PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... archetypical figures, branded into the collective consciousness, order the book’s chapters. Venus, befittingly the first, is especially engrossing ... A stellar section called \'Monstrous Women\' asks if \'Medusa was originally a Black African deity from Libya\' ... However, McCormack’s analysis snags on pop culture ... The relitigation of these issues reads as an attempt to be \'topical,\' which feels unnecessary given the timeliness of the work overall ... Women in the Picture mounts a sensitive and probing critique of the motifs, the preordained poses and affectations of the female figure in art. If feminism aspires to render itself obsolete, McCormack’s project too yearns for a future when critiquing such postures—the flayed victims, the temptresses and the sexless \'mammies\'—will no longer be necessary. For now it is.
Brontez Purnell
RaveBookforumThe itinerancy in locale and perspective, well suited to the fragmentary form, also finds a natural complement in Purnell’s spry humorizing and keen modulation of rhythm and pacing, skills no doubt sharpened by his history as a musician ... Raised Christian, Purnell is duly fixated on the corporeal, blood and bodies in all their seeping, unruly acridity ... The collection recalls, in style and substance, the New Narrative of the late 1970s and ’80s, when the burgeoning influence of HIV/AIDS awareness amid the sexual revolution invited gay literature out from underground, from short stories in Playboy, wanted ads in newspapers, and other snippets ... These are Black stories by a Black queer author of great prolificity and range, but traffic in no BLACKNESS™ legible to the consumptive masses seeking antiracist reading lists ... they are also performances of technical virtuosity, formal experimentation, and mastery rarely acknowledged in Black writers, whose primary function—that of teacher—is presumed to be at the level of content, not style. They play with and resist autobiography, enlivened by Purnell’s marvelous ear for Black vernacular and his finely meted candor. The stories end as they begin, without clear resolution or arc, slipping out quietly into the morning light.
