Reviews tagging 'Stalking'

Les Argonautes by Maggie Nelson

26 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

chloehayward's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Stalking

hanoibikingtours's review against another edition

emotional funny reflective fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent and Pregnancy

Moderate: Alcoholism, Blood, Excrement, and Stalking

Minor: Body shaming, Child death, Miscarriage, Transphobia, and Vomit

robinks's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

3.25

As a disclaimer: I think this book would’ve come across better in print format instead of audiobook. Some of the formatting and content felt disjointed in audio. That being said, I had a hard time figuring out what this story was trying to communicate, though it did bring up some good questions about blended families for reflection.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Transphobia, Stalking, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Deadnaming, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Death of parent, and Lesbophobia

Minor: Cancer and Abortion

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

jaiari12's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Sexism, Terminal illness, Transphobia, Stalking, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

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

o3tri's review against another edition

medium-paced

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Sexism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Cultural appropriation

Moderate: Ableism, Body shaming, Child abuse, Deadnaming, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Hate crime, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, Stalking, and Lesbophobia

leguinstan's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

4.5

The Argonauts has literally made me reevaluate the way I think about memoirs and I can confidently say that after having read this, I no longer have the same expectations about the genre that I once did.

While much has been said about Nelson's heavy incorporation of queer and feminist theory in her memoir, the sense of uncertainty expressed in The Argonauts is what made the biggest impression on me. From the meandering stream-of-consciousness writing to the chain of unanswered questions peppered throughout her theoretical musings, Nelson makes it apparent that for all her erudition she is just as unmoored as the rest of us. This is in stark contrast to what most of us expect from a memoir: a strictly chronological presentation of a sequence of events leading to a significant change or revelation in the memoirist's life. Nelson intentionally leans into the contradictory, ever-evolving aspects of her identity and resists the instinct to compress her life into the confines of a narrative arc.

While I found it very easy to appreciate these aspects of the work, I can't say the same for the aforementioned incorporation of theory which had me frustrated at several points. And aside from this frustration, I also find it more difficult to find the value in what is arguably the single most inaccessible aspect of the memoir. But considering the fact that Nelson is entrenched in academia and that she is interested in queer and feminist theory, would a removal of the theoretical analysis in The Argonauts be a less authentic representation of Maggie Nelson's life? Can authenticity sometimes be at odds with accessibility? Is this genre-mashing a reflection of Nelson's multiplicity?

The reading experience may not have been smooth sailing, but Nelson's boldly experimental, vulnerable, thought-provoking writing makes up for the bumpy ride.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy

Moderate: Sexual content, Stalking, and Death of parent

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Homophobia, Transphobia, and Dysphoria

antoniak's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

The writing of this book was beautiful and the thoughts refreshing and differentiated. A lot of it went completely over my head though, which made the reading experience slightly frustrating at times 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Terminal illness, Stalking, and Death of parent

Minor: Drug abuse and Eating disorder