” Are you a Christian?’ Ilonka finally asked. ‘No, I am dying.” Anya turned a page. “Dead people have no religion,’” (Pike 4). Ilonka Pawluk has checked-in to Rotterham Home, a hospice for teenagers, typically state wards, who are soon to die. But Ilonka is different, she’s taking better care of herself, and once her …
“People love an idea, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Even if they only know how to do exactly the wrong thing,” (Machado 228). In her memoir, Carmen Maria Machado finds the words, after years and difficulty, to articulate what it was like being in an abusive same-sex relationship. Part fairy-tale, horror …
“I am a delicate mist. No one can look at me or touch me or see me. I do not want to be held, which is fine-no one wants to hold me, and even if they did, it wouldn’t help. I am a murmuration, a lightly undulating spray of particles, moving easily around the earth …
“One day I will die, and one day everyone I know will die. One day everyone I don’t know will die. One day every animal and plant on this planet will die. One day earth itself will die, and one day all of humanity, and all relics of human life,” (Austin). Twenty-seven-year-old atheist lesbian Gilda …
“Boredom…is not far from blizz; one regards boredom from the shores of pleasure…The condition of the modern foetus. Just think: nothing to do but be and grow, where growing is hardly a conscious act. The joy of pure existence, the tedium of undifferentiated days. Extended bliss is boredom of the existential kind. This confinement shouldn’t …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. “Creative, enterprising, and technologically savvy, millennials have produced a proliferation of images of themselves that complicate demographic analyses and challenge widely held assumptions. These films, television series, digital representations, and, of course, plays, offer complex insights into a much-maligned demographic and deserve serious …
“It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?” (Ward 138). Rob is desperate for a normal life, and on the surface she’s achieved it: a husband, two daughters, and a nice house in the suburbs she’s renovated to her …
“One of the hardest things about recovery is coming to terms with the fact that you can’t trust your brain anymore. In fact, you need to understand that your brain has become your own worst enemy. It will steer you toward bad choices, override logic and common sense, and warp your most cherished memories into …
I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. “Her blood ran red like any other warm-blooded American woman, but Bunny knew her insides were inky black, a mixture of oil and water she’d never be free of. Oil tied her to Texas, to her oil baron family, to her …
“Self-sacrifice remains the only fate imaginable for women. More precisely, it is a self-sacrifice that operates by way of abandoning one’s own creative potential rather than it’s realization,” (Chollet 83). Feminist writer Mona Chollet explores which type of women were accused of witchcraft in history and how that has adapted to the modern world. Looking particularly at …
Sarah O'Connor 