claremorg's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Fairly academic, but I quite liked the lens and insight of these essays. Especially the one about emojis/emoticons/GIFS, which feels very tangible, but also the one about Grizzly Man. Lots of interesting food for thought and consideration for “the face.”
lifeinpoetry's review against another edition
5.0
I went into this thinking it'd be more like Restless Books' The Face series and was pleasantly surprised to find this lighter on autobiography, delving more into theory and criticism. Very easy to follow along even if you're not acquainted with each essay's main topic. I'd never heard of The Bondswoman but think it's necessary to add to my TBR and only had a nodding acquaintance with The Elephant Man and Grizzly Man but still found the essays on these fascinating. The essay on emojis/emoticons/gifs/(digital) symbols was easily my favorite, with the one on The Bondswoman being the runnerup. The idea of sampling the work of other authors and "blackening" them in The Bondswoman reminded me of BIPOC &/or queer poets taking texts, often anti-* ones, to make hybrid works that subvert the meaning of the originals.
criticalgayze's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Last semester, I took a graduate level class on contemporary literary theory. This was both the exact right book and the exact wrong book to read with those ideas floating around in my head.
Writers like Serpell who can vacillate what feels like flawlessly (knowing that the more flawless it looks, the more work it requires) between amazing literary novels (The Old Drift is a modern classic.) and this kind of high calibur academic nonfiction truly make me sick in the jealous bones of my aspiring writer's skeleton. Serpell is truly among the likes of the select few (Roxane Gay and Brandon Taylor spring most readily to mind) who can make any subject or form compelling.
Will most definitely be getting to her 2022 New York Times Top 10 book The Furrows in February.
Writers like Serpell who can vacillate what feels like flawlessly (knowing that the more flawless it looks, the more work it requires) between amazing literary novels (The Old Drift is a modern classic.) and this kind of high calibur academic nonfiction truly make me sick in the jealous bones of my aspiring writer's skeleton. Serpell is truly among the likes of the select few (Roxane Gay and Brandon Taylor spring most readily to mind) who can make any subject or form compelling.
Will most definitely be getting to her 2022 New York Times Top 10 book The Furrows in February.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
Clearly I do not know enough about American culture to understand many of the references in this book. Anyway, read The Age of Instagram Face by Jia Tolentino, published in The New Yorker. It'll fuck you up.
lauren_endnotes's review against another edition
"The history of literature and art is littered not just with 'The Ideal Face' but also with stranger faces... the essays in this book take up a range of recalcitrant and unruly faces : the disabled face, the racially ambiguous face, the dead face, the faces we see in objects, the animal face, the blank face, and the digital face."
From the Introduction essay of STRANGER FACES by Namwali Serpell, 2020.
Lapping up the literary criticism, semiotics, aesthetics, & film theory in this essay collection! What a delight!
Serpell constructs 5 essays around the concept of 'the face'.
▫️"Elephant in Rooms" - Joseph Merrick, 'the Elephant Man' - discourse on representations of Cleopatra, and the transformation of Michael Jackson
▫️"Two-Faced" - the narrative & provenance of 'The Bondswoman's Narrative', the manuscript by an enslaved woman from the 1850s. Discussion of passing, and the authenticity of the work.
▫️"Mop Head" - Hitchcock doppelgängers in 1960's Psycho. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, the shower scene, and the anthropomorphism of objects in film classic.
▫️"Bear Head" - Werner Herzog's 2005 "Grizzly Man" documentary about the life & death of Timothy Treadwell. Animal faces, death, blankness, "extreme sublime" in film.
▫️"E-Faced"
From the Introduction essay of STRANGER FACES by Namwali Serpell, 2020.
Lapping up the literary criticism, semiotics, aesthetics, & film theory in this essay collection! What a delight!
Serpell constructs 5 essays around the concept of 'the face'.
▫️"Elephant in Rooms" - Joseph Merrick, 'the Elephant Man' - discourse on representations of Cleopatra, and the transformation of Michael Jackson
▫️"Two-Faced" - the narrative & provenance of 'The Bondswoman's Narrative', the manuscript by an enslaved woman from the 1850s. Discussion of passing, and the authenticity of the work.
▫️"Mop Head" - Hitchcock doppelgängers in 1960's Psycho. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, the shower scene, and the anthropomorphism of objects in film classic.
▫️"Bear Head" - Werner Herzog's 2005 "Grizzly Man" documentary about the life & death of Timothy Treadwell. Animal faces, death, blankness, "extreme sublime" in film.
▫️"E-Faced"