Even more than I was hoping for, a thoroughly humanizing personal and anthropological narrative closely following several young Hondurans over several recent years in their own experiences of migration up and down Mexico, the relentless gang violence and poverty causing them to be stateless human smugglers, the shrinking space between state enforcement and cartel consolidation for less violent less exploitative routes.
Critiques et Commentaires
Reading for fun, threads over the years of scifi, history, social movements and justice, farming, philosophy. I actively work to balance out the white male default in what I read, but have a long way to go.
He/they for the praxis.
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loppear a publié une critique de Soldiers and Kings par Jason De León
loppear a commencé la lecture de The Language of Power par Rosemary Kirstein (Steerswoman, #4)
Two-hour podcast interview with the author on Tin House' Between the Covers: tinhouse.com/podcast/omar-el-akkad-one-day-everyone-will-have-always-been-against-this/
loppear a publié une critique de Go As a River par Shelley Read
solid 1950s western novel
3 étoiles
Chance, sense of place in the mountain west, love, home front, racism, what can be washed away and what can be transplanted. Women-focused, twists around an expected plot, hard scenes of loss and violence, I'm not sure they add up to a great whole but has a fitting firmness and solidity.
loppear a publié une critique de One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This par Omar El Akkad (duplicate)
clear-eyed and heartfelt
5 étoiles
Faced with genocide in Gaza (and a personal immigrant journey reporting on Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and more confrontations of us vs them), a sharp and painful breakup with the comfortable beliefs of liberal western democracy's morality that allow any of us to look away.
loppear a publié une critique de Blindsight par Peter Watts
hard
4 étoiles
Hard, as jargon-heavy sci-fi, as violent eldritch horrors, as our unlikable unforgiving neurodiverse crew tears apart those around them, as a philosophical conclusion about consciousness, self-awareness, and artificial intelligence. It is surprising to me that I still deeply liked it on re-read.
loppear a publié une critique de Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) par John Scalzi
meh
2 étoiles
A cozy military sci-fi. On the first hand this is a fun romp of geriatric boot camp with fun technological reveals. Fails in comparison to "The Forever War" for any confrontation with political and social impacts of the endless colonial war context. And introduces several maddeningly open-ended universal author escape hatches for the subsequent series.
loppear a publié une critique de I Contain Multitudes par Ed Yong
the complications of microbiology
5 étoiles
Our interrelations with microbes as co-equal participants in health and evolution, from coral reefs to human microbiomes. Upturns simplifications of good and bad, of in and out, self and other, and finally made sense of metagenomics for me.
loppear a publié une critique de Grievers par Adrienne Maree Brown (Black Dawn, #1)
loppear a publié une critique de The Tainted Cup par Robert Jackson Bennett (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
approachable murder mystery, off-kilter characters
3 étoiles
Entirely enjoyable imperial intrigue and whodunnit with outsider characters in a strange enough world, just not quite my cup of tea but could see revisiting for the world once the series is complete.
loppear a publié une critique de Who's Afraid of Gender? par Judith Butler
appropriately correct and angry
3 étoiles
A response to authoritarian anti-gender movements, the first half rails a bit more than I need to relive current politics, the second half updates Butler's approach to co-constructed gender in society as anti-colonial anti-racist, and emphasizes the right's lie of gender ideology being a destructive force in society, distracting from dealing with real dangers of climate, economic precarity, and war.













