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shorshewitch's reviews
283 reviews
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
5.0
This was such a sad book. A blend of fiction and philosophy told by a narrator we never know much about, not even the name. The broken star's name is Macabea and it's about her and like 4 people she has ever known in her whole life.
The Dear Ones by Berta Dávila
4.0
tw : motherhood, abortion
My second book from the 3TimesRebel oeuvre. I wasn't as impressed as with the first one "Mothers Don't" but this one also deals with motherhood and as a childfree woman, motherhood fascinates me from afar. That women keep choosing again and again to do this to their bodies is very intriguing to me. In that, this one also deals with an abortion. It's a quick read so I'd recommend if you want a reflective clips of a life of a mother who chose to abort the second time.
My second book from the 3TimesRebel oeuvre. I wasn't as impressed as with the first one "Mothers Don't" but this one also deals with motherhood and as a childfree woman, motherhood fascinates me from afar. That women keep choosing again and again to do this to their bodies is very intriguing to me. In that, this one also deals with an abortion. It's a quick read so I'd recommend if you want a reflective clips of a life of a mother who chose to abort the second time.
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
5.0
Like I said on the reading group some of the parts of the book are at such a mic-drop level that this can be a brilliantly good ironical (satirist) stand up comedy monologue.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
3.0
This took me so long. It rambles way too much in some places. It is a very confusing book for me. Like there were several passages in it, that as a writer / reader, I wish I had written. But there are so many others that as an editor I think I might have edited out. I will probably write in detail later. But for now, it's a good book, except for maybe the need for tighter edits. But the Pulitzer has decided it's a great book, so who am I to contradict. 🥲
Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language by Roxane Gay
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Frida's Bed by Slavenka Drakulić
4.0
Special shoutout to the translation – So seamlessly done. Some sentences are so beautiful, it is hard to believe this isn’t the original language of the prose.
Some quotes:
/Death has hovered around her since childhood. A shadow that is always there. A ghostly white skull with touches of gray; gray, the color of fear, is ever-present in her life and a part of her. She is standing there alone beneath the angry sky and swirl of menacing clouds. Still a child, she has yet to grow into her face. When she grows up she will have Frida’s face. Again and again Frida will paint her own face over the white skull, proof that she is still alive./
/ I could not escape the pity or the cruelty of others. Pity had a smell to it, I always recognized it because I had grown up with it. Because it had followed me all my life. Sometimes I thought I would gag from the familiar reek of sweat that soaked the air./
/ Frida never asked herself why this had had to happen to her. She did not believe there was anyone who had the answer to such a question./
/ She did not kowtow to popular taste and still less did she try to win over the public. Except for that first self-portrait, all the others were unsparing of both the sitter and the viewer. As if she did not care whether they would appeal to somebody or not. She painted her life, why should it appeal to anybody? She painted a faint mustache on her face, something any other woman would have bleached, plucked, shaved, concealed. She was out to provoke, and why not? Who says a woman can’t sport a mustache above her scarlet-red lips?/
/ My situation looks so ridiculous and pointless that no one can understand how much I can’t stand myself, hate myself, I wasted my best years as a kept woman, doing what I thought was best for him and would help him most. I never thought of myself, and after six years together, his answer was that loyalty is a bourgeois value which exists only for the purpose of exploitation and economic profit./
/ The difference between us was that I was stronger. I wrestled with my demon by stripping him bare, revealing him, denouncing him. I was ruthless. I wore my illness down, sucked it dry, exploited it. I stubbornly resisted it. I lived in a state of permanent inner tension, waging a life-or-death struggle. I dragged my pain from its depths and brought it to the surface, exposing it to the light and to public scrutiny. Demons hate that. I displayed not only the face of that pain but also the body, its legs, its wounds, its heart, its stomach, its spine . . . And that gave me strength. My rebellion was scandalous because not only did I paint, but I painted pain and sickness! Sick people don’t do that. And my father? He sank deeper and deeper into his solitude. Toward the end, it was difficult to pull him out of it. I, on the other hand, refused to accept the sentence pronounced on me./
Some quotes:
/Death has hovered around her since childhood. A shadow that is always there. A ghostly white skull with touches of gray; gray, the color of fear, is ever-present in her life and a part of her. She is standing there alone beneath the angry sky and swirl of menacing clouds. Still a child, she has yet to grow into her face. When she grows up she will have Frida’s face. Again and again Frida will paint her own face over the white skull, proof that she is still alive./
/ I could not escape the pity or the cruelty of others. Pity had a smell to it, I always recognized it because I had grown up with it. Because it had followed me all my life. Sometimes I thought I would gag from the familiar reek of sweat that soaked the air./
/ Frida never asked herself why this had had to happen to her. She did not believe there was anyone who had the answer to such a question./
/ She did not kowtow to popular taste and still less did she try to win over the public. Except for that first self-portrait, all the others were unsparing of both the sitter and the viewer. As if she did not care whether they would appeal to somebody or not. She painted her life, why should it appeal to anybody? She painted a faint mustache on her face, something any other woman would have bleached, plucked, shaved, concealed. She was out to provoke, and why not? Who says a woman can’t sport a mustache above her scarlet-red lips?/
/ My situation looks so ridiculous and pointless that no one can understand how much I can’t stand myself, hate myself, I wasted my best years as a kept woman, doing what I thought was best for him and would help him most. I never thought of myself, and after six years together, his answer was that loyalty is a bourgeois value which exists only for the purpose of exploitation and economic profit./
/ The difference between us was that I was stronger. I wrestled with my demon by stripping him bare, revealing him, denouncing him. I was ruthless. I wore my illness down, sucked it dry, exploited it. I stubbornly resisted it. I lived in a state of permanent inner tension, waging a life-or-death struggle. I dragged my pain from its depths and brought it to the surface, exposing it to the light and to public scrutiny. Demons hate that. I displayed not only the face of that pain but also the body, its legs, its wounds, its heart, its stomach, its spine . . . And that gave me strength. My rebellion was scandalous because not only did I paint, but I painted pain and sickness! Sick people don’t do that. And my father? He sank deeper and deeper into his solitude. Toward the end, it was difficult to pull him out of it. I, on the other hand, refused to accept the sentence pronounced on me./