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isunshoweri checked out "meanwhile, elsewhere"' from my local library because it had a short story by ryka aoki, an author whose book "light from uncommon stars" i read and loved in january. i also like queer sff and i trusted trans authors to have interesting takes and compelling, thoughtful stories.
i was wrong.
so, some highlights:
the ryka aoki story was really good! it's about a closeted trans woman who gets trapped in a nightmare/monkey's paw house with her two best friends and what happens when they're faced with a twisted version of their deepest desires.
there was also a story by someone local to the area (the author had actually left a post-it in the book saying "this story is mine i'm from here hope you enjoy" which i found very endearing). this one tickled my soc-sci major sensibilities--it's about an anthropologist visiting a society where grammatical gender isn't based on sex, it's tied to occupation. stationary people are women and nomadic people are men. the story is told through journal entries from the point of view of a boy (who american audiences would understand to be a girl) given the journal by the anthropologist. it's hard to explain the concept in a way that does it justice but i found the story very neat.
last two: there was a story about bodyswapping, the transition potential of bodyswapping with a trans person of the opposite gender, the legal ramifications of that, and also commentary on workout culture and prostitution in that kind of society. and one that's about a trans girl who comes out and, embarrassed by her friend's reaction, runs away to a hotel on mars for the weekend and gets drunk and that's it, but it's really well done, ok?
[cw: sexual assault mention] but this collection also had some really low lows. there were a number of instances of just straight-up bad writing. bad grammar, bad punctuation--this book was clearly not copy edited. also just prose that sounded like a teenager wrote it, uncreative or ham-fisted sentences, a lack of natural movement in the plot. BUT ALSO, the first story in the collection straight up made no sense (in a benign way), and the second story was a zombie apocalypse story where the main character rapes people while she's turning into a zombie and it's written off as okay because they didn't want to date her and because they're white and she's chinese. it made me really kind of uncomfortable.
anyway, so i got halfway through the book, got fed up with the bad writing, skipped ahead to the ryka aoki story, and then gave up.
i was wrong.
so, some highlights:
the ryka aoki story was really good! it's about a closeted trans woman who gets trapped in a nightmare/monkey's paw house with her two best friends and what happens when they're faced with a twisted version of their deepest desires.
there was also a story by someone local to the area (the author had actually left a post-it in the book saying "this story is mine i'm from here hope you enjoy" which i found very endearing). this one tickled my soc-sci major sensibilities--it's about an anthropologist visiting a society where grammatical gender isn't based on sex, it's tied to occupation. stationary people are women and nomadic people are men. the story is told through journal entries from the point of view of a boy (who american audiences would understand to be a girl) given the journal by the anthropologist. it's hard to explain the concept in a way that does it justice but i found the story very neat.
last two: there was a story about bodyswapping, the transition potential of bodyswapping with a trans person of the opposite gender, the legal ramifications of that, and also commentary on workout culture and prostitution in that kind of society. and one that's about a trans girl who comes out and, embarrassed by her friend's reaction, runs away to a hotel on mars for the weekend and gets drunk and that's it, but it's really well done, ok?
[cw: sexual assault mention] but this collection also had some really low lows. there were a number of instances of just straight-up bad writing. bad grammar, bad punctuation--this book was clearly not copy edited. also just prose that sounded like a teenager wrote it, uncreative or ham-fisted sentences, a lack of natural movement in the plot. BUT ALSO, the first story in the collection straight up made no sense (in a benign way), and the second story was a zombie apocalypse story where the main character rapes people while she's turning into a zombie and it's written off as okay because they didn't want to date her and because they're white and she's chinese. it made me really kind of uncomfortable.
anyway, so i got halfway through the book, got fed up with the bad writing, skipped ahead to the ryka aoki story, and then gave up.
