gabsalott13's reviews
403 reviews

This was enjoyable, even though you see the plot twist coming from a mile away. I think the author has some really great insights on the specific relationship dynamics where one person has a much heavier "mental load" than the other, and the cyclical arguments that can create. There were several moments where I was reading a passage, and shocked at how accurate the descriptions felt to situations I've been in before. 

I do think one of the reasons I had trouble with the whole "Stepford husband" twist was because as much as I do believe people would like to have more help in the home, like the author writes about Nora, many cishet women are actually attracted to some level of toxic masculinity. This is internalized misogyny, sure, but like it is an important part of the romantic equation for many of the straight couples I know of. So, I feel that it's a misstep that this book barely addresses how the "solution" these wives have created to the problems in the kitchen will likely create a different set of problems in the bedroom. Maybe that will be addressed in the next iOS update for these Stepford Husbands...

 

What an underwhelming follow-up/prequel to Pet (which I mostly loved!) Bitter is a coming-of-age story that features Jam's parents amidst the backdrop of Lucille's revolutionary period. While this sounded promising, Emezi abandoned the detailed yet subtle worldbuilding that made the Lucille of their first book in this series so enjoyable.

In its place, they've delivered a bible-thumping, derivative drudge of a book that forges ahead with its plot with little respect for its characters. I think Emezi miscalculated where the brilliance of Pet was—not in the utopian renderings of Lucille, which anyone could have come up with, but the skillful construction of youth who were truly innocent enough to have lived this other world. In Bitter, the young people are plot devices that you barely get to know before they're placed in otherworldly situations. I dare say that the scene in Pet where Redemption's family is in the kitchen and their parent is peeling the fruit has more characterization than the entirety of this book.

My other gripe is that if Emezi was going to blow by the real-life characters, I would have at least appreciated a better explanation of Bitter's magical realism elements. Those of y'all who were with me since the Goodreads days know I don't have the range for the supernatural, but at least in Pet these components were measured enough to be tolerable. Here, the angels are so hastily depicted that I never was disarmed by them, which of course makes the terrible "twist" of their true powers much less shocking than it was in Pet. 

For so long, I feel like everyone has watched in wonder as Akwaeke Emezi has been a book-producing machine!! Unfortunately this time, I feel like quantity has finally caught up with them, in exchange for quality. Bitter feels churned out of an "I spent summer 2020 on Twitter" assembly line, no longer as original and arresting as their earlier work that so many of us came to love.

Final note: Unlike Pet, Bitter is textbook YA, which means my criticisms probably are irrelevant to the target audience. Slowly but surely, I am trying to break the chains of 20-something lesbians reading books made for teenagers, so I will stop my complaining here and go read something written for people my age. 

This was so much fun to read!!! I can definitely see why it was a Reese's Book Club pick, as it's super cinematic and chock full of characters you'd love to see on the screen. It was also great to see a book that sunk into the craft of its central couple—seeing people connect through their passions and talents is such an underrated element of romance writing. 

Docking a star for the cons: the "Blavity Black" corniness, and surely some questionable political choices from the main characters (by this I don't mean the substance use.) 

I really enjoyed the story, but it’s such a tedious slow burn because you can see the train wreck coming about 1/3 of the way in. The characters don’t begin connecting the dots until the last 20 pages, and so the “great evil reveal” and hasty aftermath feel incredibly rushed. I think I have whiplash now, to be honest. It’s a shame because with better pacing, this would easily be a 4-to-4.25 review! 

I would say it’s disappointing but I don’t even want to give it that much energy. Disjointed plot where we spend time floating between several different settings, some of which  seem less useful or worth attention than others. The characters were either unremarkable or not likable, often because they seemed contrived. I don’t know people who talk/act like them, particularly Grace and Yuki. The dialogue was equal parts clunky, corny, and maudlin. Would not recommend.  

This is a somewhat heavy-handed, mostly enjoyable story centered on the familial, professional, and romantic/sexual lives of two siblings, Olga and Prieto Acevedo. Both siblings' adult lives are still deeply tethered to the traumatic childhood event of their mother, Blanca, abandoning them for various revolutionary causes in Latin America. 

I think this story raised some really compelling points about the balance between one's external politics and the responsibility to live out those values in your intimate relationships. It shows the damage that occurs when people are working towards the liberation of entire countries of people while mistreating the people closest to them. In the case of the Acevedo siblings, this hypocrisy from their mother caused them to rebel against her political commitments, which they came to see as in conflict with their care and wellbeing. 

Because Blanca is such a villainous character within her family (she is a condescending, selfish, manipulative, and also homophobic mother, daughter, and sister), it makes it hard for the main characters and the readers to fully buy into the aforementioned political commitments. Due to her being a deadbeat, she is only characterized through her children's memories, folklore from her devotees, and one-sided correspondence. This means that while Olga and Prieto get to be fully complex humans, we don't see much of the pure dedication Blanca had for oppressed people that caused her to leave her family. I was surprised Xochitl Gonzalez didn't make this choice, not only because she switches narrators quite liberally throughout the story, but also because including Blanca's POV outside the letters could've nuanced her (still inexcusable) treatment of her children. 

Similarly, while I enjoyed the back-and-forth attention to the geographies of "New and Old" Brooklyn and Puerto Rico, the characters who threaten the futures of both places are also portrayed as one-dimensional villains. This is mostly due to lazy writing, and a lack of clear perspective on the book's ultimate political stance. For example, one of the main "good" characters ends up having the exact same exploitative occupation (a landlord) as the "bad" characters. I think Olga justifies this as okay because he still turns windfall profits, but doesn't displace people, but that seems misaligned with Prieto's earlier opinions about how the problems of tenant exploitation in their community started well before gentrification. This moral confusion continues when Gonzalez has one characters conclude that Blanca is no better than the disaster capitalists seeking to gentrify Brooklyn and occupy Puerto Rico, because they both exploit and use people towards their aims. This overcomparison is only possible because Gonzalez didn't really do the work to fully understand Blanca's deep ethical motivations to her causes. She's right that these motivations don't justify Blanca's means (particularly the manipulation of her children and nonchalant acceptance of human suffering), but she's wrong that her ultimate goals are the same as Dick and the Selbys wanting to further line their already-lined pockets.

My final gripe (and reason for not making this a clean 4-stars) is Gonzalez's creepy fascination with the skin colors of various characters in her book...we can tell that a white lady (regardless of ethnicity) wrote this!! However, I still mostly enjoyed the book and would recommend to others. 

This is such a helpful guide!!! The only reason I didn't fly through this book is because there were so many wonderful quotes I wanted to get down on every single page. There are way too many helpful concepts in here to get into them all, so I'm going to try and summarize the most helpful components from each chapter.

Chapter 1: Arriving at Asexuality
This chapter really helped set the scene for the "multiple qualifying factors" approach of this book, where the author is sharing stories of asexual experiences and concepts, for you to choose which ones fit (instead of use any to say "this doesn't apply to you.") This chapter is also maybe one of the places Angela Chen shares her own experiences in a way that is fully helpful, and not slightly grating—more on this later.

Chapter 2: Explanation via Negativa  
In this chapter, Angela Chen separates out the difference between sex drive (basically, your general libido or undirected horniness) and sexual attraction ("a libido with a target.") This was SUCH a helpful delineation, as it helps me to understand why asexual people can still experience the desire to masturbate, or even have partnered sex, but in a very different way than some allosexual people do. This chapter also introduced the "spectrum within the spectrum" of how asexual people can feel about partnered sex at any given moment: sex-repulsed, to sex-indifferent, to sex-favorable. I am already using this range as a helpful way to check in with myself from week to week (and honestly sometimes minute to minute.) One annoying part at the end is a recurring theme throughout the book: while Chen is very adept at interrogating how compulsory sexuality impacts her life choices, there is no similar interrogation of the compulsory HETEROsexuality in some of her statements. For instance, when she talks about how she has a greater "aversion" to sex with cis women than cis men, there are no thoughts about the patriarchal norms that may have impacted this aversion...hmm!!!

Chapter 3: Compulsory Sexuality and (Male) Asexual Existence
Okay, so this is like the concept that changed the game for me!!! Compulsory sexuality is an extension of  

Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality—Chen argues that if “heterosexuality is a political institution that is taught and conditioned and reinforced”, so is allosexuality! The ideas that all "normal people" have sex, that only immature people don't have sex, or that sex is the most passionate or adventurous or ultimate experience of connection you can have with someone you love, are ALL concepts derived from compulsory sexuality. Chen goes a helpful step further by talking about how the institution of allosexuality interacts with other systems in our society, such as capitalism. For instance, a lot of the negative responses to asexuality is because of how this flies in the face of how we commodify sex. If the current set-up is that people are supposed to "buy into" compulsory sexuality in exchange for society's promised return on sexual investment, which includes being a cooler, more cultured person, than asexuality is literally bad for business. I appreciated how open the people surveyed in this chapter were about how it can be embarrassing to identify as asexual, because you feel like you're saying you don't live life to the fullest. Thankfully, my favorite parts in this chapter combat this pretty well. Through her interviews and personal anecdotes, Chen describes the many ways asexual people lead thrilling, passionate, cultured lives that have nothing to do with their sexual endeavors.

Chapter 4: Just Let Me Liberate You
This is, hands down, my favorite chapter of the book, and only 78% for petty reasons. It summarizes the "mutation of feminist values" that makes sexual promiscuity the only expression of a liberated sexuality. Chen explains how this collapsing of sex into an inherently progressive act is troubling for survivors, asexual people, those aspiring to certain politics, people knee deep in "polyagony", and everyone else caught uncomfortably in the middle between sex-negative feminism and sex-positive feminism. Chen's ultimate verdict is that she's decided to be "sex critical", which seems like a really smart place to be. More than anything, I loved how this chapter critiques the maturity narrative that is a key part of compulsory sexuality. When sex becomes seen as the most important, evolved, or intimate way to relate to other people, and also the most “fully realized” expression of certain politics, this can cause a problem for many asexual people. However, Chen shares a reminder I want posted everywhere: "it is also troubling if the focus on personal liberation takes attention away from the true power of political organizing. Having transgressive sex can be individually powerful, but it rarely changes the greater structure of politics, law, and culture that continues to shame alternative lifestyles and sex (and enforce other forms of regressive norms) for everyone else." Basically, only being focused on your individual “freedom to” have sex the way you want, does nothing to help broader groups of people build the “freedom from” systems that use sex to oppress people.

And now, here is my favorite quote from the entire book, where Chen shares a bit of her thoughts and then quotes the piece "Your Sex is Not Radical" by Yasmin Nair. “Sex is not the center of my feminism…Even if I put in the work to make my sex life the envy of all, that would mostly help me alone. Pursuing pleasure can be wonderful, but not having a super-exciting sex life does not make one a political failure, not when there is so much other work to be done, on issues of violence and economics and education and more…as Nair writes, ’The revolution’—the one that helps all of us—‘will not come on the tidal wave of your next multiple orgasm had with your seven partners on the floor of your communal living space. It will only happen if you have an actual plan for destroying systems of oppression and exploitation.’ Sexual diversity of all kinds is important, and one’s personal sexuality does not create the limits of their political activism, in either direction.”

Chapter 5: Whitewashed
This chapter definitely was lacking, and illustrates more of why I will be waiting for Black asexual authors' thoughts on how our particular culture interacts with asexuality. One helpful component comes from Chen's interview with asexual model Yasmin Benoit, who talks about their embrace of a "desire to be desired."

Chapter 6: In Sickness and In Health
This chapter talks about the overlaps and schisms between disability justice organizing and asexual activism. In short, Chen explains that “the disabled community has spent a long time fighting the idea that disabled people are, or should be, asexual. The ace community has struggled for as long as it has existed to prove that asexuality has nothing to do with disability.” Chen includes helpful information about medical acephobia and the capitalist and patriarchal roots of much of the clinical pathologies of people who have low sexual desire. But, she could have gone much further in critique of the ableism, anti-fatness, and anti-Blackness of the health industry (for this, I'd recommend Belly of the Beast by Da'Shaun L. Harrison.) For me, the most useful critique of this chapter was when Chen talked about how diagnoses are the tools of the hierarchical medical systems in our country, that make doctors the ultimate professionals on our bodies. By contrast, asexuality is not about top-down or sterile diagnoses, but instead discovering and exploring and deciding for yourself if this is a spectrum that you may find a helpful place on. 

Chen furthers this anti-diagnostic approach by describing the need to abandon "gold star asexual policies", which make people feel like they're invalid asexual people if they’re disabled, or a bad disabled person if they’re asexual, because they fell into stereotypes or weren’t “purely asexual” without the origin of their asexuality being influenced by another identity/set of life experiences. I definitely related to this initial feeling like I couldn’t exactly ascertain where one of my experienced started and the other one began (being a lesbian, asexual, nonbinary, autistic, etc.) By the end of this chapter, I was clear that it didn't matter!!! Chen explains that the “obsession with the origin” of asexuality is compulsory sexuality in itself—when something is seen as “against the standard” or norm, people feel a burden to isolate where this "deviance" came from, in a way that is never expected in reverse. One part that definitely spoke to my identity as a recovering nondenominational Baptist is when she explains that asexual origin hunting is really about “trying to please those who were always going to be naysayers." Part of my religious deconstruction journey has been realizing I have to stop doing this with the hunt for a biblical justification for being gay—even if there isn’t one, it doesn’t matter because it's not my job to change the minds of people who are deadset on being bigoted (even if those "people" literally include the God I was raised to believe in.) In a different but similar context, Chen explains  “most of us will never have the luxury of an airtight answer to these questions [about the origin of our asexuality], just as we’ll never know how much any of our other preferences were affected by thousands of other factors. Interactions are too convoluted...questioning can be exhausting and futile. Experiences may change on their own later or they may not—so after a certain amount of effort, this work is no longer helpful and acceptance becomes more important.” This book is certainly helping with my own path to acceptance of many parts of myself!

Chapter 7: Romance, Reconsidered
This chapter had some very helpful sections about the validity of "nonsexual romantic love", and deconstructing the idea that platonic love is less passionate because only sex can bring passion into a relationship. It also brought up a topic that many of my friends and I regularly discuss, which is that I really wish our society was one were “the marital and sexual bond was not automatically assumed to be the most important emotional relationship” someone can have. Many times, this is getting in the way of A LOT of people’s desire to have really close friends. I am personally trying to work to align my own beliefs in this area with my actions, as it is really easy to fall into social scripts of what Chen calls amatonormativity, or "the underserved elevation and centrality of romantic love." One final note here: I did a buddy read for this book, and my friend Adriana made a great point about a hypocrisy in this chapter. Despite talking at the start about how our society unnecessarily devalues the extent of friendship, Chen's use of the term "queerplatonic partner" seems to do exactly the same thing. If she's saying that there's no limit to how deep or important platonic friendships can be, why do we need a new term to signify a platonic relationship that is "more important" than friendship?!? Make it make sense. 

Chapter 8: The Good-Enough Reason
This chapter was incredibly helpful with unpacking some sexual trauma, as it opens with the concept of hermeneutical injustice, or the life-affirming knowledge that is often inaccessible to oppressed people. A particular hermeneutical injustice that ace people are kept from knowing is that not wanting to have sex is “the good-enough reason” to not have sex with a partner. Because many asexual people often don’t know this, they can experience sexual coercion, consent violations, sexual assault, and other terrible situations, particularly in the concept of partnered relationships. Chen notes this is particularly likely because even most consent-minded people subliminally believe that "sex with strangers is never necessary, but sex in relationships is a requirement." Chen is able to reinforce the good-enough reason, and the nuances of experiences we may have had before we learned about it, by using a framework developed by Emily Nagoski in Come As You Are, my next therapist-recommended read! In this chapter, Chen critiques the imprecise binaries of the "no-means-no" consent model, and uses Nagoski's work to talk about a range of consent: from enthusiastic, willing, unwilling, to coerced consent (“although the last two are consent mostly in the extremely literal sense that someone did not yell out no.”) This model felt incredibly helpful as a foundation to any discussion about asexual relationships, is it gives a lot more room to start, assess, and adjust.

Chapter 9: Playing with Others
This chapter gets into the nitty-gritty of several "mixed-orientation" relationships between asexual and allosexual people. The main "solution" Chen shares is that there is a lot of power in these couples recognizing sexual mismatch as a common part of relationship negotiation, instead of the failure or abnormality of one partner. When you see incompatibility as the issue, instead of asexuality as the issue, there are lots of potential solutions. I do have gripes with Chen presenting nonmonogamy as an easy overnight solution to allo-ace relationships. In my own experience of reading and re-reading this book, I have come to realize that I'm in a double mixed-orientation relationship: I'm asexual and my girlfriend is not, while she is polyamorous and I am not. Realizing these truths has opened possible solutions, for sure, but these come with their own challenges that shouldn't be glossed over. I think this may be partially explained by a helpful admission Chen makes at the end of the chapter, which is about their own experiences of insight fallacy (knowing about the issue, or being able to put a name/term to the issue, doesn't mean the issue goes away!) I appreciated Chen's honesty about how she still has the urge to double down on “not being too ace”, tries to convince herself that her sexual desire will come back at some point, or finds reasons to explain why she hasn't wanted sex for a long period of time. Many readers (including me!) are right there with her in the murky process of moving forward with the knowledge of these life truths. 

I think the last two chapters didn't have many notable takeaways for me, but as you can see, I got a huge amount of helpful information from the first nine. I did want to add that I greatly benefitted from doing a buddy read for this book on my second read. I would highly recommend doing this, or even just talking about it with a friend—so far, pretty much everyone except one person I've discussed it with has found something in these topics they relate to (even if they don't identify as asexual.)

Chen includes a pretty helpful index and further reading list, but for the next points in my asexuality education, I am looking forward to hearing from Black asexual authors, like Sherronda Brown's forthcoming book, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture. Until then, I look forward to ruminating on the lessons of this very helpful book! :)