Cheryl Strayed is 22 when her mother dies rather suddenly of lung cancer. After losing the glue that held her family and life together, Cheryl starts to spiral. She is lost and hurt and in being so, hurts and loses people around her. She cheats on her husband, takes up a brief heroin addiction, divorces … Continue reading
Noose: True Stories of Australians Who Died at the Gallows written by Xavier Duff is a brief history of some of Australia’s most infamous capital punishment cases. The book opens with the Mile Creek massacre, which was one of the first times recorded in Australian history where white Australians were trialed and found guilty of … Continue reading
Writing about mental health and getting it right is tough. Writers need to understand and articulate what mentally ill people are feeling and it cannot read like a cliche. Readers, whether they have mental health issues or not, are going to see through platitudes, flat characterisations, and overly dramatic writing. And just like mental health … Continue reading
I love books. I love reading them, reviewing them, talking about them, and even being photographed next to them in a book-coordinated outfit (see above)! I feel like I have been doing a lot of really interesting and thought-provoking book reviews recently, but I also feel that they have been heavy. So to bring some … Continue reading
In the world of food I often feel like there is very little compromise. There is a big divide, which is social, cultural, and moral that forces people to make ultimatums between vegetarianism/veganism or an omnivorous lifestyle. People who don’t eat meat do so for many different reasons, but a lot of them do so … Continue reading
I know several men and women who have been affected by sexual assault and rape. Some of the cases of rape involved strangers, the man waiting in the shadows ready to attack. What I would call the traditional understanding of rape. However, the majority of the cases of rape from the people I know have … Continue reading
Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel Middlesex is a breathtaking inter-generational novel that addresses issues of the complex history of Eastern Europe, Greek identity, Greek-American identity, growing up in the U.S., and intersex and other LGBTQA identities. It would be easy to talk all day about the complexities of this novel as well as Eugenides’ exquisite prose writing, … Continue reading
If you are a fan of true crime writing, you will be well aware of Michelle McNamara’s work: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. It is a truly chilling, terrifying, unsettling, and complicated story that spans decades. Since its release, the cold case also became extremely … Continue reading
Mary Shelley wrote her novel Frankenstein in 1818, which tells of the young scientist Victor Frankenstein who experiments with nature and biology to reanimate a human. Frankenstein’s monster is a combination of body parts. He is hideous in form, yet cannot escape the universal human desire to love and to be loved. Frankenstein’s monster is … Continue reading
It is nothing new that trans voices have often been pushed aside, forgotten, and oppressed in societies across the globe. The fact that they confuse societal norms about gender binaries and gender-stasis make them terrifying to those who do not understand or prescribe to gender fluidity. This, paired with the flip side of people using … Continue reading
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