Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Les Argonautes by Maggie Nelson

32 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

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

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

ecross_poppy's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

3.75

So much goodness about queer relationships, motherhood, and our becoming.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy

Minor: Death of parent

talin's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Death, Vomit, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

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