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A review by onetruenorth
Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
4.0
the sequel picks up right where the first one left off, and we follow aristotle and dante’s relationship through the rest of the summer, their senior year, and the beginning summer of the beyond.
aristotle and dante dive into the waters of the world is a book about many things.
to begin, it is about love. it is about young love, and learning what that is and what that feels like: the difference between falling and love and being in love. it is about romantic love and familial love and friendship love, which i would argue are all equally important. ari started his journey stuck in his own head, which isolated himself from many people. meeting, and loving, dante taught him to open himself up, to let himself both love and be loved by others. he begins to see the humanity in the people around him, and it allows him to form deeper connections with those people.
this is also a book about hate. it takes place in 1988-1989, when the AIDs pandemic is hitting its peak while the government ignores the lives that are being lost - partly because it is easier to ignore that which we do not understand (which we are witnessing happen again with covid), and partly because the lives of gay men was deemed an acceptable cost of ignorance. ari battles homophobia - both externally and internally, as he struggles to accept himself as gay. many times, he wishes that he wasn’t - not because loving dante is not beautiful and fulfilling, but because he knows it will make his life harder. racism, and the hatred we unknowingly hold within us, is addressed. and lastly, we cover transphobia - the actions of ari’s brother, and the trans woman that he killed, are on ari’s mind. he uses the wrong pronouns for her a few times and very early in the book gender is associated with sex organs, so that’s something that still needs to be worked on.
this was a book about loss - the loss of brothers and parents and classmates and sons and lovers and lives that are so much more than numbers.
lastly, this was a book about growing up, learning who you are, becoming cartographers and making a map of the world that has a place for you in it, and then diving into those waters.
aristotle and dante dive into the waters of the world is a book about many things.
to begin, it is about love. it is about young love, and learning what that is and what that feels like: the difference between falling and love and being in love. it is about romantic love and familial love and friendship love, which i would argue are all equally important. ari started his journey stuck in his own head, which isolated himself from many people. meeting, and loving, dante taught him to open himself up, to let himself both love and be loved by others. he begins to see the humanity in the people around him, and it allows him to form deeper connections with those people.
this is also a book about hate. it takes place in 1988-1989, when the AIDs pandemic is hitting its peak while the government ignores the lives that are being lost - partly because it is easier to ignore that which we do not understand (which we are witnessing happen again with covid), and partly because the lives of gay men was deemed an acceptable cost of ignorance. ari battles homophobia - both externally and internally, as he struggles to accept himself as gay. many times, he wishes that he wasn’t - not because loving dante is not beautiful and fulfilling, but because he knows it will make his life harder. racism, and the hatred we unknowingly hold within us, is addressed. and lastly, we cover transphobia - the actions of ari’s brother, and the trans woman that he killed, are on ari’s mind. he uses the wrong pronouns for her a few times and very early in the book gender is associated with sex organs, so that’s something that still needs to be worked on.
this was a book about loss - the loss of brothers and parents and classmates and sons and lovers and lives that are so much more than numbers.
lastly, this was a book about growing up, learning who you are, becoming cartographers and making a map of the world that has a place for you in it, and then diving into those waters.