Reviews and Comments

i feel very good about having read this years after it was loud in the queer zeitgeist some 3 or 4 years ago. i recall much criticism aimed at what was being said; stuff about normalizing detrans and making the white trans girl experience some specially oppressed category etc. etc. heavily idpol based stuff that was ultimately dismissive of trans woman perspectives in favor of token intersectionality. once again something challenging and requiring acute empathy and openess met with defensiveness and myopia. but to the actual book itself. heartwarming, gutwrenching, touching, full of yearning, and devastating. what is easy to miss is that stories like this dont come to being ex nihilo, they are based heavily in the experience of the author and in the anecdotes of real people that they collect. what this story conveys feels absolutely true and real. it fragments the dominant narrative of queer life and transfemme life into a plethora of different lives. it is an expression of the impossibilty of this life chosen. it takes seriously the idea that nothing is given, life can change or end as suddenly as it began and this is truth for the queer subaltern. to live this way is to live without hope, without futurity. there is a persistent cynicism that isn't a brainworm endemic to trans women, its contrarily reality itself as lived from that position. without hope there is only the next step ahead and helping each other to take the next ad infinitum. detransition is represented not as the failure of transition, but the success of patriarchy in pushing women into masculine armor that shields them in a hostile, anti-effeminate society. peters also shows stunningly the problem of personhood in modern society: the idea that we must essentially "be something" to be someone. perhaps career, parenthood, creative pursuit these things define people in the face of others and give ontogical security in a way that is systematically denied to trans women. they cannot be people, their position is too precarious such that even getting a career and a family is considered the exception and is only held onto tenuously. the characters struggle to define themselves and always gesture at others, desperately defer to others to make them a person just to have it quickly withdrawn. this is not just trans women problem or a trans problem, its the problem with modern personhood and the depth of alienation that creates a hierarchy of person-ness. all in all super thoughtful, well executed and raw. highly recomended read and i look forward to reading more of what torrey peters has to offer.

I appreciate Hillman as a writer opposing existential nihilism with mythic psychology. Its at this point trite to affirm that nothing is essential, nothing is firm, even reality itself; so it is that the myth of the acorn resounds as a callback towards pre-christian mythology and the ideas of ancestors that lived in more traditional societies. Even if the acorn, the daimon, guardian angels, etc. aren't real in a strict sense, they are real if we choose to recognize them as forces of personality and self-development. There is irreducibly, a piece of the human assemblage that is neither genetic nor cultural; it is a calling that forcefully makes manifest the individual character when answered and can drive one to suicidal despair when ignored. It makes one wonder at the value of myth when life is lived with it rather than made an object for contemplation. There is much in this approach a greater appreciation for indigenous and non-western cultures well which treat the soul as real and relevant to daily life.

I couldn't help but feel that this story was "Lynchian". The premise is mundane, Kafka Tamura is just another kid running away from his family. The deepening of the story involves chance encounters which later become inseparable from a dramatic notion of fate. Tamura is drawn into a vortex, his fate at odds with the rational, modern, mundane sense of reality brings out the surreal. This is something that the story stylistically clarifies: that surrealism is about subverting what we expect from reality. Dreams are based on our experiences but they are uncanny because they do not follow the rules of the waking world. on the Shore also interestingly seems to suggest kinship between surrealism and myth, Murakami places in our mind the idea that myth is dream and dream is myth. Oedipus and Orpheus live in the unconscious, ruling our fates whether or not we realize it. And this notion seems to nicely complement Shinto and Buddhism, blurring the boundaries of east and west, asserting a shared experience. I loved reading this book, my first of Murakami and I doubt it will be my last.

Chambers accomplished what i affirm is the most important role of the sci-fi genre: to present potent reflections of our own day to day. The virtues we yet lack, the ways things could be different, the questions that are pervasive and perhaps inescabably human. Its not about the future, and my issues with the book come less from the contemplative value, but in the set dressing that fools the reader into shallow idealism. I think Chambers is aware of this, and is reluctant to fully embrace ideology, carefully placing Dex and Mosscap in a space of ambivalence. The treatment of the luddite colony i found however, in bad taste. the colonist who differentiates themself from the rest, further reinforces ideology that luddism is equal to close-mindedness and that technology is akin to enlightenment. I feel that Chambers consulted someone to write this characters dialogue, but doesn't internalize the meaning of what she wrote. She could have simply depicted people living happily as they pleased like we know indigneous people have for thousands of years. different, but no lesser than the rest, but instead she wrote the Amish. It gives the impression that the harmony and cohesion of this society is because they simply have everything right and that deviation from the model is inherently reactionary. I think Chambers grapples with this haunting element present in utopias with the presentation of the luddites, but i think it could have been more valuable if communties had more challenging differences that upend the apparent unity of the world. Circling back, i appreciated the treatment of human nature, the search for meaning, right relationship and the smaller discussions about money, consciousness and mystery. Overall, a bit too challenging a read maybe for believers in the status quo, too much ideology for the hungry leftist, just enough targets for thorough anarchist to take shots at.

In his own words, a response to LeGuin's the Dispossessed, Triton exposes the limits of politically conscious fiction. Bron is hilariously relatable asshole who we can't help loving. Even as his government participates in the deadliest war in the history of humanity, he can only think "but what about meeee?". Myself living in a city in a country with a broad safety net and high quality of life, i was made to think often about my own petty problems and even pettier forms of micro-politicing I've participated in that do nothing to mitigate the hot wars and genocides occurring simultaneously not 2,000 mi distance away. The truth is that that is the basis for the pettiness of everyday life. Bron is a black sheep because he was shaped by particular expectations of his youth, expectations that simply don't exist on Triton. It might be that the only expectation is that one be totally open and free, which is something not always possible. The way he chases after the Spike, like a rider believing a wild horse will stoop to his will. On a moon like Triton this isn't understood like the romantic yearning that we recognize, rather its just a very peculiar kink for the old-fashioned. He's haunted by his past, how it determines him, how it makes him small. He's thick-headed and constantly humbled for it. He's opposite of Shevek, who in many ways we're supposed to think of as a Great Man. He's a genius, a rebel to everyone, fiercely independent, etc. Despite LeGuin's likely intentions he's very much a messianic figure, well loved and respected, but detached and aloof. It makes for neither a relatable nor very interesting character. Anyways, Delany does it again.