Welcome to Litsy!

A little #BookHaul from my morning in Manchester, and a visit to the Queer Lit bookshop. I hope to read these all in the first quarter of 2025. Well, I can dream, can't I? 🤔💭🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Kai Cheng Thom's collection of essays displays her trademark combination of searing intellect and critical thinking with deep empathy and compassion. I admire her work so much! She discusses and unpacks a lot of issues inside leftist and queer social justice communities, from #MeToo, suicide, activists' tendency to demand perfection and correct rhetoric over learning and inclusion, white queers asking for her "trans ethnic story," and more. ?

I made a Trans Rights Readathon recs grid for Instagram and figured I‘d share it here too. Most of these are by trans and nonbinary (or agender) creators, with a couple of selections by cis people with trans loved ones. Some engage deeply with transness; some are just good stories by trans folks. Individual titles tagged below. #transrightsreadathon

Beautifully written, insightful and honest reflection

Many of the essays take the form of questioning current circumstances and complexities, to open discussion that will hopefully result in community acknowledgement and healing.
There is a through line of personal experiences relayed that emphasizes the fight for recognition and respect is ongoing for trans women, particularly trans women of colour. The poems included are a concentration of these ideas. Sex/sex worker positive.
⚠️SA, suicide.

"...transformative justice that differentiates the concept of punishment from accountability and healing...We will have to transform systems that centre getting even into systems that prioritize getting better." ?♥️

Props to publishers for hopping on the 'Botanicals with Black Background' train which has been chugging along since 2019 (all books shown here published 2019 or later).
I dig the aesthetic. 👍🏻🖤💐

Been waiting for the right time to read this one. Think that time is now.

Look what came in the mail! I had accidentally ordered this when it was out of stock and didn't check when it would be back in stock, so receiving it today was a bit of a nice surprise.

“if you should start to think forbidden thoughts
then come for me

the end of ever after is the beginning of the truth”
💗

Kai Cheng Thom‘s punk roots show in this essay collection. She challenges readers to interrogate the dominant paradigm, in queer community and elsewhere; to understand that people act in context, not at random, and to consider that even effective systems need frequent upkeep and occasional reinvention if they‘re to benefit the people who live within them. It‘s powerful, relevant stuff.

I cooked, and sat down later than everyone else, and ended up all alone at the table with my second sweet potato pie. Good thing I had my book to hand.

I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE is great so far. Kai Cheng Thom discusses similar issues to the ones I‘ve found in my current audiobook, THE ART OF HAPPINESS IN A TROUBLED WORLD by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, too; a nice bit of synchronicity.

Fierce, compassionate and thoughtful essays and poems about interpersonal relationships within the social justice movement and queer communities. Kai Cheng Thom advocates for nuance where, too often, issues are seen as either right or wrong. #trans #lgbtq #Canadian

We must encourage love—love that is radical, love that digs deep. Love that asks the hard questions, that is ready to listen to the whole story and keep loving anyway. […] Love for the community that has failed us all. We live in poison. The planet is dying. We can choose to consume each other or we can choose love. Even in the midst of despair, there is always a choice. I hope we choose love. #lgbtq #manifesto

And, cynical, crazy East Asian transsexual that I am, I have to believe that another way of seeing, of speaking, of being with one another is possible. That compassion and forgiveness and generosity might join justice and accountability and survival as core values of our movement. #lgbtq

When it comes to trans folks, people are always talking about gender dysphoria—dislike or hatred of the body or self. I want to talk about gender euphoria—the state of joy or delight in your being, your gender presentation.
[Internet photo. It was hard to find one where Thom (on the left) looks happy.]

I have been stalked, by someone I had never met or spoken to, because they perceived me to be “abusing” them by not responding to a Facebook friend request.

I‘ve tagged the 4th title in 8 months with queers on a roof: “We went to parties together & we did drugs together & we lay on my rooftop & drank spiked lemonade together in the shimmering heat of the Montreal summer.” Dang! I‘m always alone on the roof, just up there to clean the eaves troughs. (Oh! And should I count Emily & Ilse yelling on the roof in Emily of New Moon?)

you are allowed to leave
a relationship. a friendship. a partnership. because it is not working out for you. because they are hurting you. because you are afraid of hurting them. because there is no trust. relationships should never be based on fear. should never be based on “ they will kill themself if I leave.” […] leaving is not abuse. getting out is not abuse. freedom is not abuse. freedom is never abuse.

This was an interesting read because I've read Kai Cheng Thom's work and was blown away by her in previous years. This essay collection pulls back the curtain to the trauma that accompanies fame whether that comes from the work or being a SJW on the internet (self-declared, since I think of this as a negative term), questions the assumed safety inherit in queer communities, and proposes a few approaches of restorative justice moving forward.