Macht

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Der Buchtitel ist clever gewählt - Liv fühlt sich machtlos, auch viele Jahre nach ihrer Vergewaltigung, mit dem Geschehenen umzugehen. Nur der Leserschaft gewährt sie einen Einblick in ihre Gefühlswelt, lässt uns von ihrem Schmerz und ihrer Verweigerung, ihr Leben lang eine Vergewaltigte zu sein, wissen. Auf eine eindringliche und bewegende Art und Weise schreibt Heidi Furre über die Spuren, die sexuelle Gewalt hinterlässt - und davon, wie Betroffene selber wieder Macht ergreifen können. Während die erste Hälfte des Romans schon fast beklemmend wirkt, kommt im letzten Drittel schlussendlich die notwendige Leichtigkeit auf, um mit einer so eindrücklichen Thematik abzuschließen. Mein einziger Kritikpunkt ist, dass ich gerne mehr Zeit mit Liv's Ehepartner, ihren Kindern, und ihrer besten Freundin Frances gehabt hätte, die oft wie Statisten auf einem Filmset wirkten, und die mir so wenig in Erinnerung bleiben werden.

Yes Yes More More

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Yes Yes More More features fifteen slice-of-life stories that brim with quiet joy; vivid and incredibly tender at the same time.

To be honest, I wasn't sure whether I would get on with Wood's "no plot just vibes" approach to her stories when I started but I am glad to report that I found this debut collection quite charming. There is a warmth and zest for life in Wood's writing that is remarkable.

At the center of these stories is the spirited Annie Marshall who we meet at various points in her life as well as a recurring cast of characters, most importantly her friends Stella, Janey, and Claire, as well as some other minor characters. It's not always obvious to the reader who narrates each story, one needs to do a little unpicking, some close reading, but in my opinion that is part of the fun of these stories and it's great to see the characters you've grown to care about pop up again unexpectedly.

Woods places these characters in everyday situations: job interviews, travel, nights out, lunch with a coworker, or a chance encounter. To say that these are stories in which nothing happens would do a disservice to Wood. Rather she sets up stories in a way that the reader waits for moments the situation spins out of control and then subverts that expectation to reveal that sometimes you don't need to have bad things happen to make for a good story. How refreshing. Instead, young girls spend an afternoon on acid to end up safe and sound at home in their pyjamas with a warm beverage, a mom runs into her late daughter's best friend after many years and they reminisce, two women go to a cabin in the woods and no one tries to murder them. There is heartbreak and new love and friendship and disappointments and weddings and babies and sex, some good some bad. In other words: life.

Blood Feast

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Fourteen short stories by the late Moroccan writer.

Moustadraf writes about the injustice of living in a patriarchal society, the violence marginalized groups are subjected to, and how identity is shaped under these circumstances.

A transgender sex worker reflects on how little acceptance she has experienced in Just Different, in Woman: A Djellaba and a Packet of Milk a mother contemplates suicide when she is unable to find formula for her infant son, in Briwat a young man longs for a girl who made the most delicious fried pastries, and in Housefly, a young mother considers having an affair.

These stories are intentionally bleak. I can't think of a single good thing to come out of these stories, often they're filled with abuse and discrimination (thankfully not in graphic detail but if you feel uncomfortable with any of that please read the trigger warnings beforehand).

To me, this collection maybe more than others felt like a mosaic where each piece is not that remarkable but as a whole paints a picture of patriarchal structures and gender norms in contemporary Morocco. Worth a read if you want to know more about the region but you should have some basic knowledge about cultural practices there.

Between the World and Me

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Written as a personal letter to his adolescent son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers an emotionally charged and blunt account of the reality of Black men (and to a lesser degree Black women) in the US based on his own experiences as well as his hopes and fears for his teenage son.

"My work is to give you what I know of my own particular path while allowing you to walk on your own".

From his childhood home in Baltimore to the Mecca of Howard University to trips to Paris with his family, Coates' conveys to the reader what it is like to walk in his shoes, to feel no autonomy over one's body or future, and no possibility to keep his son safe from harm in a society that profits from the destruction and disenfranchisement of Black bodies.

"I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it".

It is raw and intimate and powerful: every paragraph felt like a gut punch.

Ma and Me

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Ma and Me is a stunning memoir that wrestles with the question of what we owe the people that gave us life.

Putsata Reang is barely one year old when her family has to flee Cambodia for America. She only survives the perilous journey because of the hope and determination of her mother who she in turn feels indebted to. It is this sense of filial duty to please her mother, to be a good Cambodian daughter, while exploring the opportunities she has in America that causes a rift between them from the moment Putsata comes out as gay, something that her mother cannot accept.

“I would realize that the day a Khmer girl is born is the day she comes into debt, purely by the fact of her existence. That she owes her parents for bringing her into the world, for raising her, and that the only way she can settle the score, or sang khun, is by getting married, when the authority over her is transferred from her parents to her husband”.

As much as Ma and Me is a memoir about forging your own path and the rift that that can cause, it is also an exploration of the trauma of war and how its horrors can trickle down several generations. Putsata often seeks opportunities to travel to Cambodia, and later works there as a journalist to reconcile her family’s past and present: “I needed to figure out what part of the guilt that comes with being an immigrant and a survivor belonged to me, and what belonged to my parents.”

Ma and Me may be a memoir of one person, chronicling one experience, but it asks universal questions about how we are shaped by our parents' past, and how difficult it can be to stay true to yourself even when it means disappointing the people you love.

W-3

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I read W-3 four months ago and I still think about certain scenes at least once a week. It's really that good.

In this sharp, dark, and comical memoir Bette Howland depicts the time she spent on the psychiatric ward dubbed W-3 in the late 1960s. Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space, who rediscovered Howland's memoir, once said: "I’m interested in writers who have a complicated relationship with that word ‘I’. I love the way W-3 upends expectations for a memoir. The way she pays attention to the world of W-3, the other patients, the doctors, the visitors. And how we come to know her through what she notices about others." It is exactly this, Howland's directing our attention outward rather than inward, that make this memoir stand out.

Despite its heavy subject matter (Howland attempted suicide in her friend Saul Bellow's apartment), there is a surprising amount of humour interspersed which help create some necessary levity. One scene in particular comes to mind that involves the patients of W-3 role-playing and imitating each other. By that point, we know the people Howland meets so intimately that without much clarifying we can identify which person is being imitated.

W-3 is one of the best memoirs I have ever read and I am very glad that her work and talent are posthumously being recognized and celebrated.

Tiny Moons (eBook, ePUB)

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This book had me craving dumplings for weeks. Nina Mingya Powles is a brilliant observer and writer. This is a wonderful short book for anyone who has ever found comfort in cooking or simply just eating food.

Everything I Know About Love

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I went into this book thinking this would just be a quirky memoir about navigating the dating scene in your twenties, about falling in love and getting over a breakup but it turned out to be so much more than that. In Everything I know about Love, Dolly Alderton describes the highs and lows of growing up/older, falling in love with the wrong people (or for the wrong reasons), finding friends who you know like the back of your hand and who are there for you no matter what, and realizing that the only person she needs is herself. This is a great book for the young women in your life!