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savaging's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this prose/poetry. One frustration: the story of the wolf-girls is so compelling in its bare facts that I wanted more bare facts, rather than weeding through the poetry to fish out what might be facts.
cesspool_princess's review against another edition
3.0
Beautiful moments, amazing imagery and ofc a stunning story she is working with but falls into cliches (a lot of diaspora poetry stuff) and ended up being more focused on the speaker than I would have chosen
600bars's review against another edition
3.0
Humanimal is a prose poem so I’m glad Kai and I read it together. The author accompanies a documentary crew as they make a film about a pair of feral children who were found by a missionary in West Bengal in 1921. The girls, Kamala and Amala, had been raised by wolves. Their forced return to society (by white missionaries no less) is a distillation of every colonial project, which is to tame the unruly subjects. Unsurprisingly, the taming results in death for Amala. You can’t get more of a perfect allegorical situation than this. Raised by wolves? Kamala and Amala? Romulus and Remus? Comeee onnnnn
The whole thing is presented as fact. Khapil had access to the missionary’s journal of observations about the girls. She’s with a documentary crew, not a normal film crew. It’s an excellent story for its symbolism, almost… toooo perfect. I made the mistake of looking up whether it’s real before we finished, and turns out it was a hoax! The Missionary faked the journals. The photos were just kids posing. When he had observers round to see Kamala, he just beat a disabled child to get her to act like a wolf. I don’t think the work would’ve been lessened by revealing that it was a hoax. It possibly would have enhanced it. In the beginning there is a sequence to explain how the girls came under the care of a wolf pack. People set (often disabled) babies outside their homes to discard them, and the wolves scooped them up. If the real Singh just took some disabled children and beat them for show, that ties into the discarding of the imperfect body and the goal of shaping a body into the “proper” shape that is all over this book, from Khapil’s excerpts about her fathers poverty-ravaged body to the original story of the girls taming.
There are some really lovely moments. Khapil does a great job of setting the mood and establishing a sense of place. I have only been to West Bengal for a few days at a time, but based on that limited experience I felt she captured a feeling about that place that I’ve never been able to describe. There’s a lot going on with color that would get picked apart if we were in English class. Khapil’s father is described (with a lot of contempt and disgust I have to say) as having a condition that sounds like something out of Helpmeet, similar to leprosy, but it’s always described with the color silver. Is that the prosthetics? Bc I was imagining crazy cyborg disease but I guess prosthetics still count as a hybrid between man and machine.
There were portions that devolved into cliches of diaspora poetry. “My mother, the papayas” etc. This was a bit eyeroll inducing and we wished it had stayed with the very strong and meaningful story of the girls and focusing less on her personal trip and feelings. Khapil knows that it’s a little annoying though: “My blood let out a deep sigh. Is it wrong to feel immediately at home in India, where, if its citizens knew you felt that way, would laugh you out of the house? But I felt it” (59). And this was written in 2009. I’m not sure what the state of poetry was like in 2009, but perhaps this type of thing was not as cliche as it is now.
The copy we had was heavily underlined and annotated and we had a good deal of fun at the previous owner’s expense. I can’t tell how old they were so if they were just a kid I’m sorry, but the comments were soooooo funny. They would frequently write “Whaa??” spelled exactly like that. They took things so literally and would write stuff like “how is this possible?????” during a metaphor or some shit. Some of the notes used words like “ontological” so I felt we were justified in giggling a little bit. To be honest I found the notes a bit helpful. I’ve never been a great poetry reader because I’m too literal minded, so the notes were kindof a how-not-to-read guide.
Humanimal was basically a summary of the intellectual pursuits I had in college. There was so much identity stuff, and then my fixation on human/animal/machine dissolution etc. Everything I ever cared about/read was either about colonization, identity, or the Cyborg Manifesto. On one hand it’s difficult to revisit bc I’m like, I’ve so moved on from this, and then I start overthinking about myself in college and just cringe. Of course I don’t mean I’ve “finished the study of colonization” like it’s a video game level that I’ve completed. This feeling is about a very particular form of navel gazing that I engaged with in college that I feel was limiting because I spent so much time thinking about myself when I could’ve been learning. But it is also nice to go back, because just because something has been done to death/ I’ve read too much of it doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy topic of study. It’s nice to see how my interests have changed.
The whole thing is presented as fact. Khapil had access to the missionary’s journal of observations about the girls. She’s with a documentary crew, not a normal film crew. It’s an excellent story for its symbolism, almost… toooo perfect. I made the mistake of looking up whether it’s real before we finished, and turns out it was a hoax! The Missionary faked the journals. The photos were just kids posing. When he had observers round to see Kamala, he just beat a disabled child to get her to act like a wolf. I don’t think the work would’ve been lessened by revealing that it was a hoax. It possibly would have enhanced it. In the beginning there is a sequence to explain how the girls came under the care of a wolf pack. People set (often disabled) babies outside their homes to discard them, and the wolves scooped them up. If the real Singh just took some disabled children and beat them for show, that ties into the discarding of the imperfect body and the goal of shaping a body into the “proper” shape that is all over this book, from Khapil’s excerpts about her fathers poverty-ravaged body to the original story of the girls taming.
There are some really lovely moments. Khapil does a great job of setting the mood and establishing a sense of place. I have only been to West Bengal for a few days at a time, but based on that limited experience I felt she captured a feeling about that place that I’ve never been able to describe. There’s a lot going on with color that would get picked apart if we were in English class. Khapil’s father is described (with a lot of contempt and disgust I have to say) as having a condition that sounds like something out of Helpmeet, similar to leprosy, but it’s always described with the color silver. Is that the prosthetics? Bc I was imagining crazy cyborg disease but I guess prosthetics still count as a hybrid between man and machine.
There were portions that devolved into cliches of diaspora poetry. “My mother, the papayas” etc. This was a bit eyeroll inducing and we wished it had stayed with the very strong and meaningful story of the girls and focusing less on her personal trip and feelings. Khapil knows that it’s a little annoying though: “My blood let out a deep sigh. Is it wrong to feel immediately at home in India, where, if its citizens knew you felt that way, would laugh you out of the house? But I felt it” (59). And this was written in 2009. I’m not sure what the state of poetry was like in 2009, but perhaps this type of thing was not as cliche as it is now.
The copy we had was heavily underlined and annotated and we had a good deal of fun at the previous owner’s expense. I can’t tell how old they were so if they were just a kid I’m sorry, but the comments were soooooo funny. They would frequently write “Whaa??” spelled exactly like that. They took things so literally and would write stuff like “how is this possible?????” during a metaphor or some shit. Some of the notes used words like “ontological” so I felt we were justified in giggling a little bit. To be honest I found the notes a bit helpful. I’ve never been a great poetry reader because I’m too literal minded, so the notes were kindof a how-not-to-read guide.
Humanimal was basically a summary of the intellectual pursuits I had in college. There was so much identity stuff, and then my fixation on human/animal/machine dissolution etc. Everything I ever cared about/read was either about colonization, identity, or the Cyborg Manifesto. On one hand it’s difficult to revisit bc I’m like, I’ve so moved on from this, and then I start overthinking about myself in college and just cringe. Of course I don’t mean I’ve “finished the study of colonization” like it’s a video game level that I’ve completed. This feeling is about a very particular form of navel gazing that I engaged with in college that I feel was limiting because I spent so much time thinking about myself when I could’ve been learning. But it is also nice to go back, because just because something has been done to death/ I’ve read too much of it doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy topic of study. It’s nice to see how my interests have changed.
capittella's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
kaitmannix's review against another edition
challenging
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.0
cdreibelbis's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
destiel74's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
I enjoyed this take on the concept of the feral child.
savaging's review
4.0
I loved this prose/poetry. One frustration: the story of the wolf-girls is so compelling in its bare facts that I wanted more bare facts, rather than weeding through the poetry to fish out what might be facts.