Eva
I grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina and for the past decade I've lived in the major metros of San Francisco and NYC. Reading Tar Hollow Trans felt like catharsis. My relationship with “home” is complex, and I often feel culturally homeless—severed from my birthplace but not fully comfortable in the city where I now live. How refreshing to have those complexities echoed in Stacy Jane Grover's work.
I'm going to share a subset of the passages I underlined in the book (of which there were many!):
[Speaking of childhood] “I dressed and played how I chose, hidden by the trees and valleys that surrounded me, unencumbered by the terrible burden of gender.” (p. 12)
“I moved to the state capital, where I found not the expected freedom but constraint, not the promised anonymity that would allow fluidity in my expressions but constant surveillance. I inherited a new queerness, one that was now a mark I was told how to wear, shaping me into contours I didn't recognize. I was what was restraining my transformation, and to grow into the shared vision of metropolitanism that would lead to my salvation, I left behind all that the country planted in me. That seeing stars was a part of being, that horizons were literal, that backwards was a direction that most often led to family, that sunsets couldn't be blocked by anything but mountains and only if one decided not to climb them—these things I could not bring into the dusty confines of the metropolis.” (p. 13-14)
“The mountains have opened my senses to a different way of knowing, of being, so that no matter where I go or who I encounter, I weave them into the quilt of my past.” (p. 16-17)
[About adolescence] “What happened, what changed so that I felt excluded where I had always felt I belonged? [...] I didn't fit in with the boys and I didn't want to, yet I was ever increasingly pushed toward them, and it hurt me.” (p. 22-23)
“I looked at my family and I knew that I was not growing into their shapes.” (p. 27)
“I don't want to create a dominant narrative at the expense of the more complicated reality to gain the acceptance of legible visibility over authentic representation.” (p. 34)
“My girlhood became a dusty dresser in a forbidden room.” (p. 55)
[About funerals] “The absurdity or mourning food, flavorless subsistence food: pale cornbread, anemic potatoes, strips of dry chicken, as if no taste exists in grief, as if savoring while mourning equates to savoring death.” (p. 59)
“I can't answer why I went through what I went through, only describe the way I ended up there.” (p. 66)
“In the uncertainty and confusion of cyberspace, at least I could exist in the correct body[...] The digital world carried our burdens for us, and we could rest knowing that the next time we dialed up, our other selves would be waiting.” (p. 85)
“[...] rural small towns in the US are imagined not only as places but also as times.” (p. 95)
“[...] rural places, especially Appalachia, are excluded from being the sites of queer and transgender life. Instead, urban locations become the sole loci for queer and transgender communities, and queer and transgender people's flight from rural locations to cities seems inevitable, even compulsory.” (p. 98)
[Citing anthropologist Kath Weston] “[...] when rural queers arrive in cities and find these supposed queer havens, they are often disappointed and alienated. [...] To flourish in the metropolis, the community there needs a backward place like Appalachia to exist to define itself against. The deeply felt effect of this binary is that queer and transgender people who live in rural areas, or who have moved to major cities but retain a deep love and attachment to their home regions and people, are told that they are not fully queer or transgender, and that they invite whatever alienation or violence they experience.” (p. 99)
“Maybe I see community as a solution to capitalism. But I know that this too is a myth.” (p. 102)
“When I try to claim the scenes I've inhabited as communities, I foreclose on the possibility of growing and shifting as a person by locking myself into a rigid field of belonging. [...] I also foreclose on that same possibility for others who inhabit them. I reduce my friends to only one facet of their existence, like their sexualities and genders or subcultures.” (p. 103)
“I've clung to the idea of my lost queer Appalachian community because I know deep down that I've never experienced one.” (p. 104)
“I can allow symbols to lose their meaning. I must let structures crumble.” (p. 113)
[On the notion of “true” identity] “The quest to write one's transgender story thus begins with rewriting one's past. We must transform our histories to fit a rigid narrative assigned to us, much the way our gender/sex assignment at birth shapes and limits the possible narratives of our entire future. [...] This is part of the reason why people invest so heavily in questions about origins, because if there were other narratives, other possibilities, the asker of such questions could come to understand that their identities could have been and could still be otherwise.” (p. 123)
“Rendering various forms of living legible for the mainstream offers no protection, no privacy, no right to interiority, no ability to be otherwise.” (p. 125)
“When we are lost, unstable, unsure, everything in life opens and expands and we become able to wonder, able to think from within and beyond what can be readily understood.” (p. 126)
Thank you, Stacy Jane Grover, for sharing yourself with such honesty and curiosity. I feel less alone because of your writing.
This books contains many valuable insights that have genuinely helped me in therapy to “unburden” and examine where particular beliefs or feelings originate from.
The book also contains a fair helping of New Age-y pseudoscience and grandiose proclamations, including a regrettable section on how IFS can heal all your bodily problems and get you off all your meds.
IFS is a great tool but this isn't a great book.
This isn't a book about how to make comics. It's a book about understanding what comics are—and even beyond that, what art is. That may sound pretentious, but it's essential context for understanding how comics can shape the way we perceive sight, sound, language, time... even how we perceive the self. Excellent and comprehensive book. Essential reading for anyone interested in visual art and communication.
So many aspects of my life make so much more sense after reading this book. I marked up almost every page. Some passages noted things I've done, exactly, like pursuing freelance over full-time work to shed the expectation of socialization, or skipping lunch because I was so hyperfocused on a task.
After reading Unmasking Autism, I've gained significantly more empathy for myself and for my family (who is also highly neurodivergent). It's nice to know that I am not uniquely broken. It's nice to know that there's a framework I can use to understand how I relate to the world.
I think this is the first time non-fiction has made me cry.
Timely, lucid, accessible, comprehensive, humane, compassionate, actionable—everyone should read this, particularly those who work in planning and policy.
Select quotes:
“More than a synonym for a traffic crash or a surprise pregnancy, ‘accident' is a euphemism for ‘nothing to see here.'” (p. 2)
“One in twenty-four people in the United States will die by accident. And among wealthy nations, the problem is distinctly American.” (p. 6)
“The people who tell the story are always the powerful ones, and the powerful ones are rarely the victims.” (p. 13)
“Workplace accidents first declined when accidents began to cost employers money, because then, for a corporation, making the workplace safe was cheaper than paying for accidents.” (p. 60)
“Accidents in America come in two sizes, relative to likelihood. Most are small and frequent—a drug overdose, a traffic crash, Some are big and rare—an oil spill, a plane crash.” (p. 66)
“All accidents are systemic, but to understand some of the systems, we will need to zoom far out from one man falling off an oil rig, or another, flush with cash, taking too much of a drug. Racism is a system, and so is stigmatization, and so is the federal infrastructure budget.” (p. 85)
“A speed limit is the perceived safe speed of a road, not the actual risk of traveling that speed on that road.” (p. 95)
“Corporations recall products, from Tylenol to Cheerios, all the time—by government force, or voluntarily, in anticipation of government force. Yet guns never are recalled, because they have a unique privilege: no government agency polices their safety. There are no federal standards for gun design.” (p. 99)
“Society ostracizes stigmatized people for a characteristic that becomes all-encompassing—a single trait dictates how we judge a whole person. And, importantly, when something goes wrong, the stigmatized, because of their flawed character, are blamed.” (p. 109)
“Finding fault in a person smells like justice and feels like a book being closed. It makes sense that we seek it. But failing to prevent the preventable results in a vast and deadly unfairness—and one outcome is the wildly unequal rate at which people are killed by accident because of racism.” (p. 129)
“Every human action in a built environment is a product of that environment.” (p. 131)
“We need to see accidents from the perspective of those involved, and we especially need to see accidents from the perspective of those harmed.” (p. 131)
“In 2019, on average, U.S. drivers killed twenty-one pedestrians every day. Disproportionately, the dead were Latino, Black, and Indigenous. The rate of accidental pedestrian death is 87 percent higher for Latino people, 93 percent higher for Black people, and 171 percent higher for Indigenous people than it is for white people. Black people are more likely to be found at fault walking in the street, less likely to be offered justice if killed there, and more likely to be killed there.” (p. 138)
“Throughout history, when the economy was booming, accidental death also peaked. Nationwide, more income inequality means more accidental death.” (p. 155)
“Whether we live or die by accident is an economic policy decision.” (p. 156)
“We can pay the cost to avoid an accident or pay more for the consequences after an accident—but because we consider these accidents, we rarely do the math.” (p. 156)
“Economic geography so strongly affects accidental death rates that people who live in poverty in rich places live longer than equally poor people who live in poor places. Wealth is a risk insulator and poverty is a risk amplifier.” (p. 168)
“One of the reasons that we don't spend money to protect people from accidents is the same reason that many Americans blame poor people for their poverty: the human error explanation absolves us of the responsibility. But blaming human error is also a well-documented cognitive bias that helps us see an unjust world as just. This bias—known as the ‘just world fallacy'—helps us feel more comfortable in a cruel world by focusing on individual behavior to explain systemic failures and structural inequality. In particular, we zero in on anything that reinforces the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In short, the fallacy is believing that the world is fair.” (p. 169)
“If the people atop the social order believe in poverty as a form of justice, and poor people more often die by accident, then nothing could or should be done about accidents. In fact, by this logic, accidents are good—a righteous punishment for bad actions or weak character.” (p. 171)
“The ability to keep the uncontrollable world at bay is quite a power—which is one reason we blame victims most of all: because the dead cannot contest that power.” (p. 174)
“Researchers have found that people have a strong urge to agree about who is to blame in any given accident—and that when some outspoken accuser presents blame in public, everyone else tends to support that view. Eyewitness statements influence other eyewitness statements so powerfully that hearing whom someone else blames can change your memory of who you thought was to blame.” (p. 179)
“Fixing the problem means there is a problem. Blaming someone means there is no problem at all.” (p. 185)
“The chief consequence of blame is the prevention of prevention. In finding fault with a person, the case of any given accident appears closed.” (p. 185)
“Putting aside blame is the first step to changing the environments that put us at risk.” (p. 188)
“The litigious society is a myth invented by corporations to protect corporations.” (p. 238)
“It is an act of love to demand accountability for the dead. And it takes rage to prevent the same accidents from happening again.” (p. 245)
“Accidents are not a design problem—we know how to design the built environment to prevent death and injury in accidents. And accidents are not a regulatory problem—we know the regulations that will reduce the accidental death toll. Rather, accidents are a political and social problem. To prevent them, we only need the will to redesign our systems, the courage to confront our worst inclinations, and the strength to rein in the powerful who allow accidents to happen.” (p. 250)
“Blame is a food chain. Always look to the top.” (p. 255)
“Every accident is born of overlaid failures.” (p. 255)
“Today, hundreds of thousands of lives, an uncountable number of life-altering injuries, and the threat of immeasurable environmental destruction rest on our acceptance that blaming the individual is best, that bad things happen to bad people, and that somehow personal responsibility will save us all. But seeing accidents for what they are means refusing to accept anything as an accident anymore. Because nothing is an accident. Nothing ever was.” (p. 256)
Like nothing I've ever read, in the best way. I often put down the book for minutes at a time just to process what I'd felt. There's a lot of pain in this book, but also beauty and joy and wisdom.
“I remember the playground, where they called me sissy and faggot before I knew what those words meant, but I knew they meant I would never belong.” (p. 49)
“When someone asks you how you're feeling, and you tell them, and then they want to tell you why you're feeling the way you're feeling, you wonder why they asked.” (p. 51)
“Part of the dream of queer is that it potentially has no opposite. Straight is the opposite of gay. Queer is a rejection of both.” (p. 71)
“When someone else's desire is what makes me feel mine, does this mean this is someone else's desire?” (p. 85)
“I don't just want islands of closeness without a connecting structure, I want relationships that I feel in my body as a cellular possibility.” (p. 89)
“Sometimes you play the same song so much that you up hating it, but then one day you wake up thinking: Why don't I play that song anymore?” (p. 97)
“A dominant narrative is always a form of erasure.” (p. 99)
“Whenever you think your memory is not as good as it used to be, it's important to remember there used to be less to remember.” (p. 137)
“Sometimes the violence of people allegedly trying to help is the worst kind of violence.” (p. 177)
“The best thing about a rhetorical question is the answer.” (p. 178)
“A question of aesthetics is barely a question at all. When this is all we treasure, there is no way not to lose.” (p. 199)
“I don't believe in nostalgia because it camouflages violence.” (p. 227)
“Love is love isn't the most helpful rhetoric for those of us who grew up abused by the people who told us they loved us the most.” (p. 231)
Mostly solid advice for anyone who writes.
Parts of the book have not aged well: sexist “humor'”, resistance to change (“an illegal alien is now an undocumented resident,” Zinsser complains), and Eurocentric takes on “the exotic”. When describing the Black jazz musicians Willie Ruff and Dwike Mitchell, Zinsser says “they speak good and often eloquent English.” Cringe.
“He” is the default pronoun throughout the book. I disagree with Zinsser's claim that “a style that converts every ‘he' into a ‘they' will quickly turn to mush.”
Many long examples could have been cut considerably. Strunk and White's “The Elements of Style”, which this book was modeled after, is a quarter as long and twice as helpful. Still, there are some gems:
“Clear thinking becomes clear writing: one can't exist without the other.” (p. 8)
“If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough.” (p. 8)
“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident.”(p. 9)
“Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation.” (p. 26)
“Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.” (p. 36)
“You learn to write by writing. It's a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it's true.” (p. 49)
“All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.” (p. 49)
“The most important sentence in any article is the first one.” (p. 54)
“Don't say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be confused. Be tired. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.” (p. 70)
“Writing is an evolving process, not a finished product. Nobody expects you to get it right the first time, or even the second time.” (p. 84)
“The reader plays a major role in the act of writing and must be given room to play it. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining—by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like “surprisingly,” “predictably” and “of course,” which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.” (p. 91)
“Never go into an interview without doing whatever homework you can.” (p. 105)
“If you consciously write for a teacher or for an editor, you'll end up not writing for anybody. If you write for yourself, you'll reach the people you want to write for.” (p. 134)
“Always start with too much material. Then give your reader just enough.” (p. 156)
“Readers will stop reading if they think you are talking down to them. Nobody wants to be patronized.” (p. 233)
“If you write about subjects you think you would enjoy knowing about, your enjoyment will show in what you write. Learning is a tonic.” (p. 245)
“Much of the trouble that writers get into comes from trying to make one sentence do too much work. Never be afraid to break a long sentence into two short ones, or even three.” (p. 262)
“Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.” (p. 280)
I wish I liked this book more than I did.
The pacing grates; the plot doesn't really get going until page 200 or so. Meanwhile, technological breakthroughs and huge historical advancements are skimmed over with only the barest detail.
The treatment of women throughout the book had me constantly thinking “ah yes, this was written by a man.” Amongst a massive cast, there are few female main characters. Many statements reduce women to their looks. Our protagonist / “mouth of God” character fails to acknowledge Ye Wenjie, the woman who at the start of the book introduces him to the breakthrough which ends up saving human civilization. And don't get me started on the 100 pages of Luo Ji's fantasy-girlfriend-come-to-life wife. Sooo cringey and dehumanizing.
The last 200 pages of the book were more fun, but I found myself having to re-read passages multiple times to understand what was happening. This didn't happen much in The Three-Body Problem, which makes me wonder if it is an issue with this book's new translator.
Characters felt flat throughout. Often felt myself unmoved over real or threatened character deaths. No matter how innovative the sci-fi concepts, a story doesn't compel if all characters sound the same.
Considering how much I enjoyed The Three-Body Problem, disappointed. Onto Death's End...
I have mixed feelings about this book.
This is the second book I've read from bell hooks. The first, All About Love, was a revelation. I re-read it 3 times. I bought copies for friends. After seeing the title The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, I immediately purchased a copy, excited to absorb more of hooks's wisdom.
Let's begin with the good: hooks presents a scathing critique of patriarchy. She outlines the ways it harms men, from emotional repression to higher rates of suicide and depression and “soul death.” Many passages resonated with me:
“There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when expressed by men; that emotion is anger.” (p. 7)
“No male successfully measured up to patriarchal standards without engaging in an ongoing practice of self-betrayal.” (p. 12)
“Boys learn to cover up grief with anger; the more troubled the boy, the more intense the mask of indifference. Shutting down emotionally is the best defense when the longing for connection must be denied.” (p. 50)
“Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity.” (p. 61)
“Workaholism is the most common addiction in men because it is usually rewarded and not taken seriously as detrimental to their emotional well-being.” (p. 158)
As someone assigned male at birth, I've often struggled to feel comfortable expressing my emotions. Much of the work I've done as an adult has been to reconnect with my body and allow myself to hear and express my own feelings. These quotes and many others resonated with me and encouraged me to continue that self work.
hooks eloquently explains how patriarchy harms us all: it spares no one, no matter their gender.
Now, onto the bad: past the first few chapters, the book is extremely repetitive. I did not learn much new. A book half this length could have twice the impact.
In attempting to counter the popular feminist narrative (of 2005) that men are all-powerful, hooks portrays men as eternally repressed and out of touch with their emotions, painting a picture at odds with my personal experience, which includes many loving, caring, emotionally-aware men.
Her view of parenting and dating is heteronormative. There is only brief reference to the impact of patriarchy in gay culture. No reference at all is made to trans people. Trans men lead very different lives from cis men and many trans men are uniquely poised to help further the dialogue about what positive masculinity can look like and how to manifest it. The book's omissions result in centering cis, straight men yet again.
When discussing families, hooks most often assumes a monogamous, heterosexual couple. Some discussion is made of single-mother homes, usually in the context of women furthering patriarchy through abuse of their sons. Single-father homes are not discussed. Non-monogamous relationships, communal living, and other queer family arrangements are not discussed, again missing the chance to explore a radically different and less rigid vision of a post-patriarchal future.
Late in the book, she claims, “anyone who has a false self must be dishonest. People who learn to lie to themselves and others cannot love because they are crippled in their capacity to tell the truth and therefore unable to trust.” (p. 154) This completely ignores closeted trans and queer people who may not be able to be fully honest and transparent with people out of concern for their own safety, as well as people who have not reached a point where they feel comfortable coming out to themselves.
In many chapters, hooks presents bold claims without citing sources, leading me to repeatedly annotate, “is this true?” in the margins. Examples:
“Again and again children hear the message from mass media that when it comes to sex, ‘he's gotta have it.' Adults may know better, from their own experience, but children become true believers. They think that men will go mad if they cannot act sexually. This is the logic that produces what feminist thinkers call ‘a rape culture.'” (p. 78)
“For boys this issue of control begins with the mother's response to his penis; usually she does not like it and she does not know what to do with it. Her discomfort with his penis communicates that there is something inherently wrong with it.” (p. 80)
“The popularization of gangsta rap, spearheaded by white male executives in the music industry, gave a public voice to patriarchy and women-hating.” (p. 129)
“If all men were in touch with primal positive passion, the categories of gay and straight would lose their charged significance.” (p. 183)
At a few points in the book, hooks blames pornography and ‘excessive' (e.g. non-monogamous) sex for furthering and reinforcing patriarchy. This may often be true, but porn and sex can also act as liberatory tools for men who have been taught to feel ashamed of their bodies. Instead of exploring the potentially positive uses of porn and non-monogamous, consensual sex, hooks casts them as universally negative. She fails to imagine a world in which individuals can be fully loving and devoted to a partner and still explore fulfilling sexual relationships with others. Even her use of the phrase “dominator culture”, though apt, overlooks people who engage in consensual dom-sub play in BDSM. Her tone veers uncomfortably close to slut-shaming.
In fact, at many points in the book, bell hooks seems to take a tremendous leap from progressive leftism to conservative fundamentalism, railing against Harry Potter, The Incredible Hulk, Power Rangers, The Matrix, sex, pornography, rap music, and more.
I admire what bell hooks attempted to do in The Will to Change, but she paints with too broad a brush, ultimately reinforcing many of the harmful stereotypes and roles prescribed by patriarchy which she tries so dutifully to avoid.
3.5 stars. Helpful but focuses exclusively on heterosexual, monogamous couples. Does not discuss issues around privilege, race, or gender which can appear in a relationship, and present challenges of their own. Does not discuss open or polyamorous relationships and the unique challenges they present.
The Imago Dialogue technique (mirroring, validating, and empathizing) is excellent advice for anyone who wants to become a better listener—regardless of if that person is your partner.
Other takeaways:
- Avoid “parallel monologue”
- Ask “is there more about that?”
- Loving acts should not be conditional or transactional
- Your neural pathways cannot experience humor and anxiety at the same time
- “Small change produces sustainable change.”
- Eliminate negativity in all forms
As someone who grew up fantasizing about Sam and Frodo, Harry and Cedric, and Kvothe and Bast, I can't imagine a genre more likely to appeal to me than gay fantasy. So when a friend recommended Carry On and I saw the cover sporting its hunky wizard-vampire duo, I said: sign me the fuck up.
What a letdown.
Let's start with the most glaring oversight, to my queer eye: the main character, Simon, has shared a bedroom with a smokin' gay vampire, Baz, for SEVEN. WHOLE ASS. TEENAGE. YEARS. But they somehow despise each other, to the point that even with identical class schedules and a shared room, they go out of their way to avoid and belittle each other.
I don't claim to speak for every gay teen, but in the 2010s at a school where kids carry around wands for fun, there's no way in hell this situation is even remotely plausible.
I get trying to craft sexual tension, but this takes it to such an extreme—they try (repeatedly!) to kill each other—that when the characters actually, finally, acknowledge their love, it comes off as totally inauthentic and stilted. Where is the fallout from the years of antagonism and self-deception? Where is the internal struggle?
After this, when Baz, who “from the first day” realized he was in love with Simon, asks Simon if he ever realized he was gay, Simon's response is “I don't know, I never really thought about it.”
[Mandrake shrieking]
Nope.
Even after the two profess their mutual boner, Simon continues to display remarkable apprehension, and Baz continues to ruthlessly make fun of Simon. (Not in a cute, joking way, but in an “eesh, this relationship is not gonna last long” kinda way.)
Characters are one-dimensional, the writing is cliche, and the plot is predictable. Each chapter—sometimes each sentence—is written from a different character's point of view, but the voices are so indistinct that I had to keep flipping back to remember who the hell is narrating.
Carry On is torn between trying to be a love story and a thriller, and failing at both.
To its merit, I finished the book in 2 days. Like I said. Gay fantasy. Done and done. But by the second half of the book I was skimming to get to Simon and Baz's relationship (all told, two brief kissing scenes and a whole lot of unexplored, internalized homophobia. Literally, at one point a “magick psychiatrist” tells Simon that being gay is “4th or 5th” on his list of issues. Cool message to send queer kids.)
Thank you, next. Don't let straight women write gay stories.
