alexandriaslibrary's reviews
244 reviews

An intro/analysis and a long reprinted poem from Stein. Lifting Belly is an ode to lesbian sex & Alice B. Toklas (Stein’s partner of 40 years) Kinda felt like overhearing to your neighbors that are in love or peeking through a peephole. Parts are so earnest, bare, and intimate. 

“Kiss my lips. She did.

Kiss my lips again she did.

Kiss my lips over and over and over again she did.

I have feathers.

Gentle fishes.

Do you think about apricots. We find them very beautiful. It is not alone their color it is their seeds that charm us. We find it a change.”

:-(( What a beautiful book about friendship, grief, and identity set against the college years 

Been really loving audiobook memoirs recently, this one was a great addition. Lieu's mother, a nail salon owner who fled Vietnam, died from complications of a tummy tuck when the author was 11. The author struggled with her grief through school, a wellness cult, and her own relationships with her family who refused to talk or discuss their mother.

As someone who has also lost a mother before many milestones, it was really moving to hear about how Lieu found acceptance and peace to keep moving forward. I also thought the audiobook was really great to actually hear vietnamese (a motif of the book is that the meaning of 'ma' can change drastically with different inflections including mother, tomb, and ghost.)

The author is also an actor/performance artist so the entire memoir feels very lived in and dynamic. 

Not even exaggerating—if you are gay you need to read this book….. this could be the best gay book I’ve ever read. Originally written in 1913/1914 but only published posthumously, this is a touching, beautifully crafted bildungsroman about a gay boy named Maurice Hall and his love triangle (and the horrors of attraction, intimacy, criminalized homosexuality, and class) <333

interconnected stories about black girls, women, and others (nonbinary) in britain. Loved the vastness and scope of their stories & that they felt very three-dimensional and real 

Should be required reading! What a mind, her views are still “radical” 40 years later but I wish everyone would’ve listened then

“Can any one of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual? Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any one particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class?

Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each other's difference with respect.”
From “Learning from the 1960s”

A book that feels plucked from my own head. Part magical companion a la Mrs Caliban, part existentialism a la Pure Colour, and a true love letter to Marta Becket and Death Valley.

Our narrator is contemplating the life of the eccentric dancer Marta Becket as a lens for her larger questions about the roles of art and religion in life. 

A very Good Book™

I highly encourage everyone to revisit Letter From Birmingham Jail if they haven’t since school (or ever). We hear so much about MLK Jr in a fluffy, celebratory way, but he’s been so decontextualized. He writes/speaks so accessibly about systemic racism, the urgency for civil rights, and the calling of God to help one another.

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal'. It was illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.”

Getting into celebrity memoir audiobooks & this one was a treat! I loved that they supplemented the audiobook with their old recordings, demos, and performances. I think this book also works so well because of its very
specific scope. Tegan and Sara switch off telling the story of their high school years & their first steps as musicians & as lesbian icons. Lucy Dacus said this is a Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll memoir & it 1000000% is