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Un libro donde realmente... no pasa nada. Lo único que pasa en este libro es que Eulalia empieza unas prácticas de profe en un colegio de monjas. Punto. Pero el tiempo que he pasado con Lali ha sido como toda una vida <3

Supongo que en general el libro es the ultimate coming of age tale, un cuento sobre hacerse mayor mientras la protagonista reflexiona sobre el hacerse mayor de les peques a los que cuida - hacerse mayor entendido como marchitarse, pasar por el tubo, tener que amoldarse a una sociedad rota, con exigencias arbitrarias pero terriblemente dañinas.

Y además ves el proceso paralelo de marchitamiento de Lali, el vapuleamiento al que se ha visto sometida en su corta vida. Aún teniendo relaciones cercanas muy sanas (he apreciado la falta de trauma materno la verdad), sigue habitando un mundo hostil del que se siente alienada y que todavía está aprendiendo a navegar, al igual que sus peques. Mundo hostil, léase, ONVRES, poder, instituciones, precariedad, el status quo, por decir algunos.

Ha sido una verdadera delicia adentrarse en la mente de Lali, ver lo puro y bello y también lo oscuro y embarazoso; lo transcendental y también lo mundano. Un detalle que me ha parecido gracioso ha sido el contraste entre la profundidad y complejidad que Lali puede tener cuando estás en su mente versus lo que expresa en diálogo: corto, ambiguo, inexpresivo. Es esta la condición adolescente? Tener una mente en pleno proceso de florecimiento y expansión, y sin embargo expresar una versión llana y predecible? Quizás sí.

Conclusión: una delicia de libro, 13/10, o más bien 5/5.

Holy shit what did I just read?

So I went in knowing only that a) it was dystopian sci-fi and b) nothing else, tbh this is more than enough to get me to read a book.

Context: this book was written in 1996, right when Taiwan ended its martial law, leaving the country exposed to the rest of the world (aka capitalism) (but also other nice things like (queer) ideas!!).

The presented dystopia: ozone layer is gone, UV radiation is so strong that humans need to make Atlantis-like replicas of countries, occupying ocean beds of the planet. Clearly a critique on growthism and techno optimism, and almost literally where we're heading lol (if you substitute the ocean for Mars) (somebody stop Elon Musk pls lol im scared)

In any case, crazy plot and plot twist and, once you look into the context, it makes much more sense - as with any dystopia, this is a piece that unveils the turmoil and anxieties of its time by projecting onto a certain future. In this case, this future presents ubiquitous commodification, mass surveillance, omnipotent corporations (this is getting too real....) but also adding many queer elements (hooray!).

Quite a mind-boggling short read, and a cool way to peep into 90s Taiwan through queer sci-fi!

@Foskea this goes out to you cuz I'm reading this after you clicked "Want to Read" on this very website! And also today is your bday what a coinkindink! Happy bday Fossie xxxx

Look...... I'm all for nonsense and abstraction but like..... A thorough analysis of "Dude, Where's My Car?" from a queer perspective, finding symbolism on forgetting as a way to disrupt vertical hegemonic patriarchal transfer of knowledge is an abstraction of nonsense I just can't get behind!

This book has some reaaaally nice commentary on failure vs success and thus the queer vs the norm and it's like a prompt for all of us to like reimagine our realities and strive for other kinds of lives that don't fit normative notions of success. Nice takes on CGI and animation media as a vessel for that, and overall interesting takes on today's world using queer "failure" as a lens. And as a way to link content and form he wants to use other types of knowledge to make a point - i.e. analyzing silly media as a form of "low theory".

I totally get it, I do love looking into media, but the 5-page analyses of "50 First Dates" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" are sooo convoluted, to a ridiculous degree!!!! To me, it all reads like a satire of postmodern academics interpreting and reinterpreting reality, getting lost in the world of ideas and grandiose lexicon.

Tbf, I think this was, at times, too academic for me - I don't read primary texts!!! I watch Youtube videos! I'm just your regular queer girlie yaknow? Maybe many things went over my head. Maybe the whole point was that this was satire! Gosh knows. In the spirit of embracing this piece, I will fully acknowledge my failure at grasping the entire meaning of this book - and that's a-okay!

To end, a really nice quote that I think pretty much summarizes the book's thesis:

"Let's leave success and its achievements to the Republicans, to the corporate managers of the world, to the winners of reality TV shows, to married couples, to SUV drivers. The concept of practicing failure perhaps prompts us to discover our inner dweeb, to be underachievers, to fall short, to get distracted, to take a detour, to find a limit, to lose our way, to forget, to avoid mastery, and, with Walter Benjamin, to recognize that "empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers"."

So one would think it's all in the title, but! It's all in the subtitle: "A memoir in archives".

This book has given me SO much food for thought. An intellectual cornucopia, if you will. So much to think about and process and ruminate and consider.

This book explores lives of some "lesbians" in history, some of them who even lived before the word lesbian existed. Even before the concept was given a name (hence the quotation marks before), when it was a sexual orientation and also a gender performance, a time when the lines between these two were blurred. Lesbianhood (?) as we know it (an identity and/or a political stance) is so so recent, and partially because of the archival silence around women, even more so dissident women. In this book there's an incredibly interesting dive into the little archives that do exist, unveiling specific queer stories, telling us more about the zeitgeist, and providing an abundance of musings on gender expression, queerness, friendship, love - all the good stuff!

This goes straight into my Lesbian Lore List (@Audrey get on it!), a must read for anyone identifying as a lesbian or as queer. Folks, we must know our past to define our collective future!

2 words, 12 letters: QUEER FANTASY!

OH to be 15 again. To be hooked on a book that introduces a whole new world, to want to know more and more and more, to not be able to go to bed even though it's way past your bedtime, to tell yourself "one more chapter"...!!

As I've been saying to my friends: This is the teenagehood that was stolen from me! A book where I can see a bit of myself in (aka Lesbians duhhh), but in this fantasy setting that we all know and love: dragons! epic journeys! long lost jewels! And of course... it all starts with a map at the beginning of the book! chefs kiss

Also idk if I'm just older and thus won't just read this without trying to look a bit deeper into it but I thought there might have been some cool commentary on like... the world? Lol. I swear to god that dragon is climate change!!!!! (iykyk)

"In her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” on the dearth of contemporaneous African accounts of slavery, Saidiya Hartman talks about the “violence of the archive.” This concept—also called “archival silence”—illustrates a difficult truth: sometimes stories are destroyed, and sometimes they are never uttered in the first place; either way something very large is irrevocably missing from our collective histories."

A very important read. This book tells a story for the archives, a story about domestic violence in a lesbian relationship. The violence that the author experienced in her own relationship. It is part autobiography, part essay, part fable, part manifesto - all while going back to the figure of "The Dream House" - the (paradoxical) name that is given to the physical representation of the abuse.

It is a political act, to tell such a story, and we must listen, we must listen and be aware. Violence, abuse, terrible people, they also belong in our (alleged) queer utopias and we must see it, recognize it, and talk about it. Many stories by women have been lost. Many more by lesbians. And even more by lesbian victims of abuse. Their stories must be told - because, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to see it, did it really fall?

On another note, it was truly a harrowing experience to read not only about the abuse that she experienced, but of the inner workings of her mind, of the mind of a victim of domestic violence. There are such powerful mechanisms at work, mechanisms that are so powerful that they can warp one's entire reality. It is scary to think that it can happen, slowly, and then all at once.

A must read for lesbians doing! their! homework!!!!

Buah. Buahhhhh. BUAH. Buah no? Buah. Qué libro. He tardado muchísimo en hacer la review porque me parece que no puedo ser muy coherente a la hora de explicar por qué me ha gustado tanto este libro. Supongo que lo que puedo decir con total seguridad es que Sara Torres escribe TAN bonito. Tan y tan bonito.

En este libro, Sara Torres habla de cosas tan grandes como la muerte de una madre o el enamoramiento, y de cosas tan pequeñas como cenar sopa una noche o leer en al biblioteca. Y en todo momento tiene la magia que tienen algunos de hacer de la realidad una obra de arte mediante las palabras. Un libro para leer lentamente, para saborear, para sentir.

Además, bastantes reflexiones sobre lo que es amar entre mujeres, o desear a una mujer siendo mujer, sin ser la parte central del libro; un libro en el que resulta que la protagonista es lesbiana, sin que sea SOBRE ser lesbiana... me explico?

En conclusión: como gran bollerona intensa que soy he disfrutado muchísimo de los pensares y sentires de otra bollerona intensa mucho más elocuente que yo. A+++

Un libro para alimentar tu misandria adormecida!!!! La verdad es que con este libro no me faltan las ganas de MATAR A ONVRES madremía qué euforia

Ahora en serio, este libro consiguió despertar dos grandes emociones en mí: la rabia y la sororidad. En el libro tres chicas se conocen al plantarle cara a un acto de abuso machista en el metro de Valencia. Lo que surge es un grupo, o más que un grupo, un clan, un aquelarre, una manada. Tres mujeres hartas, heridas, llenas de rabia, juntas en un magnetismo primordial e innato, desde la parte reptiliana de su cerebro. Se cuidan y se protegen, y se unen para luchar juntas contra la violencia sistémica y normalizada de un género hacia el otro. Después del aguante, del desgaste, de la paciencia, de la decepción... qué nos queda? nos queda LA RABIA, y nos queda, claroquesí, la violencia. Al puro estilo Hammurabico: ojo por ojo, diente por diente.

Porque si el sistema legitimiza ciertas violencias, quizás nos tenemos que cargar este sistema. Un sistema que nos falla. Quizás el callar y aguantar, la diplomacia, y la no violencia no sirven. La moral judeocristiana nos nubla la vista: NO vamos a poner la otra mejilla. Hasta el coño ya.

PD. Escribiendo esto me vengo arriba y adopto esta visión combativa que promueve la violencia pero lo que quiero decir es que canalizar la rabia puede ayudar a todo el movimiento feminista. Las versiones más radicales de un movimiento son esenciales para el cambio - juguemos con estas ideas, que formen parte del discurso, y hablemos de todas las formas que puede tomar la respuesta feminista a la violencia de género. Este libro es una de ellas.

Un libro muy especial, un regalo para toda mujer lesbiana, para toda amante. Una exploración y creación simultáneas de historia y mitología de las lesbianas. En modo diccionario, nos presentan con significados, personajes, momentos, e historias que nos permiten crear un imaginario colectivo por y para las lesbianas. En un mundo donde las historias se han contado por y para hombres, este diccionario propone algo irreverente, un ojo por ojo: una historia y mitología independiente de los hombres, sin mencionar siquiera su existencia.

Las autoras lo hacen a veces con un tono ominoso, a veces divertido y hasta travieso. Me imagino a las autoras, amantes empedernidas, tumbadas en algún escenario idílico e imaginando un mundo que fue de ellas; disfrutando del proceso, saboreando cada idea, riendo a carcajadas, llorando de rabia. No sé si ellas se dieron cuenta que en este proceso estaban creando algo que futuras amantes considerarían esencial: algo que es sólo para ellas, una pieza de cultura que nos pertenece y nos hace sentir parte de algo tangible. Todas necesitamos un mito original, cada nación, cada comunidad - y este es el libro que nos los da a las amantes.

Partes de esta mitología de las amantes que me ha encantado: las amazonas como ejes principales, la pereza y la lentitud como ritual compartido, la unión y solidaridad de amantes de todo el mundo. Partes que no tanto: usar analogías de guerra en los rituales de amor de las amantes.

Y la parte más bonita de todas: esto es un primer borrador, lo que indica que es tan sólo el principio. Es un diccionario vivo, y todas las amantes del pasado, presente, y futuro formamos parte de él. Seguimos creando nuestra mitología e historia compartidas. Este texto es sólo el principio.

My lil (huge) bedside comic book, the one I turn to when it's a tad too late, or when I'm too tired to read, and I need pretty pictures to go with the text... Thus it's been a slow read, and one that I've thoroughly enjoyed. No better bed partner than this lesbian lore essential!

In this compilation you follow the lives of the same lesbians during a span of 20+ years - and oh boy do shenanigans ensue! So many different tropes and types of lesbians: some are more queer, some are more normative, all coming from different walks of life... Beautiful lesbian biodiversity.

Although this is a comic strip it is also super political, and it's great to capture the zeitgeist of the times via the storylines and characters' opinions. It's also both amusing and slightly horrifying that issues that were relevant then, and that worried lesbians in the 80s, are issues that are relevant now, and are worrying this lesbian right here! ie rampant capitalism, environmental crisis, societal collapse, just to name a few.

Special mention to the one comic strip in this book that jokingly created the most basic feminist media analysis framework: the Bechdel test!