Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

I genuinely have no words for much this impacted me. It is truly beautifully and completely done.

My only warning would be to look at any trigger warnings if that's something that would impact you. I personally went in blind, not even knowing what it was about, and did not realize how dark things would be. Vital to talk about, but still potentially triggering nonetheless.

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fridayreads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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whatannikareads's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad fast-paced

2.75

nooooooot y’all tricking me into reading about a eugenicist!!

i’m a mixed bag of emotions about this book. after about halfway through i think the first half of the book was completely unnecessary/a different book altogether. i fell asleep quite a few times during the first half. the second half was much more interesting, but i kept getting whiplash on the organization of it; we kept switching from history to memoir to social science. i don’t feel the memoir section was expanded enough to be super engaging. the connection between the writer and david star jordan, aside from her research of him, felt like a reach. i think if she has developed her story more, or just made it a completely separate book, it could’ve been more enjoyable. the whole book could’ve just been 3 different articles tbh. it felt like reading a really long op-ed and i don’t think ot should’ve been a book tbh.

also again, i don’t know if talking about how shitty his beliefs were in the second half made up for how nicely he was portrayed in the first half?? it was just very clearly not written by a person of color lol.

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itschelseaw's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

A great book about breaking free from the labels placed on us/the world by others, by way of a rather terrible man who spent his life imposing those labels on the world and ushering in terror to those he deemed unfit.
The structure of the book was great; to go from initially learning about David Starr Jordan and how he broke from the conventional wisdom of the day, to learning how he imposed conventional wisdom on others, to eventually how he fostered eugenics in the United States (and gave the Nazi the blueprint for their genocide). It's a wonder that he's still celebrated considering how horrid he was at the end of his life.
The scene with Anna and May was especially touching; I couldn't stop crying while reading it. The tenderness they have for each other, the love and respect after all these years. My heart broke for Anna and incandescent rage filled me at David Starr Jordan and what he championed.
It's interesting how someone who devoted his life to understanding the natural world ended up ultimately having such a bad understanding of it. Unfortunately his misunderstanding of the world has led to terror and usurping bodily autonomy for far too many individuals. The twist at the end of fish not really existing as their own category of animals? Chef's kiss.

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jes312's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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beanqueen_'s review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced

5.0

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