Reviews and Comments

it was ok. some were good and made me want more. some were pretty uncomfortable and i couldn't wait for it to stop.

Started audiobook per apartment friend's rec

Wasn't interested

I listened to this book as an audiobook narrated by the author. I first learned about it in 2020 and watched "Why Trust a Corporation to do a Library's Job". I think this made me have a different impression of what to expect from the book. Some of it was information I was familiar with and some of it was new. It's also quite personal as others have noted. I was really surprised to learn about a side of Ello that didn't make the same impression on me when I was a teenager who didn't know about the drama that was happening around it. I think it'd be a book that would get along well with some friends, but I'm not sure what the person I'd recommend it to would be exactly. Perhaps something along the lines of someone who'd be interested in books like Blockchain Chicken Farm. It's the type of thing I feel like not enough of my peers know about.

I listened to this within a day and a half as an audio book. Without much background on Ada Lovelace, while I can't fact check the content from prior knowledge, I felt like this was a solid overview of Ada Lovelace's life as an introduction. The fact it's targeted for kids adds more joyful antics to the biography's narrative. It also doesn't gloss over Lovelace's difficulties with her health and family members to make her more palatable as I might have feared. Hearing about other aspects of her life humanizes her beyond her achievements. However, it also makes me wonder what traditional non-European cultures are not acknowledged in the computer science community as precursor's to Lovelace's idea of computer programming, such as through textile forms.

I learned about this book because the author came to my school freshman year. I didn't get one of the free copies they were giving out at the time, but it stayed on my mind and I saw it as an audiobook so I figured I'd check it out. Oh boy, what a journey, harder and harder to put down. If you're familiar with "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, you're introduced to several different characters with some common themes that link them to a major event—that is what came to mind when reading this book structure wise. I never finished "the Overstory" and I wouldn't compare the plot otherwise. For "There There", the final event, as well as things that happen to characters of various indigenous descent, all connected to Oakland, will sit with you for a long time. It's different from other books by indigenous folx, I've read with an emphasis on cultural loss/revitalization/reclamation in an urban context. It reminds me more of what I've heard from indigenous podcasts about current indigenous issues. I really enjoyed the role of grandmothers in this book as well.

Finished this book in about a week. I've heard of Ryka Aoki before but I did not know she was trans, so I was even more hyped to read this book and learn more about her. The writing level is appropriate for something oriented at the YA audience, especially with how it drops pop culture references (lmao Lindsey Stirling, Sword Art Online, and totally-not-undertale) and reaches to the occult and sci-fi. It was easy to breeze through.

I enjoyed the world building and character building a lot for those at the center of the stage, the food is given a lot of care 🤤, it really took the story forward from the start. You start to get draw into the cadence of their life. While the ending felt like what I thought was sufficient for a YA novel, I was disappointed how some characters really did not get their justice/recognition. There are times that this book feels like a typical YA novel and I wish it said more, but there are other times I remember how important it is that it's doing exactly what it's doing (I say as a queer trans Asian person myself). Just... maybe for someone younger than me (in my 20s)?

As others mentioned, this book could use some content warnings on the traumatic experiences that the main character especially experiences. I also noticed that aspects about inter-Asian discourse aren't really touched on: there's a celebration of primarily East and Southeast Asian cultures, not really a mention of many other cultures like South Asian or issues of colorism.

I listened to this as an audiobook, though not one I'd suggest listening to aloud in public. The book follows the journey of Japanese women from being shipped to the US, sold off to husbands who were not who they were told they were, up to a few decades later at the establishment of the first internment camps (around the 1940s). The writing never pulls any punches in telling the grim truth. The pluralistic narrative is a chorus that echos a collective memory of both things that were shared or specific to one person or another. The blurring of these narratives also tunes into how these individual voices have been historically erased, ending up in vague memories that make it harder to distinguish who is who among the "We" or "They", especially emphasized with the final parts of the book.

Nu Nu Yi begins the story by threading through a handoff of perspectives between those at the Taungbyon festival: from a pickpocket, to a wealthy woman asking for good fortune, to the spirit wives themselves, all tied to this event. Toward the latter half of the story, we are set through a drama focusing on Daisy Bond in particular into the end of the festival period. As a whole it's not too long of a read and does well to propel you to another world that pulls the curtains back behind a festival, showing what people are really thinking when it comes to spirits, love, wealth, and power.

The Taungbyon festival is not something that my family participated in, yet it's one of my main connections to queer trans history in Myanmar. Natkadaws are spirit wives, composed of effeminate gay men, trans women, others elsewhere and in between, and those who are not a part of that at all—but are looking to profit off the festival. It is difficult to read this book with the way it captures the queerphobia and transphobia that has it mark on the majority of people in society. I see how my family might struggle to imagine I might be anything like them. If not for their role as spirit wives, their identities would not hold them to any standard of acknowledgement, though given it is driven by the colonizers discretion, this didn't necessarily leave them any better off. I wonder what those festivals might be like now with the most recent coup and pandemic; it would be hard to get any of my family to tell me.