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“What Fresh Hell Is This?” by Heather Corinna

February 15, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You

Recommended to me by: Captain Awkward

This book is for anyone with a uterus who is moving toward or in menopause, whether due to aging or medical procedures. Heather Corinna’s writing is funny, profoundly inclusive, and tends to run long, as seen on her teen sex ed website Scarleteen. She likes to cover all the possibilities and include all the possible disclaimers.

She writes about the history of how menopause has been perceived and treated (or not) in the past, mostly by men. She interviewed experts (mostly women, many BIPOC) on a variety of topics and includes quotes from them, opening up a cornucopia of further reading.

She makes self-care suggestions along with compassion for their difficulty. She acknowledges the irony of recommending better sleep to help with hot flashes which often disrupt sleep. Stress and trauma tend to worsen perimenopause effects, adding another reason to reduce stress and work on healing trauma.

She covers both negative and positive effects of menopause. Contrary to popular myth, it does not bring life and love to an end. It does prompt an evaluation of what is and isn’t working in one’s life and can lead to sweeping changes.

Highly recommended to anyone who might walk this road or knows someone who is walking it.

Heather Corinna’s website.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Witches of Brooklyn: What the Hex?!” by Sophie Escabasse

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Soph

A playful graphic novel about witches in Brooklyn with an underlying message about building friendship through patience and conversation. The cast of characters is delightfully multi-racial, as is fitting for New York, and young Effie’s grandmothers are more notable for being witches than for being a couple. In fact their relationship is left a little vague, but they’re probably not just housemates.

The drawings of people are expressive and funny and the backgrounds are full of Brooklyn details.

I was just going to look at the first few pages, and got pulled into reading the whole thing. Recommended!

Available at Amazon.

“The Magic Fish” by Trung Le Nguyen

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Soph

What a lovely, powerful graphic novel. Tien is growing up in the US with Vietnamese immigrant parents. He speaks mostly English, and they speak mostly Vietnamese. It’s a close, loving family and they read fairy tales together when they have time. The graphic novel interweaves slant-wise takes on three familiar fairy tales with Tien’s adventures in high school and as he struggles to communicate important truths about himself to his parents.

The art is gorgeous. Fairy tale dresses are especially elaborate, and the end of the book contains notes on the time periods the dresses are drawn from. The one thing I found confusing is that something about the proportions of the characters made them look younger to me. Tien looked like a much younger child, and his mom looked like his teen older sister, even though the story communicates that Tien is in high school and his mom is in her 30s.

The love in the book makes me cry, along with the difficult times around immigration and grief, conveyed with kindness. Highly recommended!

Content notes: brief homophobia, not endorsed by the author, and fairy tale violence.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Knit One Girl Two and other stories” by Shira Glassman

August 21, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Women Reconnecting with Love, Art, Music, and Inspiration

Recommended to me by: Shira Glassman’s tumblr post

A collection of three delightful stories. The first one is summarized as “lighthearted Jewish f/f romance about an indie dyer who falls for the wildlife painter whose art inspired her latest round of sock club.” It’s great to read about women being happily inspired by their surroundings and each other. The story settings are richly detailed, and the emotional connections are kind and warm.

Recommended as a great antidote to reading the news.

Available at Amazon and Shira Glassman’s Gumroad.

“Care Of” by Ivan Coyote

July 17, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Letters, Connections, and Cures

Recommended to me by: Muccamukk

This book made me cry a lot in a good way, a heart-opening way. Ivan (they/them pronouns) says when they are about to go onstage to tell stories, first they imagine their chest opening right up so that the stories can come out of their heart to the audience, collect bits of the audience’s hearts and come back to Ivan.

When the pandemic hit, they were fortuitously at their partner’s home between gigs. There they stayed during pandemic lockdown, answering the special letters they had received over the years with stories and tidbits about lockdown life. The letters are vulnerably open, and the replies are warm, kind, loving. They touch on the loneliness and dangers of growing up trans, the need for mentors and safe community and chosen family when the larger community and blood family are intolerant and cruel.

Highly recommended.

Available at Amazon.

“As We Have Always Done” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

June 13, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has taught and lectured across Canada. With story and analysis, she carefully lays out how Nishnaabeg ways of living, learning, and experiencing are intrinsically suited to reestablish their communities and place-relationship that have been intentionally disrupted and stolen by colonialist settlers.

A single quote out of context doesn’t do justice to the way she steps out of whiteness to center the Nishnaabeg way of thinking and doing, but here is a taste.

Governance was made every day. Leadership was embodied and acted out every day. Grounded normativity isn’t a thing; it is generated structure born and maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Processes were created and practiced. Daily life involved making politics, education, health care, food systems, and economy on micro- and macro-scales. […] The structural and material basis of Nishnaabeg life was and is process and relationship—again, resurgence is our original instruction.

The book addresses kwe – the embodied experience of being an Indigenous woman – and the ways capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy have suppressed and damaged that experience. It also includes 2SQ – people who are Two Spirit and Queer.

I feel changed by reading this book. It affirms that there are right ways, sustainable ways of living, and Indigenous people still know and practice those ways. It supports my own search for connection to place and right ways to live. It reminds and teaches me that Indigenous people are brilliant modern thinkers and doers, interrupting the stereotypes of “primitive,” “lost,” and “in the past.”

Highly recommended!

Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation (pdf), an article by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson published in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson website

Available at Powell’s Books.