literatedyke

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1555 points

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My Taste

In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1

Reading...

It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)

Why Loiter?: Women And Risk On Mumbai Streets

21%

49%

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

47%

literatedyke made progress on...

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

Sherronda J. Brown

47%

literatedyke commented on fierceandtender's update

fierceandtender is interested in reading...

Why Loiter?: Women And Risk On Mumbai Streets

Shilpa Phadke

Presenting an original take on women’s safety in the cities of twenty-first century India, Why Loiter? maps the exclusions and negotiations that women from different classes and communities encounter in the nation’s urban public spaces.Basing this book on more than three years of research in Mumbai, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade argue that though women’s access to urban public space has increased, they still do not have an equal claim to public space in the city. And they raise the question: can women’s access to public space be viewed in isolation from that of other marginal groups?Going beyond the problem of the real and implied risks associated with women’s presence in public, they draw from feminist theory to argue that only by celebrating loitering—a radical act for most Indian women—can a truly equal, global city be created.

literatedyke commented on Lurdo's update

Lurdo is interested in reading...

Why Loiter?: Women And Risk On Mumbai Streets

Shilpa Phadke

literatedyke commented on peryton's update

peryton made progress on...

Capitalism and Disability: Essays by Marta Russell

Marta Russell

13%

Post from the Why Loiter?: Women And Risk On Mumbai Streets forum

literatedyke

Edited

Quote & thoughts from 11% (page 26)

While I'm past this point in the e-book now, I'm returning to it and wanted to share a quote:

"Mumbai's slum-dwellers, numbering almost seven million, form more than 50 per cent of the city's population. Yet, slum demolition drives are routinely undertaken under the rhetoric of beautification. Hawkers are moved around like pawns on a giant chessboard under the pretext of zoning and cleaning up the streets.

[...] Increasingly, 'citizens' are only those who can afford to buy a range of goods and services from water to electricity to real estate and toilet cleaners (which, of course, suggests the possession of a toilet), and from credit cards and club memberships to luxury cars and LCD television sets. The greater an individual's capacity to consume, the larger 'his' claim to the city. As consumer citizens we are told we have rights: the right to consume good products, the right to legal redress when consumer products are sub-standard. The rhetoric of consumer citizenship has all but drowned out the faint voices that claim citizenship based on inalienable rights to public space in the city. The impulse to exclude the poor is reflected in the spatial geography of the city: in the increasing security that we see, in the high walls of gated communities, in the glass barriers of malls and coffee shops, that repel even as they seductively beckon.

As anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (2000) puts it, 'The rich in these cities seek to gate as much of their lives as possible, travelling from guarded homes to darkened cars to air-conditioned offices, moving always in an envelope of privilege through the heat of public poverty and the dust of dispossession.'" - pgs 26-27

I'm not sure how much / if this has changed in Mumbai since being written in 2011, but if I had to guess, it's still true and has likely worsened. I'm definitely seeing parallels and connections with gentrification (materially and ideologically) here! The presence and guiding force of individualism, consumerism, carcerality especially via surveillance under the guise of safety, car-centric infrastructure, displacement, (and Islamophobia which is mentioned soon after this quote) etc is so pervasive in making public infrastructures more hostile, oppressive, and designed to fit the most privileged and powerful of our societies.

literatedyke unpaused...

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

Sherronda J. Brown

For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality—and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity. Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex—and that we all have to have it—is false. It's intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that's not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity. In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the "A" in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer—despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise. With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience—and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people. A necessary and unapologetic reclamation, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is smart, timely, and an essential read for asexuals, aromantics, queer readers, and anyone looking to better understand sexual politics in America.

literatedyke made progress on...

Celestial Bodies

Jokha Alharthi

49%

literatedyke commented on aliyahmk's update

aliyahmk made progress on...

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

22%

literatedyke made progress on...

Why Loiter?: Women And Risk On Mumbai Streets

Shilpa Phadke

21%

literatedyke commented on peryton's update

peryton finished a book

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness, literal and otherwise, of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.

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literatedyke commented on mrsrumbles's review of A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story

spoilers

mrsrumbles

Jul 23, 2026

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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literatedyke commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

literatedyke

Edited

'Pirating' vs Archiving

I know there's been other posts here with conversations on the ethics and varying popularity of condoning and/or practicing 'pirating', but I wanted to open another avenue to consider the role (and potential difference?) of archiving.

For context, posts where I provided PDFs for some books got removed here recently; I'm coming from a place of respect and understanding for that decision as the creators of Pagebound could get into legal trouble for encouraging 'illegal activities' such as 'pirating'. I'm not necessarily trying to change that practice on this platform, but widen the conversation on 'book ownership' beyond this platform and destigmatize free access to knowledge.

Additionally, there's much nuance on this topic, but overall, I believe in and practice reading freely. I believe authors should be compensated for their work and that the financial position people may be in to support that or not comes down to systems of oppression that maximize exploitation, prioritize profits, manufacture scarcity, and hoard resources, not the personal responsibility of readers. Many people, including myself, cannot afford to buy books frequently whether they be new or used. Thankfully, I have easy access to a library and thus, Libby, which is my main way of reading books. However, not everyone has access to a library or can get a library card, so they have more limited access to books.

This is where resources like free little libraries and websites such as Internet Archive and Are.na come in. What is the line between 'stealing' books and archiving them? Is archiving for public access what determines something as being viewed as 'pirating' or theft? Does a paywall or other kind of barrier, like a archive with restricted access, imply a more worthy and moral form of theft or not theft at all? Does the archiving have to be done by an institutional 'owner' for it to have ethical legitimacy? Why?

To answer any of this clear-sightedly, the roles of capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy must be considered as the context which inequitably determines people's ability to access knowledge and the moral narratives around people who find ways around standardized, restrictive, and inaccessible carriers of information. I'd love to have a conversation with that in mind!

Post from the Pagebound Club forum

literatedyke

Edited

'Pirating' vs Archiving

literatedyke commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

boggle

Edited

Women in Translation readalong/quest?

I'm very new to PB, so I'm not sure how community readalongs or quests are decided and run, so please forgive if this is out of place! But, August is Women in Translation Month and it would be cool if there was a side/limited time quest or readalong for it!

Even if there isn't and you're wanting to read more WiT, there are tons of good lists online by indie booksellers! Some of my recent favorites and ones I'm looking forward to reading: