Reviews Archives - Page 17 of 218 - The Rumpus

To Become A Kind Person Who Also Writes Books: Body Work by Melissa Febos

The ethics of Body Work are not necessarily that we writers and lovers must achieve perfect consistency between our behaviors (shopping at Sephora) and our politics (beauty standards are harmful), or between our desires (to be rewarded, both intangibly and commercially, for our adherence to dominant culture) and our values (to resist that dominance).

At the Crossing Between Words: Migrant Psalms by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

The actor stares the audience in the eye—shattering the fourth wall, and we’re implored to see better. Holnes challenges us to view our realities as multifaceted and dynamic—there are no neat boxes, no easy definitions.

Apocalypse Yesterday: Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes

The Membranes is a climate novel not because it contends with catastrophe, but because it shows that everydayness has a way of proceeding alongside disaster.

A Dreamscape of Longing: Two Big Differences by Ian Ross Singleton

Zina’s observations of her time in Detroit crystallize both a feeling of otherness and a wry critique of the young American activists who celebrated socialist ideas without fully appreciating the legacy of Soviet rule in Ukraine.

Using Form to Transform: Come Clean by Joshua Nguyen

If I had a dollar for every word I have written about BIPOC representation in entertainment media, I still wouldn’t have enough to pay back my student loans and car loans.

The Everyday Practice of Art:The Loft Generation by Edith Schloss

Her writing is quiet, perhaps even naive. But Schloss is enamored by the minutiae of her subjects, and the exactness and delicacy of her details ripple out like water. Trying to focus on one aspect of the book would be to let the entire thing go.

In Praise of Young Little Luxuries: Rax King’s Tacky

Her enthusiasm . . . leaves you a little raw, thinking about the things in your own adolescence you could have enjoyed more if you hadn’t learned so early the most ironic ways to protect your heart . . .

A Gentle Touch: Annie Hartnett’s Unlikely Animals

What’s special about Hartnett’s chorus of the dead, though, is that they stress the tension between overlapping realities.

How to Watch While Being Watched: Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Borealis

The experience, rather than linear, is borealian.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Eugene Lim’s Search History

Lim has written before about experimental fiction and the need to slough off such conventions of narrative as plot.

Metaphor by Any Means Necessary: Destiny O. Birdsong’s Negotiations

Metaphor can make life more bearable, meaningful, or simply comprehensible.

A Sinister Kind of Beauty: Joanna Pearson’s Now You Know It All

The narrator then returns to normal life, only to discover that life may never be normal again.

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