The Daughters of Izdihar is Hadeer Elsbai’s debut novel. It’s the first in The Alamaxa Duology, and I raced to the second book the moment I finished this one (tune in next month for that review). It’s always a thrill to read a fantasy novel that’s not set in the Western tradition, and with aRead More
A Sincere Satire — Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel Review
Fun Home is one of my all-time favourite books, but I haven’t enjoyed Alison Bechdel’s subsequent memoirs as much, and I’ve only read bits and pieces of Dykes to Watch Out For. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up her newest graphic novel, Spent. It stars a graphic memoirist named AlisonRead More
Danika reviews Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan
Zara Hossain is Here surprised me. This is a short book, and it’s written in a way that feels pared down to the essentials. When the story begins, Zara is experiencing Islamophobic harassment from the star football player at school, but she has a strong network and friends and family that supports her. This harassmentRead More
Danika reviews Follow Your Arrow by Jessica Verdi
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link CeCe and her girlfriend, Silvie, are social media stars. They have about a million followers each, and they are #RelationshipGoals. Their ship name is Cevie, and their lives online and off are intertwined. CeCe’s picture-perfect crafted persona begins to fall apart, though, when bickering with her girlfriend turnsRead More
Susan reviews The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Olivia Waite’s The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows is the latest in the Feminine Pursuits series, and just like last time, I’m in love. The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows explores family, the perceived legitimacy of relationships, and the hazards of marriage through the trial ofRead More
Shannon reviews Amelia Westlake Was Never Here by Erin Gough
Erin Gough’s Amelia Westlake Was Never Here is one of those hidden gems I want the world to wholeheartedly embrace. On the surface, it’s a rom/com of sorts, with a delightful enemies-to-lovers romance, but if you look a little deeper, it’s message is timely and important. Harriet Price is pretty sure she’s got her lifeRead More
Maggie reviews Folly by Maureen Brady
This month I read Folly by Maureen Brady, an extremely interesting working class lesbian book published in 1982. Folly is set in a small factory town and follows several women as they struggle to reconcile their desires for a better life with the reality of their jobs and lives. The title character, Folly, works with several area women, includingRead More
Danika reviews Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
This is a book that I will be processing for a long time. It is beyond almost anything I’ve read before. I’m not proud to say that I have very little knowledge around ableism and disability activism, which is part of why I picked up Care Work (The other being that Bodymap, Piepzna-Samarasinha’s book of poetry, isRead More
Danika reviews We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles edited by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L. Pauline Rankin
A weird thing about living in Canada is that you tend to know US history, laws, politics, etc more than you know your own. Reading We Still Demand! was a wake-up call that I actually know very little about Canadian queer history and activism, and that’s something I want to fix. Unfortunately, I had some issuesRead More
Danika reviews Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation by Urvashi Vaid
Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation by Urvashi Vaid is an examination of the history of the gay and lesbian right/liberation movement, as well as its current trajectory. It takes a close look at gay and lesbian advocacy as it stands now and suggests what some of the problems with the movementRead More