Tag Archives: nonfiction

Maggie reviews Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia

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Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia is part memoir, part collection of essays as Neema Avashia recollects growing up as part of a tiny Indian community in a majority white community in a corporate town in West Virginia and her subsequent relocation for college and then for a career in Boston. Through a series of anecdotes, she remembers the kindness of neighbors and coaches as she grew up and whenever she visits, her family’s experiences in creating their own small Indian community and what that meant for their kids, and how she reconciled those experiences with her adult life away from West Virginia. Avashia’s queer realization happened later in life, once she’d already left West Virginia, but she spends plenty of page time talking about her efforts to integrate being queer, being Indian, and being from West Virginia, while being a Boston Public School teacher.

I always love a narrative about being from a rural area and being queer. Indiana is a little different flavor of rural than West Viriginia, but the underlying themes still resonate strongly. I especially resonated with her continual meditations on being happily settled in an urban area on one hand, but missing the sense of community or some traditions on the other, and on yet a third hand being unable to fit back in when driven to re-visit.  It’s a theme that I think will be familiar with many readers from rural areas who left, as are her continual efforts to decide who is safe to introduce her wife to, and to integrate her family and friends’ expectations for how a relationship progresses into her lived reality as a queer woman. Avashia handles these topics deftly, balancing good memories with bad and childhood nostalgia with a more nuanced adult perspective in a way I appreciated.

Avashia also spends a lot of time on her roots versus her moving on with her adult life, which I deeply felt reading this on a bus in Pittsburgh while reflecting on my own roots. Her meditations on her father’s expansive and caring definition of community, how her neighbors growing up took care of each other, and her efforts to apply those values to her urban life in Boston, where she didn’t even know her neighbors, is impactful and emotional. She struggles with her identity as an Appalachian writer who lives in Boston, as an Indian woman who connects to her heritage and culture differently than her parents and extended family because of where she grew up, and as a queer woman who had no context for that growing up. Avashia’s blunt, honest writing attempts to bridge the gap between past and present and is extremely easy to fall into, covering a wide range of topics in one, conveniently travel-sized book.

In conclusion, if you are looking for an impactful memoir to read this summer, Another Appalachia is an excellent book to check out. It’s not a long read, but it’s emotional. You could make an afternoon of it, or it’s perfect for small moments like a commute.  If you resonate with the material, you will appreciate the nuance, empathy, and compassion she brings to the rural experience. And if you’re new to the experience, this collection will be full of depth and understanding. I can’t recommend it enough for people looking for a queer memoir.

Danika reviews Here and Queer: A Queer Girl’s Guide to Life by Rowan Ellis

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It was interested to read this book at about twice its target demographic, because it made me reflect back on how I learned this sort of information when I was a teen. This is a YA nonfiction book introducing queer girls to the basics of what it means to be a queer girl (or think you might be one). My first impression after finishing it was that it didn’t offer a lot that was new, but then I realized that a) it is likely new to the queer teens reading it and b) that I guess there haven’t really been self help books specifically for queer teen girls before! It feels like that should have happened by now, but I can’t think of any.

I liked that this is a highly illustrated, colourful book with glossy pages, which I think makes it a little more accessible. Speaking of accessible, though, I did find that some elements of the design left pages hard to read, with small font or dark text against a dark background.

It’s divided into three parts: Coming Out, Doing It, and Finding Your Community. The advice overall is fairly vague: how do you know if you’re queer? No one else can tell you. Take your time. Pay attention to how you feel. These are all accurate, but I’m not sure how helpful I would have found it as a teen. For me, I learned about this stuff mostly pieced together from tumblr posts, which probably isn’t the best source, but it worked fairly well for me. I would have appreciated more practical tips, but I know it’s tricky to get into specifics on topics that are so different from person to person.

One aspect I really appreciated was that Ellis brought in several different people who represent other experiences in the queer community, including being a queer woman of colour, being trans and queer, and being disabled and queer. They have an essay each to talk about their own lives and give advice to queer teen girls, which I think is really valuable. (Unfortunately, those are the sections that are hardest to read because of the design.)

While I kept reminding myself that this is meant as an introduction, it sometimes felt like it fluctuated between providing introductory, very general advice and including things that don’t have enough context for someone encountering this concept for the first time. For instance, the Stonewall Riots are described as: “… outside a bar in New York, tensions boiled over into an uprising. Police raids at the The Stonewall Inn were nothing new, but something was different this time around.” It doesn’t explain what it means for a gay bar to have a police raid, or what the specific mistreatment was that was being protested. It goes on to name some of the people involved, then says the riots lasted for days and that they inspired Pride celebrations that continue today, but I think if this was the first I’d heard of the Stonewall Riots, I wouldn’t really get what happened to start them.

I think the concept of this book is strong, but it didn’t live up to what I wanted from it. Then again, I’m not a teen queer girl, and I am glad that a book exists specifically for their questions, even if the answers aren’t exactly what I’d like to see. It is trans-inclusive and also addresses questioning your gender, which is great! While I don’t whole-heartedly recommend it, I do think there will be teens who appreciate having access to it, so it will be a good title to stock for public and school libraries (for the librarians who order, stock, and defend queer books: you are heroes who deserve so much better).

I hope that soon there will be many more advice and self help books for queer teen girls!

Rachel reviews Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays by Jill Gutowitz

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Hilarious, poignant, and stunningly clever, Jill Gutowitz’s essay collection Girls Can Kiss Now was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 and it definitely did not disappoint!

When I talk about this book (which is often), it usually goes something like this: “I’m reading this book, it’s called Girls Can Kiss Now. Have you ever heard of a title so excellent?!” Even if I had never heard of this book, if I saw it in a bookstore this title alone would induce me to buy it. It’s such a small phrase but it perfectly articulates the premise of Gutowitz’s collection: the boom in lesbian culture and media in mainstream society, and the social history of how we got here.

Through a series of witty and smart personal essays, Gutowitz explores popular culture’s treatment/representation of queer women throughout the last two decades in conjunction with her own life and her journey of self-discovery in relation to her own sexuality. The essays, alternately personal, deeply resonant, and hilarious (and sometimes all three at once) are truly a snapshot of the significance of popular culture in all of our lives—and how that significance has changed as the internet has evolved.

I have been waiting with very little patience to read this book since it was announced. A collection of essays about lesbianism and queer life written by someone who, like me, spent their formative years in the 2000s in a weird miasma of confusion and intrigue with only the internet to console you? Sign me up. This book recounts nearly every aspect of what it’s like to grow up in a very particular time in queer history: the moment when the marginal moves toward the mainstream. The moment where, suddenly, Ellen isn’t the only celesbian you can list. Gutowitz expertly articulates the strangeness and the delight associated with that shift, and even though a lot of these essays are personal and specific to her own life, they are so obviously relatable to queer experience that I found myself totally engrossed by the writing.

Not all of the essays are completely personal, though. This is a book about lesbian popular culture. Chapters like “The Ten Most Important Sapphic Paparazzi Photos in Modern History” and “The Current Lesbian Canon, as It Stands” are engaged with popular representations of queer culture. This book is such a clever and whip-smart collection. It’s so funny and insightful, and it’s required reading if you’re interested in the evolution of lesbian culture.  

I can’t recommend Girls Can Kiss Now enough for anyone interesting in queer culture, lesbian media, and the growth of the internet and social media over the course of the twenty-first century. This book couldn’t have been more clever!

Please visit Jill Gutowitz on Twitter and put Girls Can Kiss Now on your TBR on Goodreads.

Rachel Friars is a writer and academic living in Canada, dividing her time between Ontario and New Brunswick. When she’s not writing short fiction, she’s reading every lesbian novel she can find. Rachel holds two degrees in English literature and is currently pursuing a PhD in nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history.

You can find Rachel on Twitter @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

Danika reviews Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid by Shayda Kafai

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My first introduction to disability justice was reading Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, which was one of the most powerful and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read, so when I saw that Arsenal Pulp had released another book on disability justice, I knew I had to read it. Disability justice is disability activism that centres queer and trans Black, indigenous, and people of colour. It advocated for leadership from the most impacted, and it views ableism as being interconnected with other systems of oppression, including racism, capitalism, transphobia, anti-fatness, and more.

This is a history of Sins Invalid, a disability justice performance project founded in 2006 in San Francisco. It explains how they got started, but more than just recounting, it explores the ideas behind Sins Invalid and why it became such an important outlet for people. It discusses how the mainstream disability rights movement as well as disability studies as an academic framework centre white disabled activists.

Crip Kinship reclaims beauty and sexuality for queer, trans, disabled POC and Indigenous bodies: “Beauty here becomes the limp, it becomes burned glossy skin, and abundant drool. Beauty becomes Mad minds rapid loving and stimming hands. It is the survival magic of all our bodyminds doing beauty by blurring boundaries.” Sins Invalid is “transgressing the ableist assumptions that disabled bodyminds cannot: we cannot dance, we cannot speak through movement, we cannot express beauty in our bodyminds. Instead, participants learn that these limitations on movement and dance are not necessarily coming from their bodyminds, but rather from ableism’s finite imagination of who can dance and of whose movement is deemed beautiful.”

It outlines a different way of organizing as well as a different lens to examine politics. Politics not as abstract, but as material conditions that are life or death right now, and require support and accessibility. Crip Kinship invites readers to imagine what it would look like if we considered all people’s needs and came up with the solution most accessible to all, knowing that some needs will conflict, and that the process will be messy and need constant re-examining and adaption:

“[Y]ou know you’re doing [Disability Justice] because people will show up late, someone will vomit, someone will have a panic attack, and nothing will happen on time because the ramp is broken on the supposedly ‘accessible’ building … Disability Justice, when it’s really happening, is too messy and wild to really fit into traditional movement and nonprofit industrial complex structures, because out bodies and minds are too wild to fit into those structures.”

This is part history, part manifesto, bringing in so many different voices. I especially liked a chapter that discussed how Sins Invalid reclaims beauty for disabled bodyminds, but also gives space for another disability justice perspective that beauty is an unsalvageable concept based in restriction and oppression, and that it is more freeing to reclaim Ugly as a concept.

If all of these concepts and terms seem overwhelming, they are defined in end notes in the book, which is very helpful.

My only complaint was that I would have liked to see more about the people and relationships behind Sins Invalid: we see a few glimpses of conversations had at the beginning, but most of the focus was on the big picture. I would have liked some behind the scenes of what that messy process of disability justice looks like in practice, with creating this organization and keeping it running all these years. I also wanted more description of the actual performances, because what is included is incredible, but I now see that there are clips to watch for free and some documentaries for purchase on the website, so I look forward to watch those!

In fact, I am left with a long reading (and watching and listening) list of books, articles, podcasts, and videos I noted that I wanted to follow up on, and those are only a few of the resources and references collected in this book. The references given are carefully selected, highlighting disabled queer, trans, BIPOC voices, whether that’s in their published books, personal interviews, blog posts, or other formats. This makes for a great jumping off point to follow up these ideas.

I highly, highly recommend this and Care Work to anyone and everyone. It left me with a lot to think about, and I can’t wait to learn more.

Susan reviews My Alcoholic Escape From Reality by Nagata Kabi

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Nagata Kabi is back with My Alcoholic Escape From Reality! The mangaka behind My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness and My Solo Exchange Diary returns with another memoir, this time about being hospitalised for acute pacreatis resulting from her alcoholism.

My Alcoholic Escape From Reality feels a lot more like a diary comic than any of her previous works. The art style hasn’t changed, although the monochrome colour scheme has shifted to orange now, but the manga as a whole feels tonally lighter and more consistent. I assume that this is a side-effect of it being written as one piece rather than a collection, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. Despite the lighter tone, the frankness that she has in her previous books continues here. She is very open about her alcoholism and her depression, neither of which is resolved by the end of the book. She’s not a perfect patient by her own admission – she relapses, she gets angry about the restrictions on her life, she lies to her doctors – and she’s very explicit about her understanding of what would make a satisfying narrative about her experience and how it compares to what she’s living. They way Nagata Kabi personifies and visualises her conditions is more emotive than medical, which works great and stops the entire manga being medical professionals explaining things. There is still a lot of medical details involved – if you, like me, have no idea what pancreatis is, look forward to being educated! But the explanations aren’t overwhelming, which I appreciated.

One of the threads of My Alcoholic Escape From Reality is creating while dealing with not only serious medical conditions but also guilt about her work. She feels guilt for creating memoir at all, and for enjoying it when she knows how negatively her family feels about her work. (Her compromise seems to have been only involving them in the most surface-level scenes, rather than delving back into her feelings about them.) The realisations she goes through about her work and what it means to her to do that work is lovely to read.

My general recommendation for Nagata Kabi’s memoirs are that they’re good in the same way that Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is good. They are both queer creators using their most raw edges and pain as entertainment, and cast an uncomfortable reflection back on the audience consuming that entertainment (… and the reviewer rating how well they depicted that pain, yes, please enjoy the mental knots I tie myself into). They are both funny and insightful, and that humour only makes their more serious points hit like a train. This ties into the point Nagata Kabi makes about narrative satisfaction – as a story, the most satisfying endings are the ones where she either relapses or recovers, and life isn’t that tidy; instead, it’s a narrative in progress, where she’s trying to be well and at least writing herself a smidge of hope for the future, and I respect that a lot.

If you want an untidy memoir told with Nagata Kabi’s usual bluntness and humour, I’d definitely recommend picking this up.

Content warnings: alcoholism, depression, hospitalisation and medical treatment

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found as a contributing editor for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business, or a reviewing for SFF Reviews and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. She brings the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Sheila reviews Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

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“I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

Trigger warnings: death, suicide, parental death, divorce, sexual assault, war/military

As a queer woman, I have spent a large portion of my life knowing the name of Alison Bechdel (and the appropriately named “Bechdel Test”) without actually knowing anything about her. Fun Home details her childhood and early adulthood as the lesbian daughter of a closeted father; Bechdel is an incredibly talented writer, and the connections she draws between things are astoundingly complex. I spent the entire read of this graphic novel in awe of how she managed to connect each moment in later chapters to some of the earliest memories mentioned in the first.

This is a book for literature enthusiasts—especially lovers of classic literature. Each page references authors like Proust and Joyce, delving deeply into analysis of their works in order to make sense of Bechdel’s and her father’s life. At times, her parents are Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, off in Europe before life gets in the way of their way of life. Utilizing these famous (and fictitious at times) people to discern and understand her family is something I was able to relate to; at times, our parents seem more like collections of stories and past events, people just out of reach but never truly willing to be completely comprehended.

This is a heavy work, as one Bechdel’s father dies when she is in college—an event which she labels as suicide. Her inability to put herself past this event is further explored when she discusses that sometimes the lines of parent/child warped, making the child the parent, and vice versa. The Bechdel family’s running a funeral home is also ever present, something which Bechdel uses to align her family with The Addams Family. Death and bodies are constant throughout this work, both physically making an appearance in Bechdel’s life but also again in reference to authors and their literary works. 

Fun Home portrays an interesting comparison between the lives of lesbians and gay men. While there are more differences between Bechdel and her father than just those—such as military experience, age, and setting—Bechdel spends most of the book trying to find similarities between their experiences. Since her father died when she was 20, Bechdel has the rest of her life to ponder and overthink every experience she had with her father, every story she heard from or about him, to try to paint some sort of impossible, complete picture. More than anything, Bechdel is struck by the unknowns of her father. Even his darkest secrets (which include pursuing and assaulting teenage boys) are only viewed from an outside, limited perspective.

I had expected this graphic novel to feature Bechdel’s childhood, but more than anything it is a literary relationship between father and daughter. Now that I am in my 20s, I find my relationship with my parents changing (which I assume is a common occurrence). Somehow, they remain a glitching mix between person and caricature, real and unreal, known and unknown. Bechdel captures this confusion and mystery perfectly in every page of this graphic novel. While it is intense and dark at times, with difficult literary analyses at others, I cannot recommend this work enough.

Danika reviews The One You Want to Marry (And Other Identities I’ve Had) by Sophie Santos

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I have to admit, I almost stopped reading this in the first chapter because of the secondhand embarrassment factor. That same impulse that nearly made me put down the book for good also kept me completely enthralled, peeking through my fingers (metaphorically) to read the next page, unable to look away.

The One You Want to Marry is Santos’s memoir about being a self-proclaimed “late bloomer.” Not physically, but in the sense that she, for example, fully believed in Santa and fiercely defended his existence until she was told at 13. More importantly, though, she didn’t come out until her 20s despite having some… pretty big clues early on. When she told her father, he said, “you always had good female friendships.” The book is then divided up into these intense female friendships of her early life, starting with her preschool best friend she would whisper to all nap time and wail when separated from.

It’s written in a casual, intensely readable style that reminds me of reading someone’s diary–complete with an uncensored look into every aspect of their life. In fact, I felt a little voyeuristic at times, like this person probably shouldn’t be telling me about their early adventures in masturbation (in painful detail). Santos does not shy away from sharing everything from her starting a strip limbo game at a childhood sleepover to her early 20s denial of being a lesbian even in the most… compromising situations.

It’s been a while since I read a straight up (if you’ll excuse the pun) coming out memoir, as opposed to a more general memoir with a queer author. This is a equally a coming of age story, but those are intertwined. This is a story about running from yourself, chasing mirages of who you are, and what happens when you’re finally forced to stand still and face yourself. Santos’s coming of age is centred around running away from her lesbianism–beginning with ignorance that later became denial–and then finding her identity as an out lesbian.

Santos grew up in the 90s, as I did, and this provides some nostalgia and also embarrassment looking back at that time period. It seems to be aimed at young queer people, who presumably need things like same sex marriage being illegal explained. The entire framing feels a little bit 90s to me–while we still need queer representation, a lot has changed since then, which isn’t really acknowledged. (Also, all her mom’s closest friends were lesbians. She went to a lesbian commitment ceremony as a kid. She wasn’t without lesbian role models.)

She was an army brat, moving a lot and reinventing herself–always finding new, intense female friendships, of course. She also struggled with undiagnosed, untreated OCD and anxiety. We follow her through many of these reinventions, from a kid who dressed like a Backstreet Boy and kissed her best friend (as often as possible) “just for fun” to a pageant hopeful to sorority sister looking for an “MRS” to an in denial lesbian who paused mid-cunnilingus to say “I’m not gay” to the host of a show called The Lesbian Agenda.

I expected that once the book was through the awkward adolescent stage, we were out of the woods in terms of intense second hand cringiness, but I was wrong. She’s a mess even (or especially) in adulthood, especially when her untreated OCD and anxiety collide with PTSD. I appreciate her honesty, particularly when it comes to mental health as well as coming out. It’s a messy process, and this book embraces that.

I hope that young readers who feel like they’re doing it wrong, who are embarrassed about how long it took them to come out, or who are struggling to find stability in their adult identities find this book. It reassures readers that even when the road is bumpy getting there, you can still find happiness and fulfillment, including a partner who will go to great lengths to assuage your obsessive fears. (I will not spoil this scene, but it’s well worth reading this book just for the #RelationshipGoals moment.)

So if you can relate to being a “late bloomer,” or if you just want to be a voyeur into someone’s life, check this one out.

Meagan Kimberly reviews Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

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Hunger by Roxane Gay

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I posted a previous version of this review here. Trigger warnings for sexual assault and eating disorders.

Roxane Gay is an author known for her sharp and insightful thoughts on feminism and pop culture, as well as an established novelist and short fiction creator. This memoir added to her repertoire is no different.

With a book of essays dedicated to her personal body struggles, how she came to the relationship she has today with her body and herself, and a critical look at fatphobia, Hunger is brutal yet vulnerable. She makes a point early on to say that this isn’t a before and after story. This isn’t a story of triumph, of becoming overweight and fighting to lose it, and you won’t see a picture of her on the cover suddenly thin and glamorous. But this is a true story, and as I read it, I felt like it is many people’s story.

Since the first book of essays I read by her, Bad Feminist, Gay has been open about the sexual assault she endured as a child. She doesn’t shy away from it now, and in fact, goes into even more heartbreaking detail in this memoir than in Bad Feminist.

She starts her essays in this book with a look at her happy childhood and healthy family relationships, painting a picture of why she should have been a confident and strong girl, self-possessed. At least, that’s how I interpreted it, because I believe so many of us have been there. Like Gay, many of us look back on our lives and think, “Nothing happened that should have derailed my confidence or self-esteem, so why did I think so little of myself?” With simple sentence structures and plain language, Gay puts into words with such frightening honesty what it’s like in someone’s head. She doesn’t have the answers to our questions, nor to her own, but that’s not what she set out to do with Hunger.

As you read, you see her journey influenced by the terrible incidents of her past and how they shaped her relationship with food and her body. In an attempt to control what happened to her body, Gay details how she had to lose control of it in order to feel safe. She continuously explains in various chapters of the book that she ate because if she ate, she’d gain size, and if she gained size, she wouldn’t be so small and weak and easily taken over. Then again, she eats to fill the void, to satisfy the hollow left inside from the hands of callous boys who probably grew up to be abhorrent men, but no matter what she eats, it does not satisfy. It does not satiate. It just keeps leaving her hungry.

What this memoir is about goes beyond hunger of the body, though the body is the vessel we take to journey through her various desires. She hungers for food. She hungers for comfort. She hungers for safety. She hungers for warmth. She hungers to be understood. She hungers for love. In short, she is a person, like all of us. All too often the world forgets that about fat people and acts like we don’t want the same things everyone else does; like we don’t deserve those same things. Hunger is a reminder to Gay herself and to others like her, that shaping the mind is just as important as shaping the body. More importantly, it is a necessity to be kind to ourselves as much as we are kind to others. It’s alright to hunger, but don’t let it consume you.

Shana reviews The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend is my Girlfriend by Maddy Court

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If you love reading advice columns but wish they were less straight, you may enjoy The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend is my Girlfriend as much as I did. This is a warm and witty book about queer love and relationships. Each thematically organized chapter offers short, straightforward answers to queries that are both universal, like how to come out, and specific, like what do when you’re a Capricorn working in the restaurant industry and your wealthy girlfriend refuses to use her inheritance to pay the rent for three years. Oh, lesbian drama, I love you so. 

The book primarily draws from the author’s own life experiences, occasionally weaving in wisdom from her panel of queer experts. The answers from Mey Rude, a fat trans Latina writer, were particularly affirming, and humourist Samantha Irby was predictably hilarious.

The questions are fascinating and diverse, and the responses frequently surprised me by pointing out nuances in the questioner’s situation that I’d missed. For example, the answer to a twist on “Why don’t my girlfriend and I have sex anymore,” first asked the questioner to examine why she was pushing her partner for sex, after she’d already said no; later pivoting to prurient interest in the failed threesome the writer had mentioned as an aside.  

Drawing strongly on the author’s personal experiences is both a strength and weakness here. There were a few times when Court’s personal stories felt tangential, and the questions were left barely addressed. For example, I was hoping for an insightful response to a question about how to deal with low self-esteem issues when your body is fatter than your thin, ripped girlfriend. Instead of utilizing resources on body positivity and fat liberation or the perspectives of her fat guest panelists, the book included a long story about Court’s history with hating her body that seemed to miss the point.

Many of the questions reflect common themes in queer women’s lives—falling in love, figuring out your identity, navigating queer society as a marginalized person, having tough conversations with lovers and fam. At it’s best, this book felt like chatting with a friend who cares deeply about you, but also isn’t afraid to call you on your bullshit. 

Since many questions focus on firsts, like trying an open relationship, or learning to date long distance, most of the people featured are in their twenties. Still, every section includes questions from people 30+ as well. As a solidly middle-aged queer, I felt much of the advice was still relevant. Or at a minimum, highly entertaining. 
I picked up this book thinking it would be fun to read aloud on a dyke road trip. Because the tone vacillates from poignant to lightly snarky, it’s not as consistently funny as I expected. But I was struck by how much of the book focuses on kindness, on how we can care for one another, and for ourselves. I recommend The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend is my Girlfriend for readers looking for a life guidance, or a reminder the joys and absurdities of queer community.

Danika reviews Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

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I couldn’t tell you why I started listening to Why Fish Don’t Exist. I must have heard it recommended somewhere, because it was on my audiobook app favorites list, so I gave it a try as something that looked entertaining, but didn’t seem like it would requite my full attention. Like a podcast! I certainly didn’t realize it was queer, or that it was about mental health and the meaning of life.

I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of this one if you can, because the author is the cohost of Radiolab and cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, so this was a step above most audiobooks I listen to–it feels like it was made for that format. (Plus, there is an adorable audio bonus at the very end.)

This is ostensibly–at first–a biography of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist who discovered a huge chunk of the world’s known fish species. It begins with a story about Jordan, about how his life work was catalogued in glass containers containing specimens shelved in the hundreds in his office–and the earthquake that sent them tumbling down. Surrounded by hundreds of preserved fish, broken glass, and specimen labels scattered across the floor, Jordan searched the debris, found a fish and a label he recognized, and stitched it directly to the fish itself.

How does someone continue to find meaning even when chaos seems to claim everything, Miller asks. When she was a child, her scientific father told her there is no meaning in life: there’s no creator, no plan, and we are mere specks in an endless universe. As she grew up, she struggled with suicidal thoughts, and went looking for meaning that doesn’t require a belief in God. Perhaps, she reasons, Jordan has that answer. So she sets out to do a deep dive into his life, hoping that it will lead to greater understanding.

This is an impossible book to summarize, and I don’t want to spoil it for you–which isn’t something I thought I would say about a nonfiction book about fish taxonomy. It takes some twists and turns, and it is simultaneously: a biography of Jordan, a memoir of Miller’s search for meaning, a collection of trivia, and an exploration of chaos and order. Miller realizes that perhaps the urge to have neat categories for all things (and people) is something that should be pushed back on.

Miller’s queer identity isn’t the focus of most of this book, but it is an important undercurrent. This is a book about imagining the world–and your place in it–complexly, and realizing that it’s a much more weird, unpredictable, and beautiful place than you could have predicted. This is definitely one of my favourite audiobooks I’ve ever listened to.

Content warning: David Starr Jordan was a white supremacist. This is discussed later in the book.