Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Les Argonautes by Maggie Nelson

15 reviews

sarapriz's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Misogyny, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Medical content, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

moonyreadsbystarlight's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective

4.0

I really liked a lot of this. I enjoyed the style and all the references. I do think it got a little muddled in parts and I have comments about specific passages. But it was interesting overall.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Sexual violence, Transphobia, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Lesbophobia

Moderate: Body shaming, Pedophilia, Racism, and Mass/school shootings

poenaestante's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

Nelson's writing is razor sharp and touching. I've never read a book like this before. Just terrific!

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Content Warnings

Minor: Medical content and Death of parent

milliebluecapon's review against another edition

medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content

Minor: Body shaming, Cancer, Medical content, and Abortion

lottiegasp's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

This is a beautifully written memoir of Nelson's relationship with her trans partner Harry, her stepson and their new baby. As a queer feminist in what can be mistaken as a heteronormative family, Nelson explores issues of gender, queerness, feminism, family and motherhood.

I thought it had really interesting perspectives about being queer, feminist and shunning societal norms while cherishing love and family. Rightfully so, a lot of feminism focusses on empowering women and genderqueer people to be single and child-free, to not be stuck in unfulfilling and unequal relationships, and to find and cherish love elsewhere. But for people who do seek and find love through their romantic partner and children, I think it is important to consider how to do these things in a way that does not simply reinforce the hetero status quo. This is something Nelson grapples with, while portraying how she and Harry have approached things.

At some parts in the middle I found the writing and references to other scholars a bit dense. Nevertheless, I overall appreciated the rich, aesthetic literary writing style, which is perhaps more common in fiction than memoirs.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Medical content, and Pregnancy

Minor: Deadnaming and Transphobia

There are explicit descriptions of consensual sex. And detailed description of pregnancy and labour. There are some brief descriptions of transphobia, but the book focusses much more on trans joy. The author deadnames her partner once, presumably with his permission. There is a gutwrenching description of a parent dying, which is beautifully written but very sad.

steveatwaywords's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Nelson's "autotheory" memoir has already been praised by many, so I will echo the analysis: this is a remarkably intimate and scholarly work, synthesizing subjects often avoided and even cautioned against. Progressive and stark, Nelson takes on a tour of her dynamic and at times uncertain domestic life--her partner's transition, her own sexuality, the death of a parent, the murder of a sister, the entangling estrangement of pregnancy and child-rearing--and twines it with the threads of literary and gender theory: Sedgwick, Butler, Lacan, Foucault, Lambert, Wittig, Carson, Winnicott, and a host of others. The result is evocative, explicit, inspiring, reverential, and sobering.

This book is not easily navigable. While written in fragmentary pieces, the narrative is delivered in its entirety, a submersion of its whole, and one wonders at its turnings. Nelson writes while on a subway, at a cafe, surrounded by tumult, but what she offers is insular and contained, a cerebral dissection of her own life and how words, language, people shift. Derrida remarked that he wondered most about the sex lives of philosophers. Nelson has here made a powerful bridge (more a marriage) between the abstraction of teleology and the workings of body.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Death of parent

Moderate: Cancer, Medical content, Grief, and Stalking

Minor: Biphobia, Transphobia, and Murder

maess's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Stalking, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Outing, and Alcohol

softanimal's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Medical content, and Death of parent

garynoplastie's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Deadnaming, Infertility, Transphobia, Medical content, Grief, and Stalking

Minor: Alcoholism

suspicious_salmon's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent and Pregnancy

Moderate: Infertility, Sexual content, Transphobia, Medical content, Lesbophobia, and Dysphoria

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Deadnaming, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Excrement, Grief, Stalking, and Cultural appropriation