Reviews

Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir – Chase Joynt

by

A curious mix of reflection and commentary on male privilege and abuse . . . frame[d] . . . through the theories of Marshall McLuhan, someone who fascinates [Joynt] both as an academic and as a distant relative.

Saturnin – Zdeněk Jirotka

by

Saturnin wants his master to be an adventurer, but he doesn’t merely plan or dream: He acts on his fantasies, creating situations that force his master out of his banal existence and into the unexpected.

Fair to Look Upon – Mary Belle Freeley

by

Without Eve’s disobedience, there would have been no progress, advancement, or human intelligence, and for that, in Freeley’s view, Eve deserves “a profound salaam of admiration and respect” as “the first courageous, undaunted pioneer woman of the world.”

Roe v. Wade: Fifty Years After – ed. Rhae Lynn Barnes & Catherine Clinton

by

These essays demonstrate that Roe is about far more than the rights of individual states to legislate abortion.

Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry – Ryan Ruby

by

Market and technological forces are at the heart of Ruby’s analysis: How does poetry change in different social roles and contexts? How do different technologies and audience expectations shape poetry, and what happens when we think of poetry itself as a technology?

The Propagandist – Cécile Desprairies

by

Desprairies challenges the reader to inhabit a morally fraught protagonist. Why would someone collaborate with Nazis, the novel asks. Who would do such a thing?

Years and Years – Hwang Jungeun

by

Sejin and Yeongjin seem to be aware of the pitfalls of their mother’s refusal to speak of her past . . . but they ultimately do the same themselves. The three women take silence as a given, assuming that speaking would only lead to more harm.

Schrödinger’s Wife (And Other Possibilities) – Pippa Goldschmidt

by

Goldschmidt turns abstruse theories into metaphors of interpersonal relation, uncovering the hidden labor of scientific research and recovering the technical language of physics for humanistic consideration.

Galáxias – Haroldo de Campos

by

GALÁXIAS takes not only São Paulo, but the entire universe in its orbit.

ESTA BOCA ES MÍA – Lupita Limón Corrales

by

Communities are made of relationships not only between people but between people and places—between us and our homes, the plants that grow on the sidewalk, the basements we gather in to chat and strategize.