Monthly Archives: May 2026

“This is a treatise on trans ambivalence,” proclaims a sentence in the Foreword. As the author explains, part of the work of transphobia is to consistently undermine or outright deny the reality of trans people, requiring that they reply with absolute certainty — but what in human life do we know with absolute certainty?? (Nothing,ContinueContinue reading “None of the Above, Travis Alabanza”

I had lofty ambitions, like two months ago, of writing a proper essay on these two novels, which are not exactly the same book but they sure are close. Both are novels about a couple in their 20s living in a city in another country — in The Anthropologists, the city and their countries ofContinueContinue reading “Perfection and The Anthropologists”

I knew almost nothing about this movie except that it was Charli xcx in Warsaw, which is where I’m from, so obviously I had to go. And right from the jump I was pleasantly surprised to find that the credits were in Polish, as was the voice-over narration, and all of the initial dialogue. ItContinueContinue reading “Erupcja”

People have been recommending this to me for awhile (for years I guess, jeeze) and I finally picked it up. I was a little skeptical — the story of a woman stuck in a strange time loop, reliving a single day, didn’t seem very appealing (and there are 7 volumes of this?!). But I wasContinueContinue reading “On the Calculation of Volume, vl 1, Solvej Balle, tr. Barbara Haveland”

I read this weeks ago, but it has stayed with me because it feels like a desperate attempt to bear witness; to register what is happening amid rapid changes and the apparently utter indifference of the rest of the world. Evans documented the conditions in refugee camps in Northern France in 2015 and 2016 (theyContinueContinue reading “Threads: From the Refugee Crisis, Kate Evans”