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Racist and colonialist right out of the gate. The author tells us in clumsy, halting self-revelations that the protagonist is smug, controlling, and unable to think outside of conventions, that a man’s vision of life ought to be prime, while her unloving and dishonest family is portrayed as hard done by. The premise was compelling and the epilogue befitting, true to life.

Besides the pounding misogyny, the most salient aspect is the forced disproportionate gravity of literal adolescent relationships when you marry the first person you want to ‘bun’. Negging and body commentary is standard on all fronts. Surprisingly not full-on racist, just a bit escaped. Feminist is a slur. Soap opera turns. The correspondence between the protagonist and her great love in her supposed mature phase at 27 is unflattering. I appreciated the supportive friendships and the confronting of wearying subjects that endure, lack of safe access to abortion, the debts that are considered owed for male attention. One of her closest friends, her asexual future husband who inherits millions, explains her appeal to him: “I don’t think about you as female. You’re decorative, like a well-bred young collie pup… and besides you laugh at things and like to look at pictures.” It’s a record of a side of New York in 1929.

He repeatedly disrespects boundaries—but she’s intrigued. He also happens to be an astronomer-hacker who is tall, handsome, wealthy, and an expert martial artist. The first 60% doesn’t stretch beyond that level of groundwork. Once they meet extraterrestrials, the interactions still ring petulant. Also I thought Ken Liu was a better translator. Was he in a rush?

Broadcasting the photo of a possible patient zero is alarming and hopefully agreed upon as unethical. Owen has professor-equivalent status and conducts himself grossly with students throughout; the sympathy he gets, which is expressed literally, makes him come across as an author stand-in. The women characters revolve around men or babies. The few who aren't white are introduced by their race and breast size.

Dropping in the word capitalism and having a character tell us about elite panic doesn't realise a vision of a world seized by a pandemic of a new scale. As a novel of an ensemble cast, the pre-pandemic character building is a considerable drag. The tagline talks about hope but its impression is more a timeline of stories of relationship entropy.

3.5 Der Aufsatz von Otoo war der einprägsamste mit einem guten Lesefluss. Antirassistische Aufsätze auf Französisch und auf Deutsch jedoch geben öfters den Eindruck, dass sie weniger stringent sind. Dazu befinden sich die Bewegungen noch in der Anfangsphase und werden von gesellschaftlichen und politischen Kräften mit einem gewaltigen Schweigen, wenn nicht mit einer Sturheit und Anfeindung begegnet. Diese Sammlungen sind notwendig.

Beyond this being a work of talking about talking about the subject, Vogel advances no paradigm shifts, away from the white supremacist- and imperialist-friendly conception of progress nor away from including slavery in the equation in the reproduction of labour-power. In 1983 she reviews thoughts from the late 1800s, and humans remain mechanical inputs in the failed and antiquated grail of production (even non-accumulative) removed from social and ecological justice. There is no useful unitary bridge when both points are rooted in decayed models.

4.5 An incisive work of Black feminism in Britain covering reproductive justice, trans inclusionary feminism, supporting sex workers, prison abolition, and—excitingly—art as witness. I would have been bowled over if the chapter on food concentrated on food justice with inspiration from Vandana Shiva. Olufemi envisages a living, breathing practice of feminism that is anticapitalist, transnational, and collective.

Legality does not equal access. There are many more complicated demands to be made: mainstream movements will always defeat their own purpose as long as they consider the law as the sole indicator of progress. Perhaps the most powerful thing that can be done is sabotaging the law-making project and refusing to concede that abortion is unlawful.

When anti-sex work feminists talk about the very real and devastating consequences of trafficking and bolster the police state to respond to it, they do so with the intention of fortifying the borders that ruin people's lives, not with the intention of tearing them down.

Apolitical approaches, or approaches that seek to deaden the resistant potential of artistic practice are merely another mechanism through which the status quo is reproduced.

Radicals in Conversation