Embodied Exegesis is released unto the world!
After years of work, the anthology I edited is now available for you to read! Putting together an anthology of transhumanist cyberpunk written by transfem authors has been a long held dream of mine, and I’m SO excited for people to finally read it.
So what’s actually IN the anthology? In a word, weird, transhumanist post-cyberpunk:
- classic cyberpunk stories about renegade body modding (but actually trans this time)
- A chilling story by Riley Tao about internet hate mobs
- A longform poem by Ryka Aoki
- FOUR trans hivemind stories! including Hailey Piper and Izzy Wasserstein
- a structurally experimental story that engages with Baudrillard and the surveillance state by Catherine Kim
- The weirdest story I’ve ever read, about weaponized cringe by Palimrya
- A transfem coffee maker on a flotilla hunting god by Maya Deane
- and more!!!
If that sounds intriguing to you, you can grab the ebook or a physical copy from Neon Hemlock!
Look at this beautiful cover art by Lyss Menold!
What I’ve been working on
I recently finished a bookcase for my kid, which I thought was going to be a simple project. I was wrong!
I wanted to try out through-tenons (the bits you see poking through the sides), but as I was cutting the mortises (the holes that the tenon goes through), I realized that my design was horribly flawed, because what I ended up with was cross-grain mortises. In short, that meant the joint was a lot weaker than it ought to have been, because it maximized the surface area of the joint that was end-grain (the end of a board doesn’t adhere well compared to the face and sides).
I despaired. What was supposed to be a quick project was significantly harder (cross grain mortises are a bitch to chisel), and worse from a craftsmanship perspective. I worried I would end up with a wobbly bookcase, no better than some MDF junk from IKEA.
I’m so glad I persevered!
The bookcase turned out fine. It’s solid AF, and will probably last centuries, despite its flaws. My kid loves it, and it’s now full of books and graphic novels.
So this is just your regular reminder that done is better than not. Do it scared, do it badly, but do it.
(About a month after I finished the bookcase, I picked up a woodworking book that explained in detail how to do that sort of through tenon right. If only I’d read it sooner!)
What I’ve been reading
I recently finished The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, and WOW does it deserve all the hype and awards it’s gotten.
(SPOILERS) I loved the way the book blended the mythic and the modern, both in terms of its writing style, and in the setting itself. In the middle of the book it’s revealed that this blending is literal: there has been a cataclysmic tesseract of time, where the temporal space between the ancient world of myth and magic was united with–and overlaid upon–the modern world. As a result, the book is able to examine the fantastic tropes like the chosen one using the tools of contemporary literary fiction, without ever devolving to bathic satire. Fascinating stuff from a craft perspective, and incredibly enjoyable to read!
As a woodworker, I was obsessed with the depiction of doors in the book. And while I was sad there wasn’t more about the doors, I recognize that the infodumps I wanted about them would’ve only served me, the reader, and not the narrative itself. Alas!
Ethnic cleansing and pogroms are central to the narrative, and I’m still thinking about the book’s approach to those topics. It’s very common in western SF&F to have genocide be triumphantly defeated, but I’ve never resonated with that. My dad is Cajun, my mother is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. While my grandparents survived, there was no victory, and the erasure of those cultures persists. So I liked the ending of SAINT, because it understood that even though the narrative villain was defeated, the machinery of evil has a horrible momentum that cannot be stopped with a heroic victory. Fetter is still fighting it at the end. He still walks with a limp, and his mother’s culture isn’t restored.
I also loved LOVE/AGGRESSION by June Martin, which does similarly interesting things with setting and POV as SAINT.
(SPOILERS) Like Saint of Bright Doors, LOVE/AGRESSION has an ostensibly contemporary setting. BUT!! There are two POV characters, and one of them experiences a surreal world full of ethereal coffeshops, tattoo guns that can alter reality, and houses with infinite rooms. The other POV character barely acknowledges any of this, in part because she’s entirely obsessed with her own beauty.
Like SAINT, there’s this wild blending of the mundane contemporary with surrealist magic that breaks reality and obeys no rules. LOVE/AGGRESSION uses this blending to highlight and examine the intractable differences between the two ex-friends, as well as examine the dynamics of queer/trans IRL communities. It’s a great example of the use of the speculative to come at an issue from the side, and thus reveal truths that would’ve been hidden by a more direct/realistic depiction of the world.
I’m particularly fascinated by Calamity, a trans woman / goddess who embodies trans femininity and cannot stop guzzling estrogen pills. She’s acts like a speculative metaphor for the way that out trans women are inspirational lighthouses to people either still in the closet or early in transition. Calamity is murdered and eaten, but then reborn via a process that is half infiltration, half transition, and half apotheosis, which felt like commentary on how the trans community devours our own, and then appoints a new public figure to both idolize and problematize. And Calamity’s connection to HRT is interesting, though I’m still cogitating on what it means within the narrative (and the way that the book talks about trans beauty extensively without talking about passing – what does it MEAN!?).
There is SO much going on in this novel that I’m still rotating in my head. I could talk for days about it, but I will stop here!
I highly recommend you pick up copies of both books, read them, and then come talk to me about them!
Until next time!
I’m going to be in Baltimore this weekend, reading at the BIRD IN HAND CAFE, Saturday September 7th, at 6:30pm. If you’re in the area, come see me!
With love,
Ann LeBlanc
To get more posts like this, sign up for my newsletter!
]]>