The Weight is a graphic novel/memoir based on the life of Melissa Mendes' grandfather, immersing you in the poverty, fear, and violence of the American dustbowl through the eyes of a young girl. It's a daring approach for a comic, the experience overall is gutting, and Mendes' drawing style is evocative and smart. Simple linework and washes convey the humanity of her characters, even as they enact monstrous historic roles.
A relative s depression-era diary inspires a young woman s journey to adulthood. Edie comes into the world calmly as the adults around her rage. Her father is a cruel man who beats her mother regularly and much of Edie s young life is spent trying to escape this tyrant. 'Why doesn t she ever cry?...Gives me the creeps.' Of course, being a child means she lives a child s life she still has laughter-filled sleepovers and outdoor adventures with the local rat pack of kids still too young to work. But Edie s heart grows callous as her father…
Clearly patterned in response to Lolita, this story of a love affair with an underage girl turns on that girl's emerging sense of herself as maybe less girlish than everyone imagines. Her predator is weird, and unhinged, but less self-assured than Humbert Humbert; he's a veterinarian, and all his allusions are to the medical problems of farm animals. And there's another key difference between this book and Nabakov's: When he becomes obsessed with his "heavenly favorite" he sinks into her world, and we experience the whims and silliness of young girl life—a total delight in small doses. Absolute genius.
The electrifying new novel from the sensational bestselling winners of the International Booker Prize and 'one of the boldest writers alive today' (Max Porter).
'It's been a long time since a book has destroyed me like this.' Max Porter 'Obsessed me from the first line.' Daisy Johnson 'I'm in awe.' Brandon Taylor
WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
In the tempestuous summer of 2005, a local veterinarian becomes enraptured by a 14-year-old farmer's daughter - his 'favourite' - as he tends her father's cows. This deeply troubled soul is our narrator: a man who believes he…
Forthcoming later this winter, Mega Milk is a memoir divided into discreet chapters based on various aspects of the dairy industry. Central to the story is the author's relationship with their parents, feelings about dairy, and commiseration with cows. (Their trans-ness, which disrupts and leavens each of these in different ways, is *not* central to the story, and the lack of scrutiny given an author's transition is refreshing and smart.) What marks the book is curiosity, and what I felt most compelled by while reading is where the author went that I would not have gone, and what the author thought that had not occurred to me. A relatively simple premise, compellingly drawn into a full, quirky narrative, preorders of Mega Milk are my go-to holiday gifts.
A sparkling, funny, and often wrenching portrait-in-essays on the dairy industry, queer intimacy, family, fluidity, whiteness, and cows.
For decades, Megan Milks has wondered what it means to share a last name with the classic white American beverage. Now, Milks takes on their namesake subject in all its dimensions, venturing into the worlds of small dairies, bovine genetics, and manure while also turning their eye on their family and themself. The resulting essays connect the dots between human lactation, Big Dairy, being queer and lonely, climate change, transmasculinity, the bull semen industry, the milky roots of white supremacy, and the…
For years the do-it-yourself (DIY)/punk underground has worked against the logic of mass production and creative uniformity, disseminating radical ideas and directly making and trading goods and services. But what happens when the underground becomes just another market? What happens when the very tools that the artists and activists have used to build word of mouth are co-opted by corporate America? What happens to cultural resistance when it becomes just another marketing platform?
Unmarketable examines the corrosive effects of corporate infiltration of the underground. Activist and author Anne Elizabeth Moore takes a critical look at the savvy advertising agencies, corporate marketing teams, and branding experts who use DIY techniques to reach a youth market—and at members of the underground who have helped forward corporate agendas through their own artistic, and occasionally activist, projects.
Covering everything from Adbusters to Tylenol’s indie-star-studded Ouch! campaign, Unmarketable is a lively, funny, and much-needed look at what’s happening to the underground and what it means for activism, commerce, and integrity in a world dominated by corporations.
