A very moody but appealing short comic about (and I hope I read into it correctly) gender identity and leaving abusive environments. I’m a bit unsure due to the clarity of the storytelling – are Olea and Eli the same person? Is Eli letting go of their old self in an attempt to move on from the past? To me, Olea and the mother look the same so that was rather confusing. Still, the simplicity of the art style works in its favour as well as the shortness of the comic – it stuck around just enough. It definitely strikes a chord when it comes to leaving ones old life behind in favour of new beginnings.

6/10

Always interesting to read some essays, general thoughts, and new insights, so the format of the book itself was quite fun, but I did have some gripes.

• Most, a large chunk really, of this ‘memoir of essays’ are interview/radio transcripts. They get tiring very quickly, and often are also a bit hard to follow. It would make more sense to reformat some of these into actual essays or streams of thought, as then we could get some more insight and context into the conversation. I have also heard that for the audio-book version of this, everyone who speaks is voiced by the same narrator, making it even harder to decipher. I understand that getting permission to actually use voice clips from the actual session may be harder legally (it’s a bit murky, I think), but couldn’t you solve that issue by employing other narrators for distinct voices? It just is very perplexing for this book to be about accessibility and then have it not be accessible to some people because of bad formatting.

• There is another point that is rather murky; the section in which Wong talks about disabled voices in radio, having more variety and overall diversity in audio. While the idea itself isn’t bad, the logistics is muddled. Disabled people themselves may have a harder time processing coughs, stutters, wheezes, beeps and other noises on top of already trying to process audio. I know abled people struggle with this already. I can get overstimulated and overwhelmed myself. Realistically, there is not a solution for everything. But it is not trying to cancel a clear and distinct voice for being ‘ableist’.

• A more trivial point (for me imo) was Wong talking about access to plastic straws. I agree with her on that! Paper straws are horrible for everyone, bad, and inaccessible. The bendy straw was invented to help small children have better access to their drinks! They get soggy and gross five seconds into using them, the texture, the aftertaste...the same goes for wooden utensils in my opinion. But sometimes we just have to put up with them. Corporations have chosen, for image reasons, maybe Government regulations too, to abandon the plastic straw completely. It’s hard to get corporations to change, or care, especially when they just don’t care about that kind of access. While campaigning for change is good, the realistic solution here is to buy your own reusable ones. It sucks, but that’s the simplest way to avoid it. Wong treats this solution as if it were siding with the devil, aiding the enemy, proclaiming that ‘people have rent to deal with, other things to worry about’. That it’s ‘more labour and unrealistic’. Yes, it is more labour on top of what someone may have to already deal with, but it is one. How else, other than trying to beg oppressors to revert their ways, can you deal with it? Sometimes you do have to take it upon yourself to make yourself more comfortable. And while everyone does have a right to treats, access, and their own spending, if you’re bank is going to break over buying some reusable or a packet of plastic straws, I think you have bigger issues to deal with.

Yes that last point was rather petty – but I think Wong is too. Proclaiming that you must keep names of those who wronged you, having an air of aloofness yet clearly holding a lot of rage. I would too. But I feel like it’s directed wrongly at some points, and that is clear when you read such pages as ‘STFU White People’ and writing that those same people are only reading this for brownie points and to be a ‘good ally’. People suffer. It’s life. Comparing or putting other’s down for perceived privledgedness is in-fighting we don’t need, that energy should be put towards those actively trying to sweep disabled people under the rug. Some have said that Wong seems like she has an ‘axe to grind’, ‘an intolerance for certain groups’, and that she ‘just cobbled together old content’ because she either didn’t want to or didn’t know what to do. With some of the stuff in this book, it’s hard not to agree on those points.

Still, it is an eye-opener towards her unique struggles, and may make you think about certain aspects of life a different way, especially how catered just living is for a certain level of the population. If you can get past all the transcripts.

No rating.

Strangely depressing despite the actual story having nothing to do with depression at all. The whole mood of it is just...off, and not in a good way. It’s not really about anything – yes, there’s a story about a one-armed switchboard operator who works in a hotel – but everything is so surface level and dull yet somehow exasperating. Things happen, bland conversations occur, and there is no point I can defer. There’s cheating and death and craziness, but it just felt empty. There was nothing really there except a sad one-armed man and the ever-increasing losing of the plot to the point the last paragraph turns into an acid trip. Every character just seems to drift around with no purpose. It’s not offensive, nor really frustrating, nor interesting at all. It just exists, I suppose. Easily forgettable and rather dull.

3/10

Incredibly boring if not well composed. ‘Wah wah the guy I slept with for the first time in years and immediately after my father died is actually a shitty person wah wah’. Isabelle is just miserable and wallows in things that she purposefully put herself in. It’s truly a nothing burger of a book to the point of me not even being able to remember anything notable, except for her female friend sleeping with a nineteen year old girl and then proceeding to wallow that said teen would probably leave her for a man because she wants kids. The one thing I do disagree with (that someone else has said) is that this book is horrid and worthy of being burned. Brother, you are on the tip of the iceberg if you think this is deserving of that camp. It’s not offensive, or holds anything of substance, it’s just filler that will leave your mind the moment you stop reading.

3/10 – a one star for sure, but mostly because it doesn’t really have anything to offer. There are worse things out there than miserable protagonists.

Semi-interesting, though it isn’t given enough room to breathe due to the whole book essentially being only a page or two long ‘essay’. Half the pages in this were blank, with only a few sentences per page, as if it were a magazine clipping desperately turned into a full book. I did like it, but felt the ideas being presented weren’t the most mind-blowing revelations, more so just astute observations to go ‘oh, that’s neat’ to. They are good things to keep in mind, don’t get me wrong. I just wish there were more meat to really expand on her thoughts! I will read more of Butler, so hopefully I get to enjoy some more of what she has to offer.

No rating

‘Live, Laugh, Love’ but in book form. The most on-the-nose ‘everything will be okay if you just pretend to be happy and it will all work out’ writing there is to the point that we are directly being spoken to in sections. It's simple, boring, and muddled. Somehow, it has less going for it than What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, which is a similar book, but at least there’s some desiccation when it comes to its contents. Much of what was said there could be repeated here. I can’t even be bothered to go back and try to find certain quotes that irked or riled something in me – it just makes me sigh and want to move on.

2/10 – because really, I’m not five.