RaveLambda Literary... a complexly layered exploration of the personal and the political, and the literary, both a brave baring of a painful experience and a reckoning with our collective failure to truly deal with queer intimate partner abuse ... [Machado\'s] sensitivity to both the inter- and intragroup factors leading to the marginalization of abuse narratives and abuse victims are part of what makes In the Dream House compelling and timely ... Part of what makes In the Dream House so devastating at times is how well it captures the truly damaging nature of emotional and psychological abuse: it functions by making the victim doubt her own feelings, her own grasp on reality ... The intertwining of critical insight, personal narrative, and aesthetic innovation alone makes In the Dream House an incredible, exciting read from a talented author. But it’s not only that that makes the book an important one, and especially for the queer community ... begins to give a rich, vibrant language, a structure for understanding for that experience. And more than that: it made us feel seen.
Michelle Tea
RaveLambda Literary\"The pieces brought together in Against Memoir navigate the difficult balance of the personal and the communal, and the dynamics of discussing fraught issues within a community (especially queer communities), versus discussing those same issues with those outside of that community. The breadth of topics covered in this volume is impressive—no doubt there is something here for everyone. Tea writes as insightfully and incisively about pop art as she does about punk music and pigeons ... Against Memoir is a celebration of queer life, love, art, politics, history, pain, and joy. Tea’s writing continues to make the world worth living in.\
Carmen Maria Machado
RaveLambda Literary\"Machado skillfully handles the introduction of these elements, pacing her stories in a way that destabilizes the reader’s sense of what’s real: just when the world seems comprehensible, the ground shifts beneath our feet, deepening and complicating our understanding of the characters, their motives, and their lives. The genres Machado draws on have not traditionally been hospitable to women (much less queer ones): scholarship on both fairy tales and horror have long pointed out these narratives often punish women for deviations from normative gender roles and reward only those who are pure and obedient. Part of what makes Her Body and Other Parties so exciting is Machado’s negotiation of this legacy. She understands the pleasures we derive from experiencing the uncanny, the horrific, and the fantastic, and knows exactly how to generate those sensations in her reader. At the same time, her writing rejects the strictures these traditions have placed on representations of women ... Reminiscent of the work of Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, and Mariana Enriquez, Machado remixes strands of myth, horror, and pop culture and gives us something uniquely her own. Her Body and Other Parties is as much a thrilling reading experience as it is a powerful and important exploration of women’s lives.\
Chavisa Woods
RaveLambda Literary...[a] stunning collection ... Many of the book’s characters are queer, but the stories are never ‘only’ about their queerness. It’s an integral part of their identities, and a complicated one, often making them outsiders in the place they’re from, but also propelling them to get out. Sometimes, that escape becomes a strange sort of privilege when they return. Yet for all these stories’ similarities, one never has the feeling that plagues some story collections, of reading the same basic idea over and over. Woods is a gifted storyteller, and each piece follows its own unique twists and unpredictable turns. She has an eye for haunting details that give each narrative the texture of a fully-realized world ... Told with and wit and gravitas, Chavisa Woods’s Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country provides humane snapshots of outsider communities often overlooked in contemporary fiction.
