. As a USAmerican, even one who would like to know more about the world, we still tend to get buried by our country's false idea that we are the center of it and that there are a few other homogeneous continents. The variety of movements from different countries and cultures of Latin America as well as Rojava and Kurdish resistance are critical in understanding and thinking about how to build new worlds without capitalism and the state. I enjoyed learning a lot more about the Zapatistas, which I always knew I should know more about as well. It was also interesting to read more indepth about how critical women have been in these movements despite the universal assumption of maleness often hiding their efforts.

Zibechi is the kind of theorist that seeks out real life structures and analyzes them in order to ask new questions, rather than relying on idealist hypotheticals. While I am regularly accused of being an idealist, I also see how many of us can be naive when it comes to implementation of sustainable, long term, anti-authoritarian and autonomous communities. He discusses ways of resisting neoliberalism while avoiding stepping into the shoes of the oppressor (such as is the case with authoritarian communisms.) What stuck out to me in these ethnographies was how words and structures I often associate with authoritarians took on different meaning. There is discussion of the holding of territories and keeping them independent from paramilitary, authoritarian, and abusive structures. There is discussion of several different kinds of organized guards of communities that protect them without turning into cops. While I would like to read a larger book about the specifics of how these structures keep from turning authoritarian, we do get an idea of many of the ways that they both protect autonomous communities and resolve conflicts in ways that are needed. There is acknowledgement that even if we were to dismantle all oppression, people will still be human- flawed and conflicted at times - in need of guidance and occasionally ostracism or defense. 

The way Zibechi discusses nonhuman animals could have been better. There are sections where other animals are discussed solely as items of trade as if they are the same as inanimate objects. In another section, he mentions the importance of relationships with the nonhuman world, but I did not see this described much in practice. I do also think he falls a little bit into the infallible indigenous people trope, even though he is able to fairly critique the ways in which other movements may have issues with patriarchy for instance. He does acknowledge that indigenous people are highly variable, but seems to default to them having it "correct" so to speak. Being that things such as extinction of hunted species, various versions of strict gender roles, and other issues have followed humans everywhere they have migrated since leaving Africa, I would have liked more in depth analysis of those things in his discussion of indigenous communities. That said, this is a 200 page book and in that space, he can only cover so much.

Constructing Worlds Otherwise is an great look into the way new things can be created from the ashes of the old or simply outside of them. It is passionately written, well researched, and translated with great skill. I learned a lot and definitely recommend it to anyone seeking ways of being outside of oppressive systems of control and exploitation.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Defying Displacement

Image: the cover of the book is an off white background with a black and gray silhouetted city skyline across the bottom. A crane extends up along the right side and across the top. Below that in large red letters is "defying displacement." Below that in gray letters is "urban recomposition and social war." Below that in black letters is "Andrew Lee."

Defying Displacement is one of the best texts I've read regarding gentrification and related struggles. Don't let the length fool you though. Andrew Lee uses it quite well and packs a ton of well researched info into a short space. I wish more books were focused like this one is on quality of information rather than filling space. The book is not simply an academic exercise though, which brings me to more of its strengths.

While there is a little jargon here and there, DD is overall accessibly written. Much can be said about texts written about target populations and struggles in a language that only those with expensive educations tend to speak and/or can easily grasp. More than the accessibility aspect though, there is real style to this book. It is artfully constructed in both how it's written and how it's organized. The book has a sort of narrative arc in a way despite being full of short chapters that sometimes jump from place to place. Lee has a way with words that drew me into the struggles he was discussing. He uses more quotes from people experiencing and resisting gentrification than he does quotes from outside "experts" on the issue. He focuses on those who may not have the academic language for what they're doing, but who have real experience in the struggle in ways that are even more valuable than those who joined based on the category of resistance. I imagine that any reader would have a tough time making an argument against his points.

Much of the text discusses issues around gentrification that are common in every text on the topic- (usually) white people and business owners move into a low income neighborhood (often) of color and systematically displace those people by raising housing costs and attracting their friends and colleagues who then paint the original inhabitants as a problem. Lee delves deeper into how exactly these things occur and how tech industries especially have come to play a major part.  He also discusses how these industries often still require labor from the displaced people, not only making their rent skyrocket, but requiring them to still find a way to commute back to work in the area for the gentrifiers.

Lee also goes over the many ways that initiatives that may seem good to an outsider are used as vehicles of gentrification. Things like "eco friendly transit" can be used as a trojan horse for gentrification. The proponents may even claim that it will help current residents before promptly finding ways to force them out. Another effort would be to bring "the arts" or other developments to the area, ignoring and often removing the art and culture already existing there.

Lee also has criticisms and suggestions for various leftist movements. He discusses the real issues with flattening the "working class" into a homogenous group. He also discusses the problems with trying to apply the exact politics of leftist movements from decades ago onto the world of today. We must be more creative in how we approach problems, especially with how ingrained the tech industries are that were not present in the days of Lenin or Goldman.

There are many more discussions woven throughout the text which reads to me like a simultaneous human interest story, academic essay, and grounded manifesto. I really enjoyed Lee's artful way of telling a story using what can often be dense or confusing bits of info. If someone wanted a book on gentrification, either a beginner or someone with experience, I'd feel comfortable handing them this. As a side note, AK Press' printing has great graphic design, making reading all the more engaging and enjoyable.

This was also posted to my storygraph and goodreads.

Book Review: Uncharted

 

Image: the cover of the book is a cream background with a purple line curving back abd forth across the cover before shooting up to the right and fading to light blue. In large black letters is the title "uncharted" and below that in red letters in between the curves of the purple line is, "how scientists navigate their own health, research, and experiences of bias." Across the bottom in yellow letters is, "edited by skylar bayer and gabi serrato marks"

Being a book reviewer who apparently can't read, I initially processed the byline of Uncharted as being about researchers navigating their health and research bias rather than sharing their experiences of such. In hindsight it would have been weird if a book about disabled researchers was all them talking about discriminating against other people. In reality, this book does what it actually says in the title and collects the voices of disabled and chronically ill researchers discussing their experience with a wide variety of things in their fields and elsewhere.

This book has one of the most diverse sets of people across the essays included that I have encountered in an anthology. I admittedly expected a book with any sort of academia to be skewed in a certain direction. Instead this book offers a wide range of disabilities, ages, genders, economic backgrounds, countries of origin, races, and science fields. No book is ever perfect at covering every demographic, of course. Since this is an English text there's going to be some skewing there for instance. Yet, I can't recall the last time that I ran into an anthology with people from so many different life experiences.

I also found the essays in this book to be pretty good across the board. Some moved me more than others, but I think that all of them had something to offer the reader. I have to reiterate how nice it was to see a wide range of disabilities and chronic illnesses mentioned because it really covered a wide range of barriers that both disabled and non-disabled researchers would benefit from overcoming. Some of the participants saw their disability as part of them and something they did not wish to change. Other participants, such as some with chronic illness, wanted their problems to get better or go away. There was a wide range of discussion of everything in between as well. Multiple contributors discuss the social model of disability including its benefits and flaws. One of my favorite essays included a researcher who discussed how the social model of disability can also be used to make sure people, such as those who speak other languages or who aren't fluent in English, can be better included in research.

There were of course many stories of strife and struggle in this book. These ranged from struggles with literal physical barriers such as the lack of wheelchair accessibility in so many fields and buildings to the responses of advisors and colleagues ranging from dismissive to reprehensible. There are also many stories of people coming together to include their colleagues with disabilities. It is clear that that is not enough. Without systemic change, many people with disabilities are still relying on the kindness of other scientists and grad students who are also overwhelmed. Disabled people should not have to rely on such an unstable structure in order to be able to participate. Luckily there are some institutions who are trying to do better who are detailed by some of the contributors.

The design of the print book also had accessibility in mind to a certain extent. I liked how each grouping of essays got its own small introduction. They were content warnings at the start of each essay. The book was written in accessible language for the most part. There are illustrations either of the contributors or sometimes other images at the beginning of each entry, but there are not any image descriptions. Since I did not use an audio or ebook, maybe those are present there. Since there are blind contributors it seems like this was an oversight not to include descriptions if it isn't an audiobook or ebook.

For those of you reading who may be on the collective/total liberation spectrum wondering if you will be forced to endure people who harm nonhuman animals discussing the difficulties with access while completely ignoring their literal disabling/exploiting/killing of their victims in laboratory cages, fear not. There are so many different research fields portrayed here and that those who mentioned doing work with other animals were people doing field work such as ecology or climate research. If there are any who are doing captive animal research, they didn't mention it, but I admittedly did not Google every person.

One of the most important messages this book is that accessibility helps everyone. Accessibility for disabled people should be reason enough to include it in every structure and system. However, even people without disabilities or disabled folks without each other's disabilities will benefit from accessibility for all. Not only do accessible systems often make things easier for abled people as well, this book makes clear just how many brilliant scientists we are deprived of overall when they can't even get in the door or sustain the grueling grad program that is a struggle for even those without chronic illness. Disabled people who don't use wheelchairs and abled people both benefit from wheelchair accessibility. Healthy disabled people and abled people both benefit from structures that allow more flexibility for those with chronic illness. Even the most self-centered abled person on Earth must reckon with the reality that even they will benefit. This book reminds us how important it is to see accessibility as solidarity and as a collective liberation effort rather than an optional form of charity.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Bird's-Eye Views

 

 

Image: the cover of the book shows an emu and two different species of geese hanging out together and facing towards the camera against a backdrop of dense trees. On the top is a cascade of several shades of green with the book title and author's name. Bird's eye views - queer queeies about activism, animals, and identity - pattrice jones.

I want to start this review by saying that Bird's-Eye Views is the first book from Vine Sanctuary press. If you don't already know, VINE sanctuary is a massive lgbtq founded and led sanctuary for animals who have been rescued from farming and other exploitation industries. They do a massive amount of work with a tight budget including everything from creating a very groundbreaking multi-species community where the sanctuary residents have much more agency than many rescues, rehabbing animals like roosters abused in cockfighting (that even rescues often incorrectly assume must be killed,) running programs for students and children, book clubs and talks, podcasts and other education efforts, lgbtq and anti-racist organizing, and many others. Despite all of this they don't have the social media reach or funding of many sanctuaries including those that are much smaller. Purchasing this book will support that sanctuary and their residents. Go and give them a follow in your socials as well.  

All of that said, I write honest reviews and this is not an obligatory positive review. I've given 1 star to bad books by people I admire before and luckily didn't have to do that here! This book is fantastic.  

Pattrice Jones has a long history in organizing, education, and writing. She has a knack for writing about a variety of things in accessible language. I had encountered her essays here and there in anthologies, but it was her book Oxen at the Intersection that made her one of my favorite authors. It was one of those books involving animal liberation that said all the things that I wish people would say more. As a result, when I saw that this book of essays was coming out and that it would include many that had not been accessible before, I was very excited.  

This book has many essays about birds and other animals, but also includes topics like rent strikes, anti-war efforts, direct action and tactical discussion, climate change, anarchism, feminism, etc. I do really love that this book focuses so much on birds, though. A lot of animal lib/rights/rescue focuses on mammals because humans often relate to fellow mammals more than we do other species. This text focuses on birds in a way that really draws the reader in from a variety of entry points.   

I was quite impressed by how varied these essays were- coming from expected discussions of animal liberation, anarcho/eco/feminism, and lgbtq organizing to topics like art, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. You can see how much pattrice understands and thinks about these issues and how she's able to deftly navigate each of these topics in a way that makes a ton of sense.  I generally stick page flags throughout nonfiction books of any topic, but this is one of those books where I ended up putting flags on entire chapters because I was highlighting so many passages. There is something about the way pattrice writes that adds something new to the discourses around all of these topics.   

I have a hard line rule about reading about and watching animal suffering. I generally do not do it anymore except for in very particular circumstances. Let me first be clear that this book is not full of graphic discussions of animal suffering, on the contrary. However in sections where it is discussed, this is one of the times that I did not skip over the sections. Pattrice discusses the experience of birds in a way that draws the reader into their minds and what it might be like to live their lives. It helps me feel not just completely overwhelmed and defeated by the suffering, but motivated to do and think more about it. Her descriptions for instance of what it must be like to be a battery hen will bring tears to my eyes, but then push me forward to the next evolution in thinking. I'm sure it also helps to know that the person writing it may be doing so while surrounded by many birds who were able to make it out thanks to the sanctuary.  

Many articles really stuck out for me as saying something so important yet so needed in various discourses. There is an anarchist essay on the idea of property and communication within and across species that really got the gears turning in my head as did discussions of "natural anarchism" in more than human communities of other species. The discussions taking place around tactical divisions and false dichotomies of "welfarist" vs "abolitionist" (and the armchair authoritarian men often involved) has always been necessary and unfortunately continues to be so. There were multiple pieces that were about Queer love and solidarity that made my often pessimistic Queer heart grow three times it's size. I didn't expect to smile so much at times during this book. Some of the articles that were only published in other languages in the past were really good and I'm glad that they've been published here in English. Pattrice also navigates the difficult discussion of indigenous human beings and their effects on other animals who were there before humans arrived.* Along with all of these, I really enjoyed the "(non)human interest" stories (I don't know another name for the genre) that are peppered throughout the essays where we get to learn about the lives of individual sanctuary residents.   

The only thing I would like to hear more about from this book, and part of it is because many of these essays are older, is even more expansion of gender politics. There is a lot of discussion of men being in charge of many exploitation industries which is overall been true throughout history especially of white men. However, particularly in countries like the USA, as (especially white) women break more and more glass ceilings only to join in furthering the same kinds of oppression, and as people of other marginalized groups do the same, I would like to see more complex analysis. I don't think we can merely say that these people are copying white patriarchy, there are intersections here that are complicated and I would love to hear interesting takes on those intersections of hierarchy and oppression coming together that I'm sure she has lots of thoughts on. That is not to say that things like whiteness are never acknowledged in this book, on the contrary. Combatting white supremacy is a core tenet of this text. I'm addressing specifically eco-feminist essays, especially ones from decades ago.  

The way pattrice wraps up the book really touched me. She acknowledges how reckoning with all of these things discussed in the book can feel so incredibly defeating. Everything feels so big, so horrifying, so.... Inevitable. It can often feel like we shouldn't even try anymore. The author acknowledges this feeling well, but also reminds us why it's important to keep going. After all, any good anarchist knows that it's not the final destination that we're striving for, but the consistent and everlasting journey towards liberation.  

* With the exception of humans in Africa where we all originated, those we call indigenous humans were the first to arrive in that location. They were not the first animals to exist there. In some of these cases, the arrival of humans led to the endangering or even extinction of species. When followed up later by European Colonialism, you get something a million times larger and more devastating for indigenous humans and tons more species. We must also think about indigenous species in discussions of who deserves space and stay away from forcing indigenous humans into a monolith of a single people who all resemble white people's notions of a modern day environmentalistwith indigenous heritage.

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Creating Our Own Lives

 

Image: the cover of the book is a white background with "creating our own lives" in large red letters in the center. At the bottom is "Michael Gill and Beth Myers, editors" abd at the top is "college students with intellectual disability." In the rest of the white space are a bunch of illustrations of backpacks of many different colors and styles.

Creating Our Own Lives is a groundbreaking collection. This is true not only for the world at large but also for the most niche realms of disability justice and scholarship. All too often, intellectually and developmentally disabled (I will use I&DD for brevity) people are left out of disability discourse, or worse, are intentionally abandoned so that other disabled folks can prove that they're not like them. Collecting these voices of intellectually disabled folks about their experiences with higher education is truly admirable and absolutely crucial for disability justice to succeed for all.   

There are a wide variety of voices in this book with a wide range of intellectual disabilities and support needs. Some entries are composed by a single disabled author, while others include multiple voices from both the disabled author and their family, tutor, friend, mentor, etc. We end up with a snapshot of the many ways people can experience college, what they want from it, and how they can best be included with other students rather than solely placed in a separate facility. Some authors also include poetry or other creative forms of expression with their entries. 

The common thread that was woven throughout these essays was the importance of the college experience. This book offered a welcome challenge to my internalized capitalism and meritocracy. Even as a disabled anarchist who initially went to college for art (later psychology) knowing that there was no money there, to learn and experience new things, I found myself asking, "but is this going to get you a job that will make a living wage? Will you be able to pay off debt? Are you learning the (right, valuable, constructive, etc) things?" It was fantastic to be pushed back into the thinking that I want to have- that there is value in the experience and learning in and of themselves that should be available to all. This is not to say that they didn't learn important things that benefitted them later- they certainly did and that's clear.  

This book also did not shy away from some of the specific dangers and hurtles faced by students with intellectual disabilities. One author along with her family recounts the experience of rape, calling attention to the frequency at which women and girls (and frankly, all other genders) with I&DD are targets of predators. Others discussed how their race, sexuality, nationality, specific access needs, etc affected their experiences. The way many people describe their experiences and how they process the world offers a much better look into their lives than textbooks written by non-I&DD professionals.   

I was also left with some worries. There are a few programs mentioned multiple times throughout that I had not previously heard of and thus would like more information on. There is also a thread of the authors generally having suppotive family and friends and enough financial support to cover the costs of education and all of the supports around it. I used to work with I&DD folks who were mostly middle age and older adults, many of whom had few to no supports and lived in poverty. How can we make these programs accessible to them?   

Another thing that really worried me was the frequent mention of unpaid internships. Unpaid internships are already exploitative and shady when the people slaving under them don't have I&DD. When you take into account that the USA allows disabled people to be paid sub-minimum wage and the fact that many of the contributors were seeking jobs in things like food service, teachers assistants, early childhood support, etc, unpaid internships seem like a great way for corporations to both profit from an image of "helping" disabled people while having them work without pay. Perhaps there's a small modicum of redeemability if an internship leads you to a high pay job where you can recover from working for nothing. This is not the case with many of the jobs sought out here. Generally, people who join food service jobs, for instance, go through training at their location and are paid during that time. There's no reason that should change for an I&DD person. I do not feel that the editors reckoned enough with these possibilities of exploitation. They did discuss ableism and interconnected oppressions, but seemed to see these programs as an antidote.  

In the end, my question is: Are these programs equitably designed or are they a drink of water in the desert? It's probably a bit of both. Nonetheless, this book exists as an important step forward and justly highlights the voices of people who often remain unheard and unseen. I hope that it leads to more scholarship in this direction.  

This was also posted to my goodreads.

Book Review: Mad World

Image: The cover of the book is a white background with blue, black, and orange arrows pointing to a white silhouette of a profile of someone head in the center. In the upper left corner is mad world in black letters on a white background. In the upper left corner is Mica Frazer-Carroll, the politics of mental health in white letters on a black background.

Mica Frazer-Carroll's Mad World is a decent addition to the field of both radical mental health and academia around mental health and disability justice. The author tells us early on that she has a depersonalization disorder diagnosis, and she sometimes mentions this throughout the rest of the book but does not make the error of constantly using herself as a case study which I appreciate. The author is British so there is a lot of history that I learned about mental health and access in that area that I didn't know about as a US American. Much of it mirrors the history here. There are also bits of disability justice, anti-psychiatry, and radical mental health movement history that I did not know about before- including in the USA- despite having read a lot of different texts on the subject. For example , I didn't know that the anti-psychiatry movement spanned political positions on the left and right, ranging from freedom to be oneself to freedom to not have society pay for the cost of medical care and whatnot. 

This book also captures well how awful psychiatry has been and how much abuse and absolute wrongdoing has occurred within it. It does this without absolutely burying you in the horrific details. I believe she gives you enough information to know what she's talking about without completely overwhelming the reader. I am also a person who has dealt with some of these abuses personally and have seen others deal with them. There's a long history of psychiatry being used against everyone from enslaved people to activists. At the same time my personal experience has not led me to a fully anti-psychiatry position, just as abuses in other medical fields have not led me to be anti-modern medicine- which leads me to my next point.  

This book has some flaws that I see across lots of radical mental health texts, however I do think that the author approaches it with more nuance than many others do. I like that this book asks more questions than it answers. It asks a lot of, "what if we did things x way," sort of questions. However, like many of these sorts of texts, people with very extreme and unglamorous symptoms of mental illness are not really included as much as they should be. We don't fit The narrative of just being sort of different and needing a sort of different society.  

This is very personal for me, so it often colors my ability to read these things in ways that I'm not sure are constructive. I have very extreme OCD that ruins my life. I think about getting actual brain surgery on a daily basis. OCD is not just a different way of viewing the world requiring environmental or systemic change. In fact, relying on that can strengthen OCDs grip. My closest family member suffers from very severe paranoid psychosis and has been on the run for many years- including bouts of homelessness and disappearance- because her brain has led her to believe that almost everyone she sees or interacts with is in on a gang stalking plot. This text talks about hearing voices as some sort of spiritual experience and even discusses entertaining and validating delusions because you can never really know - which I guess may be true with spirituality. The unfortunate fact is that the vast majority of people with psychosis have paranoid psychosis. Are these things caused by stressors and lack of social access to needs? They're absolutely exacerbated by them and isolation definitely can trigger episodes. A social and systemic change model would undoubtedly help these people. I'm not denying that. But, in my experience, when dealing with people with paranoid psychosis or severe OCD or any other number of unglamorous and torturous symptoms, most people disappear. Most people do not want to provide support and create the community-based things that we need- including radical mental health advocates.  

This is what is so devastating about this sort of thing. There is just criticism of the neoliberal mental health awareness movement and how it places the onus on individual change as the solution. Part of this awareness is that they want awareness of people who have something like short-term mild depression and are able to get out of it by joining a gym and taking an antidepressant and then becoming a "productive member of society." Radical mental health is unfortunately not immune to that same sort of influence. When you're really in the trenches dealing with people who are living in absolute hell, it's quite difficult to believe that the biomedical model isn't pretty important, however flawed. Furthermore with things like schizophrenia, there is marked brain damage and measurable effects of the disease that this book claims are not present in psychiatry. This is why all of it is frustrating because radical mental health tends to be about whatever diagnoses or getting the most attention at the time. And the people able to advocate and get that attention are usually the people who are the "highest functioning" and widely appealing, as is true in any movement.  

Another contradiction is that she acknowledges one of the problems with psychiatry and diagnosis is poor inter-rater reliability. This means that from professional to professional they may not come up with the same diagnosis. This is true across all medical fields, but is especially true of psychiatry. I agree. The issue then is that she goes on to support self-diagnosis by people with no training and experience in the field. If the inter-rater reliability between people who are trained is bad, it's going to be even worse between people who aren't. I'm not saying self dx people don't read or research. But, there is a lot of overlap between things and over the decades I have seen various diagnoses be the one that people are seeking out because it is the one that people are talking about the most. Even professionals are not immune from this. This is worse now with the advent of social media. And if one of the main criticisms of psychiatry is that it pathologizes non-normativity, why is there such a strong movement to change diagnosis to include more non-normativity and to allow anyone to diagnose themselves with anything? Nobody wants to get a diagnosis of OCD even though that may be a more correct diagnosis for them than one of autism. People cannot self diagnose with a disorder that includes psychosis because one of the markers of psychosis is not knowing you are experiencing it.  

I may be being unfair here because the author makes it very clear in one chapter that the division between a binary biomedical model and a social model of disability isn't really something that exists. She also acknowledges that we can seek radical mental health while still believing that we want treatment or cures. However much of the book is still devoted to focusing on a more social or systemic change model. She does jump around though. I found myself frustrated with a chapter or two, but then she would move on to the next and I would be back on board.  

The best parts were where she did balance these things and discussed innovative ways of dealing with various symptoms. Some of the discussions with indigenous healers and how they dealt with people hearing voices, having hallucinations, or dealing with delusions were interesting. I would like to see things like this taking up massive amounts of space and radical mental health texts and guides. I also like that she talked about people creating maps of how to help them when they are really going through it. The key is to create these things and one is in a more stable position. In the case of something like severe psychosis though, getting to that stable position is near impossible without the biomedical model. It does happen, but the vast majority of people that I have known and spoken to who have dealt with psychosis have said that involuntary treatment, while absolutely harrowing, was the only thing that brought them back to themselves.  

Near the end of the book she talks about the importance of not leaving anyone behind and not abandoning people with one form of illness in order for another to advance. This is not talked about enough in radical mental health or any other disability justice circles. I've seen Eli Clare and some others discuss, for instance, the abandonment of people with intellectual disability when people with other disabilities focus on telling everyone how intelligent they are. To be a broken record, in radical mental health, people with more extreme symptoms are often abandoned or spoken about incorrectly while other people pathologize difference in behavior and apply diagnosis to it sometimes even after multiple professionals have told them that the diagnosis does not fit. This then changes what that diagnosis means and leads down the path of seeing the people who actually have more extreme access needs being seen as the bad kind of people with that diagnosis (if they are seen at all.) Many people with an autism diagnosis from a young age for instance do not have this diagnosis because they are "privileged." They have the diagnosis because their access needs were so great that they ended up being diagnosed early on in life. This shit is messy and complicated and I'm glad that this author was able to discuss directly the importance of not leaving behind those who may adhere more toward the biomedical model or who may have needs that are isolating.  

Overall, in spite of my ranting criticisms at times, this is a really good book written by someone who clearly cares about the issue and did their best to span the wide variety of viewpoints and experiences that exist across the world of madness and mental illness. This text is a valuable one and both organizes and enriches these discussions.

This was also posted to my Goodreads.

Book Review: Rattling the Cages

 

Image: The cover of the book is a black background with an illustration of a hand reaching up from the bottom of the cover to pull the cord to turn on a light bulb that extends down from the top of the cover in yellow. Across the top of the book and large yellow block letters is rattling the cages. Hello that in smaller white letters is oral histories of North American political prisoners. In the bottom right corner and white and yellow letters is foreword by Angela y Davis, introduction by Sarah falconer, and edited by Josh Davidson with Eric King.

I was really impressed with Rattling the Cages and how well thought out and organized this collection of political prisoner interviews was. It's a hefty volume and includes a lot of people. The book was composed in tandem with some political prisoners which really increases it's ability to cover many of the things that prisoners deal with and endure.

To speak on the organization of it first, I really love that this book was written with everyone in mind. What I mean by this is that there are copious footnotes, a glossary, and many other descriptors describing what various movements, political prisoners, abbreviations, slang terms, and many other things that a person who isn't super familiar with the history and present of various forms of resistance may not know about. Speaking from my own experience, there are many prisoners here that I remember their stories because I was alive during them and watching them happen in real time. I'm 41 years old and so I recall people like Daniel McGowan, Chelsea Manning, etc as well as many of the people that came after them. However I was not alive for people who were arrested in the '70s for instance. It was really helpful to have all of the different movements and their participants briefly but well described for me as I went along. I really wish more texts were written like this. It can be very frustrating to read far left texts, especially about populations of people who lack access to academia like prisoners, be written in a language that very few people can actually understand. It can also become easy to forget what we didn't know before we became active and use a bunch of jargon. The people who wrote and edited this book definitely had these things in mind which I appreciate. I feel like you could hand it to anyone who is able to read English and they would be able to grasp what's going on.

There are a lot of different threads that move throughout these entries. Some participants talked more than others but they were all answering similar questions. There are many things that differ from person to person and from prison to prison (or sometimes jail to jail.) But, there are also many currents that ran through almost every entry. One of the most common was the racial division and prisons and how it could be dealt with based on whether it was a men's or women's prison. There were a couple of people who were in specific situations such as Chelsea Manning being in a military prison where she was one of the only white people or David Campbell in Rikers Island where this isn't as big a thing. But, almost all white people were initially expected to hug up with white supremacists. In women's prisons it was often a place where white prisoners could challenge this very directly and in men's prisons, the retribution was often far more violent and dangerous, so they would have to be more careful and how they approached resistance to white supremacy. Another common theme is how much compromise you have to have with other people in prisons. In some ways I kept thinking how much we could learn about conflict resolution from prisoners because of this. Movements of all types can often end up being a niche echo chamber with lots of people with exactly the same beliefs. At the internet to that and it's even more extreme. How much can we learn from people placed into a hell hole microcosm with a wide range of people all packed together like sardines who managed to find a way to navigate through that and in some cases even organize people and get them to overcome some of their prejudices? That said, everyone was very clear that you should not go in as an activist talking about how you're going to organize everyone and instead, if you have not been in prison before, to be quiet, observe, and treat the prisoners who've been there as the ones who know what's up.

As I mentioned, there were a lot of differences between men's and women's prisons. There are a lot of differences between different men's prisons and different women's prisons as well, but the gender and general seems to have an effect. Women were more likely to be doing care work and taking care of one another than men. This is perhaps unsurprising, but stands out as a more controlled study of human behavior since everyone is in this box they can't escape. There were some male prisoners who took on a more macho role, but many others who carried this sort of care work to other prisoners behind the scenes. Ed Mead impressed the shit out of me. I honestly didn't know much about him before this, but reading about his efforts to combat prison rape, homophobia, etc were pretty amazing. I would never expect you could start a men against patriarchy group in prison, but he did it somehow (and a lot of other really cool things.) There are lots of people that stood out to me and lots of people who did great things organizing people. To list them all would make this review for too long.

One thing I'm really grateful for that this book did for me was get my ass in gear about spending more time with writing my prisoner pen pals. With all of my recent struggles in life I have put it off. I know it's important. However, reading every single prisoner talk about how critical outside support is really reminded me why I started doing it in the first place. People talking about it being the one time they got to escape the place, sitting there reading letters from other people, was motivating. Jake Conroy even gave me some great ideas on conversation starters. This week I sent my prisoner pen pals "desert Island questions" as he described one of his pen pals sending to him. If you aren't already writing to someone, consider making it a regular thing. There are organizations like anarchist black cross, certain days, black and pink, etc who have nifty guides on helping you get started. It truly is life-changing to have that connection. Every single entry mentions this.

Another action point that was mentioned multiple times, and described in depth by Daniel McGowan, was the issue of how prisoner support and politicization has gone downhill over the recent decades. There is some support for more famous political prisoners like Mumia and Peltier, but tons of political prisoners today aren't even known by name let alone supported. Apparently during the civil Rights era, the amount of prisoners that were radical was also much higher. So you have a less politicized prison population and less support for political prisoners right now. This is something that needs to change. It can start by doing little things like donating to their commissary, writing, visiting, etc as individual actions, but there also needs to be coordinated organizing to support political prisoners. We cannot allow the state to just lock people away who are taking the biggest risks in terms of organizing and activism.

I think this is a book that pretty much everybody should read. This is one of those things where human beings are locked behind these giant structures and so easily hidden away. It is easy for those on the outside to forget about them because it's designed that way. It's designed to break people down turn them into numbers, slave labor, etc. I think empathy is a good exercise in general, but very particularly here, thinking about and embodying the words collected in this book really helps drive home how even the little things we could do can really make big impacts. I hope folks will read this book and also take action to connect with political prisoners however they're able.

This was also posted to my Goodreads.