RavePorter House ReviewMuch of contemporary literary discourse centers around the ebbing divide between the personal and the professional—the widespread recognition that the political, the personal, and the literary are inseparably entwined. It is a long-due reckoning, the result of decades of work by writers and activists from marginalized groups who have fought for the recognition and validity of their personal expression ... The enormous vividness and clarity of Yuknavitch’s characters comes from the voices she gives them. Their voices are inherently political, navigating power dynamics that are stacked against them, structures that use and dehumanize them. But Yuknavitch’s characters see themselves not as victims of circumstance but as agents in complicated social ecosystems—as people with backbones and boundaries, complex traumas and even more complex internal hierarchies of meaning ... freshness and elegance. The seamless merging of the personal with the political and the political with the aesthetic, all three working in concert to form a tight and clear vision of our complicated world—this is the collection that Yuknavitch has given us. Never shying away from discomfort, transgression, or profanity, Yuknavitch directs the reader to corners of the world they would rather avoid, has us meet eyes whose gaze we would rather avoid.
