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Our struggles are so very intimately connected. We should match our intentions & our words with our actions, as Assata says.

„Each time one of imperialism's tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation. [...] Imperialism is an international system of exploitation, and, we, as revolutionaries, need to be internationalists to defeat it.”

I've read it with a knot in my neck, heart alternating between being as big as a flea to full of love and inspiration. You should read it too. Please read it too.

She went through hell and back at the hands of white people. Of bastard police. Of racists, both the loud kind and the quiet, enabler kind. At the hand of patriarchy. And yet, in spite of it all, she stood by herself, finding herself and her culture in every instance, in every trial, in every struggle.

The book is so well structured. There's a main arc, the one of her trials for allegedly murdering a bastard cop (which she didn't), and snapshots from throughout her life.

As with any book I fall in love with, this one is full of passages you'll want to turn into huge billboards so everyone could read and shed off some privilege and wilful ignorance.

Won't spoil anything in this review but ugh. I did spoil it for the people that were unfortunate enough to talk to me while I was reading this, haha.

The liberation of trans people would improve the lives of everyone in our society.

There are no words to describe how amazing this book is. So good I had to read it twice, back to back.
Written during the 2020 pandemic, although it feels timeless, and it feels like the world has always needed this book.

It's one of those books that will deplete your highlighter markers.

First of all, I think everyone that is not trans should definitely read this book, it explains so many facets of transness, so many misconceptions, harmful tropes or politicized issues, in very easy to understand ways. If you have even a shadow of bigotry (as most of us have, being brainwashed by society, family, school and the media), this book will definitely replace that hate with love.

Author and activist Shon Faye unravels time itself, exposing what some of us have always known (even subconsciously), that trans beings have always been a part of humanity. We're not a recent "invention" at all.

This book approaches transness from an intersectional perspective which I loved. It talks about capitalism, sexism, patriarchy, eugenics, racism, which are the roots of most evil in the world.

Honestly, I will definitely read it a third time.

As far as memoirs go, I enjoyed the nonlinear style, mixed with natural history, philosophical musings and inner thoughts.

Between the high expectations to overcome as a woman in science, the patriarchal gender norms, the stress of gathering funds alongside her male lab partner with whom she has a special relationship (which had several pressure points, for that relationship to be defined, or to "progress" in a direction she didn't want, even though the expectations were there as well).

Really loved reading about her relationship with her mom. How she had to overcome the imposed upon her housewife status. How she inspired her love for not just reading but exhaustively reading a book.

Also loved her relationship with her husband, how in spite of people telling her, at various points, that she was too inexpressive or too expressive, their relationship had the right chemistry.

Two quotes I really loved:

"People don't know to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one."

„Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-hundred-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood. In our relentless and ever-intensifying obsession with obtaining a higher volume, potency, and variety of these three things, we have devastated plant ecology to an extent that millions of years of natural disaster could not.”

The one thing I disliked — the fact that she cared so deeply about plants, about the planet, but in several instances described eating beings. Wish she applied her way of thinking to what's on her plate as well. Or, rather, who is on her plate.