RaveChicago Review of BooksThere’s an inherent pleasure in reading about desire. It is, after all, what gives narrative literature its stakes, keeping us hooked as we root our protagonists on. To proceed through Wanting is to be swept up, again and again, into moments of urgency, which makes it the only literary essay collection I’ve encountered that I could accurately describe as a page-turner. But beyond this delight, what sets Wanting apart is how uniformly artful these essays are: insightful and poetic, thought-provoking and stirring. They do what all great essays do, which is to push beyond surfaces and make space for complication.
Jody Keisner
RaveHippocampus MagazineGorgeous, stirring, and deeply probing exploration of what it means to be human in a world that gives us plenty of reasons to feel unsafe—particularly if we are female ... Chilling as these recollections are, it’s Keisner’s ability to conjure life’s more subtle and private forms of terror that makes her writing so powerful ... A kaleidoscopic portrait of a psyche on edge ... Some of the book’s most breathtaking scenes explore how motherhood heightened Keisner’s alertness to life’s fragility ... The greatest triumph of Under My Bed and Other Essays is how masterfully Keisner captures this inescapable tension.
Koa Beck
RaveThe Boston GlobeA former editor at Jezebel, Vogue, and Marie-claire.com, Beck illuminates how prejudice and elitism suffuse mainstream feminist thinking ... As a biracial and queer woman, Beck knows what it means to be excluded from this narrative. But because she’s \'light skinned and very conventionally feminine\' — and often mistaken for white and straight — she has also experienced its privileges. Her status as both an outsider and insider to white feminism’s default identity gives her a prime vantage point from which to critique its mechanisms ... What’s \'feminist about oppressing other women within the shadow of slavery so you can have a corner office and be profiled in The Cut?\' Beck rightly asks. Beck artfully traces how these contradictions have been baked into the feminist movement from its beginnings ... Beck is a perceptive cultural critic, but even more importantly, she’s a visionary. Her book ends with a rousing blueprint for a more inclusive \'new era of feminism\' ... powerful and inspiring.
