Critiques et Commentaires

Affirming stories, full of love and mystery, rebellion and reflection.

Engaging and humorous academic archaeological rant, nominally about whether Chaco Canyon is the center of a long and large class society in the southwest and connected to Mesoamerican culture as much as an odd Pueblo precursor, but fundamentally about widening archaeological discussion from local site parochial scientism to engage narrative prehistory, persuasive argument, and speculation.

An American mom who comes to realize our approach to parenting - from industrialized roots and consumerist separation of kid/parent worlds and work/play activities, to its narrow forms of control and praise and anger, to nuclear family isolation and overwhelming expectations - is just weird and counterproductive. She frames this in time spent with her toddler while reporting on contemporary indigenous families approaches, and in seeing practices embodied in community her answers in translation are applicable to adult relationships as well as the task of raising future adults with well-developed senses of belonging and capacity and confidence. Pay attention to the behaviors you model and encourage, and create autonomy not independence nor control.

A fragmented linear history, simultaneously text-heavy and disjointedly repetitive in its story, and then meandering to fit in a frame or poster making a tangential global connection; the art is consistent but mostly reduced to portraiture and caricature.

Thoughts on young children, on theatre, often the prompt is enough to fill in the thought, or provides the structure she proceeds to erase, in probing our expectations.

Referenced as source inspiration for Roanhorse's Black Sun, so as the sequel to that is coming up on my list I'll read a different kind of "speculative" pre-history...

Varied essays on anarchism in the 70s vs the Left, mostly aimed at redirecting consciousness raising, environmentalist, and marxist strains to fully abandon their industrial, capitalist, technologist, and fundamentally domineering underpinnings for a utopian but not universalist project of liberatory self-development self-organization and ecological coexistence.

Ancestral memory implants and empire at war and family bonds strained... it helps to know this is a string of novellas, as much as this brings its characters to life and vivid inner conflict, there's a lot of setting for perhaps too many strands in this story.

Tough characters, tough children and adults who can't leave their childhood behind, the gritty taste of old western justice and revenge in a decaying modern setting. I can't fault the form for tying in and up every last thread of pain and stretch for redemption.

The premise and title irk me, but this interview with the author www.ttbook.org/interview/modern-parenting-tips-ancient-civilizations and the introduction set a good tone of seeking and humility in current cultural alternative-to-American parenting approaches, we'll see.

Historical drama of struggle and battles and intrigue and a gender-complicated cast vying for their place in the world and power... hints of fantastical and fanatical possibilities to come, but this was slow and violent for me.

Dark humor from below, a grimly magical adventure in a familiar but inventive world.

Nerdy and approachably thorough, the level of structural and social development of these ants (millions to a nest!) is astoundingly conveyed in short picture-filled chapters.

Expanding the author's prior investigation into "wild" (airquoted throughout) space and rejecting the line between human and nature, she philosophically and environmentally unpacks what obligations we have to animals and species - in her view, mistaken valuing of "naturalness" and "species genetic purity" (reflecting colonial inflected categorization) rather than autonomy and ecosystem diversity - through location reporting on zoos and conservation projects, eradication campaigns and captive breeding. Well summed up in the suggestion that rather than de-extincting woolly mammoths, we coexist with nature in new ways such that we can imagine elephants able to migrate over the next ten thousand years to occupy places where they would adapt with hairy coats.

Second read, the sense of absurdist normalcy around incomprehensible change drives every scene and is just gripping.