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jamrock's review
5.0
This book is the set reading for week one of our Posthumanism module, as part of a Cultural & Critical Studies MA. The first week sets out to consider 'what is human' as a baseline for discussing what it means to be 'posthuman'. The genre is feminist sci-fi and the author, Vandana Singh, grew up in India. Singh was raised on a diet of stories and myths in Hindi and English; later earning a PhD in theoretical particle physics.
Short, exotic and haunting; it's a cute, clever and thought provoking novella. Avoiding spoilers, it's a book that follows a character and experiences, through them, many of the feelings and experiences that we might consider define humans. This covers love and loss, desire and unrequited love, envy, shame, death and mourning. It also allows a reader to understand what it is like to experience being 'othered', to feel like an other, or simply to be treated like an alien, even when a person may not feel they are different to those who consider them so.
I can see why we were set this piece as there are many passages that could be used for analysis of what it means to be human. Also useful to analyse who gets to applies labels such as inhuman, as well as when and why they do.
Short, exotic and haunting; it's a cute, clever and thought provoking novella. Avoiding spoilers, it's a book that follows a character and experiences, through them, many of the feelings and experiences that we might consider define humans. This covers love and loss, desire and unrequited love, envy, shame, death and mourning. It also allows a reader to understand what it is like to experience being 'othered', to feel like an other, or simply to be treated like an alien, even when a person may not feel they are different to those who consider them so.
I can see why we were set this piece as there are many passages that could be used for analysis of what it means to be human. Also useful to analyse who gets to applies labels such as inhuman, as well as when and why they do.
sucrose's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.0
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