Autoren-Bilder

Jen Sookfong Lee

Autor von The End of East

11 Werke 327 Mitglieder 30 Rezensionen Lieblingsautor von 1 Lesern

Über den Autor

Beinhaltet den Namen: Lee Sookfong, Jen

Werke von Jen Sookfong Lee

Getagged

Wissenswertes

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

This is ok. H liked looking at pictures of other babies, but it's kinda in media res for the animals racing.

Also as a horse I gotta say "scared and runs away" is not usually what I think for the sign, but oh well
 
Gekennzeichnet
Daumari | 1 weitere Rezension | Dec 28, 2023 |
Living in a world of his own making and escaping from a house in which he never belonged are his two successes. (p. 14-5)

Leaving was one of two choices. He could stay, and work in the curio shop for the rest of his life. He would marry a girl he barely knew or barely tolerated, and live in this house with his parents, eating the same food, staring at them staring at him. If he left, non one would notice him. He would be invisible, moving around this city or another one, one body among many - life unseen, life unplanned. If he left, he could be anonymous for a time, observing and quiet. And then he could create a new Danny, one who took the world's most famous photographs, one who never thought of his parents at all. (p. 95)

… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
NewLibrary78 | Jul 22, 2023 |
Through a series of essays with a loose theme of pop culture, Sookfong Lee talks about growing up in Vancouver, Canada as the daughter of Chinese immigrants. When she was 12 and her father died after a lengthy battle with cancer, she found comfort in watching Bob Ross with his soothing ASMR voice; when her mother disappeared into deep depression, she identified with the orphan [Anne of Green Gables]. Princess Diana helped her navigate the expectations of having to be the "good girl" that is expected of Chinese girls in Canada, and Awkwafina showed her that she could be herself and break out from stereotypes. The most interesting chapter for me was "The Boys on Film" and her early crushes on white boys in movies, such as John Cusack in Say Anything, and then growing up to date too many white guys who treated her as their fetish. I don't think of myself as someone who cares about pop culture (now as an adult), but she uses it in an interesting way to explain how she figured out how to fit into her surroundings and the overriding whiteness everywhere around her.

The recurring struggles she deals with are absent parents (father through illness and death; mother through mental illness), racism (lots of racism), fitting in and not fitting in, divorce, single motherhood, and life as a struggling writer. This memoir is raw, sometimes angry, and intimate.
… (mehr)
½
1 abstimmen
Gekennzeichnet
Nickelini | Jan 26, 2023 |
"When we are not fixed, not over it, still triggered, still feeling, still healing in our forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond we are not failing. We are remembering. We are learning from our survivorhood. We are moving from a model that gasps at our scars to one that wants to learn as much from them as possible. We are not an individual defect. We are a collective movement, a series of overlapping Survivor communities."

-Not over it, not fixed, and living a life worth living: a disability Justice vision of survivorhood
By
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
From
“Whatever Gets You Through
Twelve survivors on life after sexual assault”

This…was not what I expected. It was so much more than that.
It's going to be difficult to be objective and not get rather personal with this review, but that's to be expected given the subject matter. I was not expecting such a literary work but on that point it certainly delivered.

Even if you view this book purely as a work of literature, which would be a mistake, it's 10 out of 10 all the way. This is precisely what we should be doing with literature right now in my opinion - using art to have important and necessary conversations that we as a culture can't seem to have otherwise and ones that we -need- to have.

Of course if you feel a….draw to the subject matter you should definitely check it out this is easily one of the best things I've ever read and certainly in my top two or three of this year.

Okay personal stuff here. As a Survivor of multiple violations I found something in each of these women's stories that spoke to me directly it seemed. One of the great things about literature and using literature to talk about such things as rape is that it liberates the author to be able to tell the story however the hell they like. A great Triumph of what we nowadays call Creative nonfiction, and aside from the book's other merits, of which there are considerable number aside, it is an Exemplar of what creative non-fiction can do. Many of these are completely nonlinear narratives quite a few are entirely symbolic that all of them are powerful impactful and real.
And there is no way to miss what's being discussed.
Unlike what you might expect this is a very fast read and in terms of its pure writing quite engaging- enough so that I had to make myself read it in small doses, generally one section at a time, for my own well being.

Yes I'm aware of the subject matter but the writing itself is more than merely solid, it is exceptional and definitely told by people who understand the use and power of their Words

One of my favorite things about this book is it's rather clearly stated agenda. To completely collapse and ignore the standard cultural narrative surrounding these things and replace it with the only narrative that matters that of those who survived these experiences. In that it is quite political but my favorite kind of political that which seeks to unleash a truth upon the world and eradicate the lies that have come before.

To get into the specifics of each narrative would be both inappropriate and quite disrespectful the contents thereof should not be subject to such inanities such as literary criticism. Bluntly there is no way a simple synopses could do this work Justice
So I shall not attempt to do so instead I will simply urge you to read it if you have the wherewithal to do so.

Yes it's about surviving but much more importantly it's about what comes after. It's about the part that begins when the bullshit patriarchal, media glazed cultural narrative ends. It's about the Long messy follow-up that casts very long Shadows on the lives of those affected.
As a Survivor myself I found an unusual Community feeling manifesting as I progressed through the volume in that special way that lifts one's own burden.
An odd thing? Surely. But a real thing.

Reading this made me feel better not worse despite the obvious possibility of very bad things coming from this though I would still learn caution to anyone else with a survivor engaging perhaps trepidatiously into the first few pages of this volume take it slowly at your own pace, and stop if you need to.

5 out of 5. Would give it a 6 if I could.
Anything else I read on this related matters it's going to have a very high water mark indeed.

Reclaim your truth,
The Maenad
… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
Serendipitygirl | 1 weitere Rezension | Oct 15, 2022 |

Auszeichnungen

Dir gefällt vielleicht auch

Nahestehende Autoren

Heather O'Neill Contributor
Elly Danica Contributor
Amber Dawn Contributor
Karyn L. Freedman Contributor
Juliane Okot Bitek Contributor
Gwen Benaway Contributor
Kai Cheng Thom Contributor
Lauren McKeon Contributor
Soraya Palmer Contributor

Statistikseite

Werke
11
Mitglieder
327
Beliebtheit
#72,482
Bewertung
½ 3.5
Rezensionen
30
ISBNs
44
Sprachen
1
Favoriten
1

Diagramme & Grafiken