An artist turned full-time mom grows fur, hunts naked, and eats raw meat off the floor with her toddler son. Just another triumphant, heartwarming story about motherhood. 10/10.
Do you want to spend a few weeks wading through the thick paranoia of The Troubles? This book embodies a political moment without ever once feeling newsy. Its narrator knows no jargon, no propoganda, she can't name what's going on, she just knows what she feels and feels what she knows. I've never read historical fiction that does what this book does, it just blew my dang mind. Just make sure you're ready though because, whoa, content warning: stalking and threat of sexual assault simmers throughout.
Is it possible to exceed your hype? Holy crap this novel is good! A hysterical and disturbing prose rendering of our internet-minds, a prescient meditation on the crumbling of Roe, redeeming its bleak vision by digging into real life, into hope. This was the best book I read in 2021.
This photography book catalogues the sidewalks, storefronts, overpasses, and other quirks of the built environment that make L.A. look so L.A., and it rocks. I kept laughing out loud with recognition. New arrivals and lifelong Angelenos will love it; it’s a total treat. Plus, your friend who convinced you to move here doesn’t already own it—it’s a rare import!
So, you survived a global pandemic. Are you ready to laugh about it? You’ll cry, too, for other reasons. Severance is a pitch perfect novel about nostalgia and diaspora, where an infectious disease drives people to mindlessly repeat familiar habits until they die of starvation. Just like late-capitalism! Imagine sheltering in place in an abandoned Hot Topic. You’re welcome.
I’ve never read another novel like The Collection. The protagonist is filing away mental images of the anonymous sex she is having, and the sex is divorced from any opposing gaze or truly even a presence beyond, well, what the cover suggests, fully centering the female protagonist’s urges and desires in this very wild way. Wow. What an experiment.
For every creative person on your list, Lynda Barry is here. She brought her composition notebook and she’s going to fix everything. Syllabus reminds us that we DO notice things, we DO have a sense of humor, we’re FULL of ideas and we’re wide awake to the weird, wonderful world, so we’re ready to make art. Great for all ages.
Originally a poet, Jenny Zhang's debut story collection is fierce, energetic, so funny, so heart-rending, juicy and delicious, just like those grapes. The stories' narrators are Chinese immigrants loosely connected by the fact that they lived in the same building when they first arrived in New York City. Features the most fabulously brutal pre-pubescent narrator I have ever read. This collection took my breath away. Zhang is a voice master. Heartily recommend.
Toward what end does art depict trauma? Can shock-and-awe heal us, or does it sometimes do more harm than good? If you are someone who snags on these questions a lot (maybe you wonder why some upsetting tv shows are wonderful and others are truly terrible!) I recommend The Art of Cruelty. Maggie Nelson's clarity is supernatural, she has fewer limiting filters than the rest of us or something, I don't know, her mind is incredible, we don't deserve her.
Do you want to spend a few weeks wading through the thick paranoia of The Troubles? This book embodies a political moment without ever once feeling newsy. Its narrator knows no jargon, no propoganda, she can't name what's going on, she just knows what she feels and feels what she knows. I've never read historical fiction that does what this book does, it just blew my dang mind. Just make sure you're ready though because, whoa, content warning: stalking and threat of sexual assault simmers throughout.
If you feel like dropping out, read this guide to dropping in. I cried four times and felt a modicum of hope. I don't say this lightly: it's a necessary book.
"Text means tissue." Skin, y'all. And what is sexier than a flash of skin you weren't supposed to see? Barthes thinks what's going on between a writer and a reader is a seduction. I've never written so many exclamation points in a book in my damn life. Lit crit that is emphatically NOT boring!
Keep it by your bedside, read one or two before bed, guaranteed to chortle.
Morgan Parker has several great collections, they're all going to make your dang life, but this one was my first love. Parker's poems needle history through modern-day doldrums like it's nothing, like life is a napkin ring. It's all the same old crap, as Basquiat likes to say. Parker likes to say it, too. She has a SAMO tattoo.
