Review copy provided by Erewhon Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the first book I’ve gotten to review from Erewhon, I\nbelieve the first book they’re putting out at all. It’s an interesting choice\nto set the tone for their new imprint–very much a book both of the current\nmoment and of science fiction’s past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jonathon Bridge is a man at odds with himself. He’s not even\nsure he understands everything that has upset his wife–the details unfold over\nthe course of the book–but one of the conditions for staying in their marriage\nand co-parenting their child is that he spend a year in The Fortress. The\nFortress is a woman-run city-state which men only enter under certain extremely\nnarrow conditions–basically a gender serfdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This feels like a book from the ’70s. It has all the\n“and then it’s a fortress OF WOMEN” and “let’s learn about\ngender in a very encounter-y sort of way” elements that…there were LOADS\nof those, some of you read fourteen of them the year you were fourteen, I know\nI did. And I feel like S.A. Jones was maybe one of us and wanted to read one of\nthem and realized how INCREDIBLY PROBLEMATIC all of those ’70s gender encounter\nbooks are in retrospect and said, huh, let’s do one in the present moment that\npeople can read right now without screaming. There is a lot more emphasis on\nconsent, on structural problems, on being part of structural problems even if\nyou are not the worst of them. On empathy and understanding other people’s\nviewpoints. So if you grew up with those ’70s gender encounter books and feel\nlike you’d like another that’s more up-to-date, this is definitely for you–and\nif you have no idea what I’m talking about, this might also be for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do wonder whether this will age any better than the\nprevious iterations did. I wonder whether the things that it is saying about\nlearning what it feels like to be helpless, to consent and then feel uncertain\nabout the free value of that consent, the context of that consent, all of those\nthings…will feel retrograde and gross. But that’s how we get there. We don’t\nget there by never talking about it, by never going off and thinking about what\nsomeone else said. We get there by doing another round of them and then saying,\nokay, but, but this thing, it doesn’t take into account this other thing, and\nthen this, and also that. That’s how conversation works, that’s how discourse\nworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a lot about sex and gender and consent in here, and\nI feel like Erewhon’s opening statement was: we know what this field is, and we\nwant to move the discourse forward, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, okay. Thanks. I’ll look forward to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review copy provided by Erewhon Books. This is the first book I’ve gotten to review from Erewhon, I believe the first book they’re putting out at all. It’s an interesting choice to set the tone for their new imprint–very much a book both of the current moment and of science fiction’s past. Jonathon Bridge is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-2722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2723,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions\/2723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}