Get on the Bus for Mr. Graham Jones's Wild Ride: Off the Reservation

 Off the Reservation by Stephen Graham Jones

Off the Reservation book cover

Author Stephen Graham Jones

I don’t often recommend reading the acknowledgements first, but in the case of Stephen Graham Jones’s ambitious and wildly imaginative follow up to The Only Good Indians it might provide some context in understanding this surreal road-trip and possession horror novel that not only confronts many of the myths and stereotypes surrounding Indians, but he also offers insights and the inspirations that influenced this sequel to The Only Good Indians. Beyond textual evidence, Graham Jones also offers insight into his writing process, which informs this multi-layered novel that inhabits the perspectives of several complex characters who shift and evolve throughout the course of the novel and road trip. As Graham Jones notes “Put me in a group, at a dinner, a reception, and I usually hunch my shoulders and hide, stay quiet, always snaking looks at the door. Put me at the keyboard, though, and I come alive.” He discusses how part of the novel was written in an Applebee’s while he was on the road, and another chapter was written in the back of a car, where he risked motion sickness to put his vision on paper (or computer). He also thanks (sarcastically) a passenger who sat in front of him during a flight who pushed the seat back and nearly caused an ocular migraine while Graham Jones was continuing to work on this novel. It’s a fascinating look at the writing process for one of the most inventive and distinct voices in horror today, and it helped me better understand some of the events and significance of the characters and the action throughout the novel. Plus, he also offers sine background about the chapter “He Stood Dying”, which is pretty much a chapter about Nate going to the bathroom. It’s a fascinating chapter that left me wondering more about why so much of the chapter was dedicated to this process; it serves an important function later on in the story, which I don’t want to spoil, and the acknowledgement also reveals some of the motivation behind this focus. So depending on whether a reader wants to try to navigate this complex, surreal story on their own to attempt to make meaning, or whether they would prefer to hear from the author about motivations and meaning, it might help. I found myself both engaged and perplexed by Graham Jones’s unique style that features both truly gross and graphic horror as well as long, complex, stream-of-consciousness sentences that extend for several lines and capture details of the surrounding environment, the characters’ thoughts and feelings, and sometimes the author’s own interjections. One example from the pee chapter starts “He was a stoic Indian, though, didn’t even show it, excerpt maybe in how fast his fingertips kept galloping over the laminated table of the Sundancer’s abbreviated booth of a dining table, Mooch laying down solitaire cards across from him, his overfilled blader a stretched-tight drum skin picking up every single one of those thunderous impacts of varnished paper meeting laminated tabletop.” I found myself re-reading sections to better grasp what was happening, and I was constantly reminded of Toni Morrison’s famous retort to Oprah about the need to re-read “That, my dear, is called reading.” Off the Reservation has something for everyone, whether it is graphic and gross body horror, symbolic metaphors to counter the stereotypes and racism that Indians experience and to challenge the myths of America’s westward expansion, and the distinct voice of literary horror’s most inventive stylist. However, this is probably not a book for everyone, but it is a rewarding book if readers are willing to re-read and work to make meaning of the depth of Graham Jones’s surreal and metaphorical vision.

Off the Reservation is much different from The Only Good Indians even though it features some of the same characters. Where The Only Good Indians also featured multiple characters, whose stories were told in different sections, Off the Reservation also features multiple distinct characters whose stories intersect as they are all taking part on a road trip mission in an old Sundancer Camper RV to travel from Montana to Carlisle, Pa., site of the notorious Carlisle Indian School, whose founder, Richard Henry Pratt, explained the mission of the school to “Kill the Indian, save the man”, and as it’s been found out, the school often took this motto literally with over 200 marked and unmarked graves found around the school grounds. The Only Good Indians felt a lot like It to me as there were several friends who experienced a kind of trauma when they were younger that eventually came to haunt them. Off the Reservation feels like something else entirely. At first, I thought that with the road trip in the RV, there where hints of Doctor Sleep’s True Knot, but a kind of inverse to Crow Daddy, since these Indians were all attempting to repatriate the bones of a boy who died at the Carlisle Indian School, not take the lifeforce from younger kids. However, Off the Reservation also reminded me of Sherman Alexie’s excellent short story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” where the trip becomes more than just travelling, but it functions as a way to reconnect with indigenous culture and heritage while also confronting stereotypes and racism. Maybe I’m just looking too much into these similarities since these were not books that Graham Jones mentioned in the acknowledgement section, but I loved the way the road trip played out. Beyond these literary connections, Off the Reservation’s horror is what really sets it apart from other books. I also loved The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and that book also included some graphic details, but it was framed as a kind of vampire novel, whereas Off the Reservation features a demonic spirit that ends up possessing members of the trip and causing extreme instances of body horror. Other characters, notably Christiana/Christian, experience their own violence and body horror, with a brutal attack at a rest stop that leaves them without a tongue, which is eventually replaced by a synthetic tongue that is attached by magnets, which Christiana/Christian keeps in a hollowed-out bible to help with finding their voice. This might be my favorite character in the book, and they are definitely one of the more symbolic characters, who loses their voice to a kind of settler violence, and struggles to communicate throughout the rest of the book. Although one could argue that it’s the other characters and us who struggle to understand them, and that Christiana/Christian have developed their own language despite the efforts of others to try to silence them or replace their voice with a synthetic facsimile kept in a Christian box. There’s many of these kinds of symbolic incidents throughout the novel, whether it is characters questioning the cleanliness of blankets and refusing to use them or even the voice of Russell Means showing up to talk through the body of Nurse Seine (I also loved Graham Jones’s aside “It was the same clipped-but-controlled delivery from the 1989 Senate hearings that he always showed class, to try to foment what might need fomenting. Eighteen minutes of prepared remarks: restrained but angry, persuasive but demanding, eloquent but in that reservation accent, AIMing (my emphasis) for the bullseye and hitting it line after line- a hero if there ever was one.”). Although Nurse Seine has her own motivations for bringing Nate out to the Carlisle Indian School, I felt bad for everything that she experiences throughout the novel. She’s repeatedly punished through the possession, and it reminded me a lot of the Evil Dead movies where there is horror, gore, but also a bit of surreal slapstick and over-the-top body horror. Graham Jones definitely puts her through the wringer throughout this book.

Although I’ve written a good amount about this book, I haven’t even really addressed the plot of the book, and it’s a little challenging since this book starts out with Nate and his friend Sebby looking to burglarize a kind of lake vacation home, only to end up in a car accident. Prior to the accident, Nate sees what he thinks are tiny deer that may have been recording the burglary, which he later witnesses on a videotape of the film War Party, which apparently is a real film that takes place on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. I also loved how this locally made film ends up playing a kind of surreal role where Nate struggles to understand the truth of history and the fictions of the myths that many believe. The film plays on a loop throughout their road trip, and Nate witnesses changes in the film, whether it’s Sebby’s sudden appearance in the film or seeing the moments before the accident that heavily damaged Nate’s skull and sent Sebby into a coma. While recuperating in the hospital, Nate’s nurse, Nurse Seine, ends up helping him with his recovery, and eventually encouraging him to join the road trip to Carlisle and eventually join the Dakota pipeline protests on their way back to Montana (I think). The story shifts from Nate and Sebby’s antics to start the novel, to Nate’s difficult recovery, and eventually the long journey out to Carlisle, and while the group of Indians in the Sundancer RV cover many miles in their journey, most of the action takes place within the RV, with some occasional rest stops and when they eventually reach their destination of Carlisle. I can’t really give more details about this incredible book without really spoiling too much of it; however, the story shifts to a possession story, which apparently Graham Jones was learning the rules of with his grad seminar on possession stories (which I would have loved to take- this sounds like an amazing course; hopefully he at least releases the syllabus). I’m still trying to make sense of the book and many of the wild events that took place after they reach Carlisle, but if readers appreciate unique stories that take common tropes and reinvent them, then they will most likely appreciate this inventive and original book. It is a challenging read, mostly because of Graham Jones’s unique style, with his long, complex sentences and stream-of-consciousness narration of multiple characters who are in the RV. It’s a rewarding read for those who want to venture Off the Reservation and challenge themselves, but it may not be for everyone. Much like he did with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Graham Jones experiments with form and style, taking horror staples like the vampire or demons who look for a human host to create a unique and original story that reinvents monsters and challenges stereotypes and historical myths. Graham Jones has created a wild road trip that I didn’t want to end, but I really enjoyed the ride. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Saga Press and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of this amazing book! 

Race, Robots, and Popular Culture: We Radiant Things by Franny Choi

 We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg by Franny Choi

We Radiant Things book cover

Author and Poet Franny Choi

I recently read David Treuer’s The Savage Mind, which is a fascinating book that asks us to reconsider the ideas of savagery and civilization throughout American history. Treuer referred to literary critic Northrop Frye in a part of the book that resonated with me. Treuer emphasized the differences between a historian and a poet by noting that “history (and historians) tackle what has happened. But poets (and poetry) look at ‘a kind of thing that might happen’…The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. [She} gives you the typical, recurring, or what Aristotle calls the universal event.” I really liked this distinction, as it is a reminder of not only the importance of artists to complement the historical record, but also how important their perspectives and deep, personal understanding is for interpreting and making meaning to events, whether they are well-known or experienced by individuals. Franny Choi’s excellent new collection of essays We Radiant Things: Notes on Being Alien and Becoming Cyborg made me think again about Treuer’s points about the role of poets in providing more context and a more nuanced look at events, especially as we are continually inundated with various perspectives of different events, media and entertainment. Choi, who is also a poet, provides interesting perspectives on a wide range of topics, frequently critiquing how robots, aliens, cyborgs and other popular figures in sci-fi and horror are often coded as representations of Asian, and particularly Asian females. She examines popular films, shows, and even music to explore these representations, how they have impacted her own identity and how others perceive her, as well as how these representations are not necessarily new, but rather an evolution in the racialized portrayals of Asians that have led to exploitative practices and treatment in labor, employment, education, relationships, and sex. Choi begins the essay with an analysis of Kyoko from 2014’s Ex Machina, examining how Kyoko’s silence and subservient portrayals rely on her racial ambiguity and Japanese name. In an interesting twist, Kyoko ultimately kills the man responsible for her creation, yet Choi explores how Kyoko’s portrayal of a mute, obedient “other” has been shaped by stereotypes and myths about Asian women that have persisted for many years. I’ve only seen Ex Machina once, and I was blown away by the story, but I was more focused on Ava’s role in the story. Choi’s observations and analysis (and apparently a recut of the film with only the scenes of Kyoko) provided a new understanding and perspective, like the kind that Treuer argues poets bring to events. For what it’s worth, Alex Garland, the writer and director of Ex Machina, has worked with Sonoya Mizuno, the actress who plays Kyoko, in a few other projects, notably Devs, where she plays the lead role of Lily Chan, a software engineer trying to uncover the mysterious death of her boyfriend. Regardless, Choi identifies other portrayals of these kinds of racialized portrayals where a future in society is often portrayed as a dystopian Chinatown, like Blade Runner. It’s definitely something I’ve noticed, and with the recent reveal that the coding for The Matrix was taken from a Japanese cookbook, we can see how sci-fi filmmakers have often portrayed the future as an exotic other, like Edward Said’s argument about the West’s portrayal of other cultures, particularly in the Middle East and Asia as distorted and inferior, a portrayal that continues to play out not just in popular culture, but in policies and programs, unfortunately.

I found Choi’s analysis of cyborg films to be particularly interesting, as she brings her own personal interest to films like Ghost in the Machine and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. I loved her writing about T2, which I remember seeing in the theater. Choi recounts how this film became a favorite of her father’s and a family staple, but also notes it’s particular connection to Korean immigrant culture with the film’s themes of “good machines” and “bad machines.” Again, I appreciated the perspective she brings to analyzing this film, exploring scenes where Edward Furlong as an adolescent John Connor is trying to teach Arnold Schwartzenegger’s T800 to speak with some slang and idioms, almost like an immigrant learning to use American phrases and idioms. However, as Choi notes, the appearance of Robert Patrick’s T1000, who can mimic other’s appearances and takes the form of a police officer, provides some insight into the struggles of immigrants and other minorities with cultural assimilation. This was definitely not a reading I took when I saw the film as a teen, but I loved reading about how Choi’s viewings of the film have evolved over the years, and how this idea about good machines and bad machines resonated with her own experiences as a child of immigrants. Nevertheless, Choi grounds her understanding of these machines in the historical accounts of immigrant Chinese workers who helped to build the transcontinental railroad and were largely characterized by their machinelike work ethic and lack of complaining or pushback. Choi also explores how this view was often pushed by those who exploited the precarious nature of these immigrants’ work and later ended up implementing the Chinese exclusion act, also based on the portrayal of Asian countries as “the other”, a dangerous kind of image of the West. This was also resonant as we are currently witnessing a calculated and systemic backlash against immigrants, often relying on tired and reckless stereotypes that not only cast immigrant groups as backwards or uncivilized, but also as threatening to American’s jobs and culture. As Treuer noted in The Savage Mind, it’s the ability of these stereotypes that induce fear of the loss of status and culture among other things that leads to violence, whether it is institutional violence through policies or physical violence that Choi also documents against Asian Americans through the brutal murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 in Detroit.

Where Choi’s writing especially stood out to me was in her chapter “Love, Death, and Pink Robots” that explores how the Flaming Lips came to write one of their most iconic albums Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Like Choi, this album also has significant memories for me from the summer of 2002 and beyond. I was struck by the beautiful descriptions of the music for both the song “Fight Test” that opens the album and “Do You Realize”, which still nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it. Choi’s music writing includes some of the most aural elements, fitting for a poet: “The track begins with a simple four-chord progression on acoustic guitar, which warps at the end of each phrase. In the back ground, what sounds like a slide guitar (actually a pitch-bending whammy pedal) evokes cowgirls pining in space.” There are some other amazingly-apt descriptions of the sounds that Coyne and Company evoke throughout their iconic album, like “The key changes, and the strange chorus of Wayne Coyne’s sixteen cloned voices rises to fill the space around my heart again.” While Choi contrasts Yoshimi’s role in the song as a Japanese woman who fights the automation, possibly challenging the stereotypes of the female Asian automaton, she also notes how Yoshimi is relegated to parts of the other songs, without having much to do with any theme of this kind of resistance and challenging stereotypes throughout the entirety of the album. Similarly, she notes the smaller image of Yoshimi on the cover of the album, nearly dwarfed by the pink robots. Choi does share her heartbreaking connection with the song “Do You Realize”, one of the saddest and most beautiful songs about the eventuality of death. I won’t give the details here, I loved the way that Choi explores how the meaning of the song and its heartbreak take her back to different eras of her life from 2003 to 2009 to 2025. While she connects the album to her main themes, it’s also one of the enjoyable connections she makes with these forms of popular media that have influenced her interests in robots and Asian American culture.

Another chapter and observation that stood out to me was “Ghost in the Shell (Intensive Care)” where Choi recounts the last days she spent with her mother, who was hospitalized in Italy after an aneurysm burst, kept alive by a respirator and hooked up to machines. As someone who experienced a dying parent in the hospital, attached to machines, I can relate, and Choi explores how these machines that seem so inhuman and artificial can actually keep us alive and help us perform integral functions. Like her reflection on the Flaming Lips’ song, this is another beautifully written but heart wrenching experience that Choi manages to capture all the confusing and intense emotions that she experienced. Yet, she also envisions her mother as Kusanagi from Ghost in the Machine, and how her cybernetic connection enables her to have a new view of consciousness. In another chapter, she explores how she has a similar conflicted relationship with technology, and how she’s harnessed the power of spreadsheets to be “the bionic arms I use to keep up with the work, to run alongside the assembly line, or maybe, to outpace my alienation and disgust.” Choi explores this complicated relationship and how technology has become like a cybernetic extension of ourselves which we rely on to survive (or maybe it’s feeding off of us, harvesting something from us).

I wasn’t sure what to expect from We Radiant Things. I am fascinated by this idea of cyborgs and robots and their portrayal in popular culture, and Franny Choi’s observations and analysis helped to challenge some of those perceptions, especially in how they are often tied to portrayals of Asians, Asian Americans, and especially Asian women. However, she also draws from her own personal experiences, which create a more intimate, funny, sad, and heartfelt rendering of these portrayals and instances. I really enjoyed learning more about how these portrayals have affected her identity, and how she challenges many of these roles by analyzing them. I would also love to take her class “Race, Robots, and Asian American Literature” or “Poetry and Technology”, since some of the work from these essays probably informs her teaching. This is a wonderful collection that will hopefully provide new insights into looking at the implications of how robots, cyborgs and technology are represented on the screen and in popular culture. Many thanks to Ecco Publishers and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of this wonderful book. Highly recommended!  

Excavating the Past to Analyze the Present: The Savage Mind: an American Legacy by David Treuer

 The Savage Mind: An American Legacy 

by David Treuer

The Savage Mind book cover

Author and anthropologist David Treuer

Pete Hegseth, the embattled Secretary of Defense, recently announced a new spectacle for Americans. While his stewardship of the largest department in the government has been marked by firings, sharing classified information, leaks, and presentations that border on bizarre. Yet he made the announcement that convicted killer Nidal Malik Hasan, whose brutal murders of 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 rocked the country, would be executed by firing squad. Hasan’s execution by firing squad will mark the first carried out by the military since 1945, but what is even more shocking is that Hegseth said he plans to broadcast the execution, making the death available to watch live for Americans. Hegseth, who purports to be a Christian and regularly invokes Jesus’s name in his speeches, has claimed that broadcasting the execution will act as a deterrent, despite no evidence that public executions or other forms of punishment deter people from committing crimes. As one of the most brutal attacks committed on an American military base, Hasan’s violence surely stands out, and its also possible that Hegseth’s purported religious beliefs call for the kind of old testament idea of an eye-for-an-eye type justice, not necessarily the same turn-the-other-cheek philosophy that Jesus and early Christians espoused. Rather, it’s a brutal and barbaric reminder of what David Treuer deems The Savage Mind, a mindset that “is American violence” that often used violence as a policy to remind others of America’s uniqueness, its power, and its strength. I couldn’t help but think about Treuer’s book when Hegseth made this awful announcement since the call to broadcast a live death follows on the heals of countless social media videos showing militarized henchmen chasing suspected immigrants, breaking windows, slamming people to the ground for an obvious reminder of America’s power. It follows on the taxpayer funded spectacle of the UFC fights at the White House, where opponents not only fought one another, but also dehumanized one of its former residents. David Treuer’s reflective and timely new book The Savage Mind: An American Legacy comes at an important time, when it seems like “the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…The ceremony of innocence is drowned;” In fact, Treuer quotes Yeats’ poem to remind us that this kind of violence and upheaval is part of a cycle, and in the words of Gil Scott Heron, it “ain’t no new thing.” Nevertheless, Treuer’s The Savage Mind is one of those books that I’m going to start recommending to all my friends and family. It’s an important and urgent book, and much like his earlier book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present invites readers to reconsider their conceptions of stereotypes and ideas from the past that persist in the present. However, unlike the hopeful and sanguine tone of The Heartbeat, where Treuer identified stories of resilience and survival across Indian reservations and tribal communities in America, The Savage Mind examines the frontier and the history of American violence that has contributed to making American what it is. As I was reading The Savage Mind, I couldn’t help but also think about Eddie Glaude Jr’s recent America, U.S.A. and how his tone towards the ideas have shifted from his earlier book Begin Again, which took a hopeful tone in reexamining racism and false myths. While violence, racism, intolerance, and political divisiveness continue to be at the forefront of the news, Treuer’s book reminds readers that this is part of the frontier mentality that has helped to push not only the physical boundaries of America’s geography but also extended the boundaries of what is acceptable to attain these advantages and privileges. Both books call for readers to reexamine the past, but to also consider how past myths, stereotypes, and belief systems have encouraged the present divisions and inequalities that continue to persist. The Savage Mind, like America, U.S.A., is also an important book to read to not only consider what is happening today, but how we can make changes that promote more healing and acceptance, to lessen our divisions and work towards promoting more equality.

While it’s not always an easy book to read, I love how Treuer frames the book as a kind of letter or dialogue with his children, interrogating his own complicated feelings as the son of an Ojibwe mother and a Jewish immigrant father and what America’s history of violence, slavery, stolen land, and bad faith treaties, among other disparate practices means to him. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Treuer presents the history and his own ideas like a dialogue with his children, framing his experiences, family, and concerns not only as hopes and fears for his children, but also a part of the multitudes of American life.

I loved the way this book was written, with careful consideration for each line. I also learned that Treuer studied with Toni Morrison (he calls her Professor Morrison) while he was an undergrad at Princeton, and I can see that influence in each line, carefully wrought word choices with repetition, inversions, and the kind of mirrored syntax that creates a reflective and critical mood in readers. He also referenced one of Morrison’s greatest quotes that I was not aware of: “If you can only feel tall if someone else is on their knees, then you’ve got a serious problem.” This line resonated with me, especially in how so much of the current administration’s approach to governing requires that kind of submission.  I found myself going back over lines to think more about the history, events, and ideas that Treuer was excavating and analyzing. Although he’s trained as an anthropologist, as he recounted on his first day of class with Professor Morrison, she informed him that he wrote better than most anthropologists, which was good. Although Treuer examines history and current events throughout the book, the personal parts recounting his memories of working with Professor Morrison or learning how to fence while at Princeton were some of my favorite parts of the book. He even makes a reference to his kids as his “best thing,” which I found both heartwarming and brilliant in later learning about Morrison’s influence on his writing. Treuer connects these experiences, feeling like an outsider, possibly experiencing a kind of imposter syndrome, with his own desire to challenge the stereotypes of Indians. There’s also a great story about meeting Clifford Geertz, arguably the most significant figure in 20^th century anthropology, and not allowing Geertz to get a word in, challenging him about fencing. As these stories entertain, Treuer eventually brings readers back to the violence, and how its not just embedded in American culture or the frontier mindset, but possibly even a part of human nature. From examining Geertz’s analysis of deep play in Balinese cock fighting, where the roosters are extensions of the man, to Freud’s cynical later work Civilization and Its Discontents, Treuer provides evidence of the influence of the frontier on American and European conquests to expand land and property at any cost, even if it means denying the humanity of others.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect with this book, and I was amazed at how it straddles many different genres and styles- it’s part memoir, part historical analysis, part instructions to his children, and all heart, where Treuer helps readers understand the implications of The Savage Mind and the legacy of American colonialism, stolen land, broken treaties, starvation, paternalism, and the other forms of physical and symbolic violence on Indians, the enslaved, and others denied rights, opportunities, and equality. I was amazed at how deftly Treuer moves from the past to the present to personal connections, whether it was through his parents’ or grandparents, his brothers or cousins, and how these experiences all serve to represent elements of The Savage Mind and the frontier, the purportedly unknown land and space that allows for lawlessness, greed, and the rapacious development of the manifest destiny. As Treuer demonstrates throughout the book, this kind of cyclical violence is often condoned through the calls for progress and growth, and is often justified as part of the entitlement of this progress. The Savage Mind is a book that all Americans should read, and its an especially important book for students to read to confront many of the myths about American exceptionalism that often skirt the kind of systemic violence and displacement that have bloated our land. I was aware of many of the events, but Treuer’s analysis and revisiting these events throughout history, both American and world history, allows readers to reconsider the consequences of colonialism and imperialism and the calls for expansion and domination, especially from a cultural and human perspective that we often do not confront in textbooks. Whether it was learning about Columbus’s crimes against humanity or Andrew Jackson’s attempts to exterminate Indians in America (and how these laws and Jim Crow laws influenced the Nuremberg Laws in 1930s Germany), The Savage Mind offers much for readers to consider and reconsider. Although there is a lot to confront and wrestle with throughout the book, Treuer framing these historical atrocities challenging situations as a letter and dialogue with his children also brings readers into the conversation, making it feel more dialogic and inviting them to not only consider the perspectives and experiences of others, but also to empathize with them and our shared history of violence, even if we may not have experienced the violence in similar ways. Furthermore, Treuer ends the book with stories of hope and redemption, sharing how the Big Drum Ceremony originated for his Ojibwe tribe. Interestingly, it was brought to the Ojibwe by a Dakota Sioux woman who survived an attack by the US army and received a vision of the ceremony during her time hiding. Part of the vision instructed her to share the ceremony with the Ojibwe, who had fought with the Dakotas for years. Although the Dakotas shared the ceremony, it became an Ojibwe tradition where members who were touched by violence led the ceremony. Treuer explains it much better, but he spends time with two Ojibwe veterans who recount how the Big Drum Ceremony has helped them heal their trauma from war. It’s an incredible story of healing, and especially how community like the Ojibwe tribe can help to shoulder grief and sorrow so that individuals do not need to feel this heavy burden. Treuer once again weaves the past, the present, and the personal to offer insights into how we continue to feel the ramifications of the past, but this experience is much different from the incidents of violence that are continuously revisited on American people. Rather, it’s about healing, peace, community, and recognizing our shared humanity. It’s a beautiful ending to a complicated legacy of violence, stolen land, broken treaties, and mistreatment. And while Treuer doesn’t call for forgetting and moving forward, he does recognize the significance of community in helping to forge forward. The Savage Mind is an important and engaging read. Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for allowing me to preview and advanced copy of this amazing book. Highly recommended! 

Domestic Horror in Sarah Langan's Trad Wife

 Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

Trad Wife book cover

Author Sarah Langan

In her excellent book Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980) that reframes 1970s classic horror films, Professor Eleanor Johnson establishes a new genre of horror films called domestic horror. As Johnson explains, films like The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Stepford Wives all feature female protagonists who are confined to a dwelling place and often face restricted freedom, a male antagonist who also inhabits the same space and is not easily removed, and horror centered usually around children, reproduction, or sex, while the female protagonist also experiences some kind of physical threat. Johnson explains that as women were working more outside of the home and delaying marriage and motherhood to focus on education and careers, society recognized this shift and some movies recognized the cultural shifts that these changes may have represented. However, it was only after the Dobbs’ decision that eliminated the federal protection for women’s reproductive rights that prompted Dr. Johnson to reevaluate these films. Although her focus was on horror films, I would add Sarah Langan’s mind-bending, genre-blending novel Trad Wife to this category.  Although Trad Wives are a much-discussed and somewhat controversial topic online, Langan establishes she’s “telling a particular story, about the ominous turn of a cultural wheel toward something ugly” in her Acknowledgements at the end of the book (make sure you read it!). I found her discussion of how she approached this novel and the subject of trad wives especially interesting since earlier this year I read Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear, the buzzy and scathing satire of trad wives that has received both commendations and criticisms about its portrayal of trad wife influencers and its sense of realism. Although satire primarily functions in extreme caricatures and exaggerated examples, Langan explains “I quickly realized that I didn’t want to poke fun at either the phenomenon or the women involved”, and Trad Wife establishes a world and movement that is, in the words of William S. Burroughs is “ancient, corrupted” and defined by “control systems”, those particularly focused on women, whether they are employees, daughters, sisters, mothers, or wives. The female protagonist, Jenny Kaplan, seems to be the antithesis of Mia Wright, a trad wife influencer who runs Black Swan Farm and its subsidiary products that she enlists her followers to sell in a seeming pyramid scheme. As a reporter working for Bread & Circus magazine, Jenny is a writer who has been struggling with the shift in journalism over time, seeing her work reduced to lists and eye-catching click bait. Jenny is also grieving in a way, as we learn about the dissolution of her relationship with her fiancé, Jarron, who seemed to mentally deteriorate during COVID, with Jenny eventually asking his parents to pick him up from their shared apartment. Jenny’s personal and professional challenges present a kind of inverse experience to Mia, whose increasingly popular videos that demonstrate her traditional, conservative beliefs and messy and sometimes harmful attempts with recipes have drawn wide-viewership and followers willing to become part of her ambassador program for Black Swan Farm. I loved how Langan presents this kind of inversion between Jenny and Mia. Although Mia is challenged by the constraints in digital journalism, she is inspired to write an intensely private memoir like piece about Jarron (without naming him) and the challenges she experienced. The piece goes viral, attracting significant interest, but also significant, misogynistic trolls (especially DirtyGarry), who eventually call for her cancellation, where she loses her job at Bread & Circus. The trolls don’t stop with her job, but also pressure the cancellation of a film production based on Jenny’s viral piece “Drano”. Although the virality splits society, Jenny does have one fan, Mia Wright, whose unlikely admiration leads to an opportunity for a freelance profile negotiated by Jenny’s former editor.

There’s a lot of build up in the first quarter of the book, and Jenny’s progression from struggling writer to viral sensation to cancelled moves quickly, but it also captures some of the milkshake duck like movement of today’s digital cancel culture. While Jenny didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, as an outspoken and independent woman trying to establish her voice, she’s a threat to the Brotherhood and trolls like DirtyGarry who are either too insecure to see women’s rise in society as progress or are just incel losers who, in the words of Toni Morrison, can only feel tall when others are on their knees. Nevertheless, her cancellation sets up Jenny as needing to escape and needing a byline to continue writing and establishing her name (plus, she also needs the money to pay rent). It also gives her time to research and study Mia Wright’s virality, something that Jenny initially approaches with disdain and skepticism, but something about Mia’s videos, in which Mia shouts out viewers, Jenny among them, as being seen engages Jenny and allows her to see elements of Mia that are so appealing to others. However, upon watching her videos, notably a Taco Tuesday disaster in which Mia falls to the ground, spilling the ingredients, but still eating it off the floor, Jenny notices a tell in which Mia signals to her dog to knock her down. Other videos reveal cuts, bruises, and falls that Jenny deems suspicious if not purposeful. Yet, it’s the humiliation, the pain, and violence that Mia endures, all to support her husband and 8 children, that viewers love. That and Mia’s call to cherish the seed that both perplex Jenny, but also intrigues her, wondering how and why Mia is so popular.

Jenny eventually travels out to Black Swan Farm in Sylvan, PA, located in Western PA, not far from Eerie. Langan intersperses these chapters with various other forms of writing, including newspaper articles and historical reports from town that detail its history of suspected witchcraft that culminated in Corrie’s fire. I don’t want to get into the specifics of the story, but I really loved how Langan incorporates this kind of folk horror into the narrative, showing how systems of control have been a part of American society since before the start of the nation. Jenny’s initial interview session leaves Mia feeling a little anxious about how she might be portrayed, especially since Jenny is on to her tricks to attract more viewers. As a result, Mia invites Jenny to spend a week at the farm where she will live the trad wife life, helping out around the farm and learning more about Mia’s day to day responsibilities. While Jenny’s photographer understands the project as a kind of Freaky Friday shoot, Mia also views it as a city mouse -country mouse story of mutual understanding of differences. However, as Jenny spends more and more time at the farm, she gradually discovers things aren’t what they seem. From the odd behavior of the children to the rancid odor in her room to her loss of clumps of hair and scalp every night during sleep, Jenny’s experience at Black Swan goes from strange to frightening. Langan creates a mysterious setting that gradually becomes more and more uncanny and unsettling, as weird and creepy events begin to overtake Jenny’s stay. One of the elements of the farm and house that I appreciate so much was the strange yellow wallpaper with jagged shapes that seemed to spell out words and phrases that Jenny couldn’t seem to decipher at first. It has to be a reference to Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s classic short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where a woman likely experiencing post-partum depression is given the rest cure, but is really confined to a small upper room with hideous yellow wallpaper. Eventually she envisions a woman breaking free from the patterns in the wallpaper. The color yellow is prominently featured throughout the book, and it is also probably a reference to The King in Yellow as Carcosa is also mentioned. Yet, I really appreciated the references to “The Yellow Wallpaper” and tying this story into the theme of domestic horror. The house and land belong to Mia’s husband Steadman’s family. While Steadman is somewhat absent minded, his other brothers serve similar authoritative roles of control as the town’s doctor and the town’s sheriff. Their roles similarly reveal to Jenny the control that the men have over Mia’s family, and how Mia’s online persona’s bliss in domesticity and submission is contrasted with the lack of agency and voice she has over her own family. It’s a fascinating parallel and criticism of the artificiality of social media. As Langan mentioned, she’s not here to critique the women involved as trad wives; if anything, she’s sympathetic to the submission and control they experience. Yet, Langan, like Caro Claire Burke in Yesteryear, is critical of the system that allows this kind of submission to perpetuate and project a voice for women rather than providing them platforms and agency to speak for themselves.

Trad Wife is a wild ride- it’s shocking, violent, and creepy. It’s a book I couldn’t put down, especially in the last quarter of the book. I won’t spoil any of the ending, but the story has many twists and turns and relies on some great use of folk and body horror. Trad Wife is the great kind of horror that challenges our ideas about society while also being entertaining and engaging. Both Jenny and Mia are interesting and sympathetic characters. Langan’s story calls out things in the world like pyramid schemes, for-profit schools, and our love for violence and humiliation online to keep us glued to our screens. It made me think more about the users on the other end of the screen and what their situation might be to post something that reveals their missteps, their degradation, and their shame. I loved the way that Langan critiques all of these elements of society while also creating an entertaining and creepy story that’s filled with so much weird imagery and events. Many thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this excellent and timely domestic horror novel. Highly recommended! 

The Personal and Cultural Impact of Frank Ocean's Blonde (33 1/3 Series)

 Frank Ocean's Blonde (33 1/3 Series) 

by Yousef Srour

Frank Ocean's Blonde book cover

Author Yousef Srour

In the Epilogue to Yousef Srour’s debut book, a 33 1/3 entry focused on Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Srour recounts that after finishing the first draft of the book, his editor “suggested that I needed to put more of myself into these pages”. While detailing and analyzing personal connections to albums can sometimes have mixed results in the 33 1/3 book series that focuses on a significant album, I find these personal connections to be highly insightful and wonderful to read. Although many of the books include details about the creation of the album, how the album is situated in the artists’ career and catalogue, or the album’s cultural significance, sometimes learning about an individual’s personal connection to the album is also meaningful and prompts some self-reflection and introspection from the reader. This is the case with Srour’s meditation on Frank Ocean’s Blonde, an album that Srour likens to other cultural and generational touchstones like Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Prince’s Sign O’ The Times, and Radiohead’s Kid A (although I might argue that OK Computer might be another comp).  While I’m not as familiar with Ocean’s work as some of these other referents, Srour provides plenty of musical and artistic influences to demonstrate where Ocean’s music was influenced, but more importantly Srour documents both the cultural and personal impact of Ocean’s work, and how not only Ocean’s approach to music and visual albums, but also his groundbreaking statements about his sexuality shifted ideas about masculinity, vulnerability, and sexuality in music, especially in hip-hop and R&B. One of the aspects about Ocean’s work that I found so interesting was his work with Odd Future, the hip-hop collective that birthed Tyler the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt but was also infamous for their controversial and shocking lyrics and themes. Yet, as Srour documents interviews with Tyler and Ocean in his book, they found inspiration and support from one another, even if their music moved in different directions and focused on different lyrical content. If anything, as Odd Future has grown apart and its members matured, it looks like the immersive and conceptual approach to music and art was apparent in Ocean’s work as well as Odd Future’s shock doctrine. Srour helps readers draw these connections through his extensive research “about the most enigmatic record of my generation”, documenting not only his findings but also the effects of writing, meeting deadlines, and trying to support oneself through the creative process. The book becomes not only an critical reflection on the album, but also a meta-narrative about the creative process where readers are able to witness the struggles and challenges that artists and creators experience, whether it is doubt, stress, habits, and even tinges of madness and paranoia that seem to glean a teeming brain. Are these influences or implications? Srour doesn’t answer that question but seems to suggest that great artists like Ocean experience these struggles and doubts that can often be sources of inspiration.

Beyond Ocean’s artistic output, I wasn’t aware of his life and experiences, and despite being an enigmatic and private person, Srour uses the extensive interviews and tumblr posts from Ocean to make meaning of his life and work. It’s useful synthesis and analysis as well as contextualization with other artists who Srour either cites as influences on Ocean’s work or Srour recognizes as thematic and stylistic peers. Srour draws connections between Ocean and artists like D’Angelo and Prince, but also notes how Ocean’s approach to art, ambiguity, and emotion is similar to Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and even Elliot Smith. It’s not the kind of parallels I anticipated discovering in this book, but it was fascinating to think more about, and how all of these artists have challenged traditional tropes in music and masculinity. I also appreciated how Srour balances the facts of Ocean’s life with his interpretation of his work, providing some biographical details about Frank Ocean’s life and transformation from Christophere Breaux to Lonny Breaux to eventually Frank Ocean. Srour explores how this change, along with Ocean’s moves from Long Beach to New Orleans and eventually back to LA in early adulthood all contributed to the themes and textures in his music.

What I found most fascinating about Ocean, though, was his daring approach to releasing music at a time when music was shifting from digital purchases to streaming. It’s unclear whether Ocean was prescient or just tired of the lack of support from his record label (Def Jam- and it was probably the latter), but he self-released his mixtape Nostalgia Ultra, which became a critical and commercial success (through streaming) before his debut album Channel Orange was released. As Srour explains, the decision to self-release seemed to catch his record label off-guard but also was probably related to the lack of sample clearances on the mixtape. Nevertheless, its success and acclaim provided Ocean with more clout and sway at the label, which eventually released Channel Orange the following year. I also found it interesting that while this album was similarly critically acclaimed, Ocean found its categorization as R&B problematic as the album seemed to expand on the boundaries and was influenced by many different genres, not just R&B. Equally momentous was Ocean’s Tumblr letter he released in 2012 that was intended for the liner notes to Channel Orange. Srour explores the cultural and personal impact of Ocean’s letter where he describes his first love as unrequited feelings for another man. Although Srour’s book and Ocean’s work make the argument that Ocean’s music transcends traditional genre’s like R&B and Hip-Hop, which have sometimes demonstrated misogyny and homophobia, it’s easy to forget how significant Frank Ocean’s letter was in shifting the culture and challenging these anachronistic beliefs in music. A Srour documents, Ocean received support from artists and creatives in hip-hop ranging from the new generation, like his Odd Future fam, to the older generation noting the congratulations that Russell Simmons offered to Ocean. Srour further explores Ocean’s posts about the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 and the persecution of suspected LGBTQ+ individuals in Syria and Iraq at the hands of the Islamic State. Again, it’s fascinating to see how Ocean’s work and words greatly challenged the status quo and traditions in Hip-Hop and R&B, taking a political and personal stand against the oppressed, the persecuted, and those who were murdered for their identities. In 2016, I was in the process of moving and expecting the birth of my second child, with the hopes that a democrat would continue in the White House, so I was somewhat removed from all of these events and didn’t necessarily realize the significance of Frank Ocean’s work and statements. The latter part of Srour’s book focuses on a track-by-track analysis of Blonde, and explores the lyrical, musical, and visual elements of the album, tying them to Ocean’s own influences, as well as the artistic predecessors that Srour documents in the book. Srour’s book captures what makes these 33 1/3 books so compelling and why these album’s are culturally, musically, artistically and personally significant. He closely analyzes the influences and influence but also explores his own personal connections to Ocean’s music. While some may question this approach, I really appreciate it. It gave me more insight into younger generations and helped me better understand the importance of Ocean’s work. This was a wonderful addition to the 33 1/3 series. Highly recommended! 

Red Roots Volume One: An Inventive, Genre Blending Comic

 Red Roots Volume One by Lorenzo De Felici

Red Roots book cover

Author and artist Lorenzo De Felici

Many thanks to Image Comics and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of the wild and inventive comic Red Roots by Lorenzo De Felici. This volume collects issues 1-5, world building a mysterious other dimension where a high school biology teacher and a professional killer end up meeting through a giant warrior creature named Grit. The story starts off alternating between the two characters, Dante (or Dan), the professional killer out for vengeance, and Katie, a high school teacher who makes an unsettling discovery in her home, leading her to question her sanity. Their stories converge in a strange, new world where the red roots bring new recruits to join the battle-inflicted world. We gradually learn more about the world, the seemingly endless battles, and the various creatures that inhabit this world as Dan and Katie learn more through their interactions with other creatures, including Grit. The artwork is stellar in this collection, moving from a realistic style to a fantasy world populated by inventive creature designs. At times, the story is a little hard to follow since the transitions from one world to the next are sudden, but we learn more about how Katie and Dan ended up in the land of the Red Roots and how they might be afforded an opportunity to leave. The story ends suddenly without any resolution, so I’m hopefully that future issues will examine more about how Dan and Katie navigate this strange world, managing threats from the enemy combatants as well as creatures within the town who seem suspicious or jealous of their position as humans. I really enjoyed how the artwork and story synthesizes several genres to create a unique tale that can appeal to sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and action/adventure enthusiasts. I’m looking forward to learning more about the world of Red Roots in subsequent issues. Recommended!

Artificial Intimacy and the Outsourcing of Human Relationships

 Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines  by Sherry Turkle

Artificial Intimacy book cover

Author and researcher Sherry Turkle

I just came across an article from The Atlantic that focused on the work of Gad Saad and his belief about the toxic nature of empathy that is leading to the decline of “the west”, Saad, who holds a doctorate in marketing, seems to take a zero sum approach to empathy, where the ability to share feelings and relate to others, once held as a true sign of one’s humanity or appreciation for life, has now become toxic and woke. While it seems that Saad is more concerned with empathy in policies and regulations, his belief in empathy as toxic and destructive has received much attention from right wingers and what Gil Duran has nicknamed the Nerd Reich, a band of technofascists whose desire for efficiency and control have led to world wars. While Saad’s views on empathy are bizarre and misanthropic, they are gaining, probably for many of the reasons that Sherry Turkle has investigated our relationships with technology for nearly 50 years. In her latest book, Artificial Intimacy: What We Become When We Talk to Machines, Turkle treads new ground in the area of human machine intersection, but still manages to investigate the deleterious effects that technology has on our ability to communicate, to open up and become vulnerable, to relate, and to empathize with others. In past books, Turkle has investigated how technology like social media, email, and text messaging impacts our abilities to have conversations or communicate our feelings or ideas, or how digital toys often take the place of real relationships for children, blurring their schema for not only living things but also relationships. In this book, Turkle examines many of these same problematic outcomes, but she is looking at how chatbots and AI have impacted several areas of human relationships, connectivity, creativity, and thinking.

Even if you’ve never read Turkle’s other books or are familiar with her research, this is a great book to start with as the subject, artificial intelligence, is at the forefront of the news and seems to be an inescapable part of our online and digital experiences. However, what I found most fascinating in this book was Turkle’s interviews and documentation of how others are using chatbots in their daily lives. As an educator, I was glad to see that Turkle takes a constructivist and humanist approach to analyzing the participants’ use of AI, examining not only it’s impact on their abilities to think and classify information, but more significantly how AI dependency might impact their relationships with others. Through using theoretical frameworks from developmental psychologists like Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget, Turkle notes that prior developmental milestones and markers of cognition and identity development may be bypassed or unresolved which may have significant implications for individuals and society as they opt out of tasks that may be challenging, difficult, or even confrontational. As Turkle reminds readers with Erikson’s theory in particular, the developmental stages are not always resolved in a linear fashion, but we often face these conflicts throughout our lives. While resolution often results in a positive development in our authentic selves or identity, an unresolved conflict may have a detrimental impact on our psyche, leading to issues in identity diffusion, mistrust, and even despair. Proponents of AI claim that it leads to efficiency and an ability to personalize our interests and learning, yet Turkle’s own experiences documenting the obsequiousness of AI and several popular chat programs show that its demonstration of feelings or emotions are shallow and misleading. She also reminds readers that human relationships and learning are messy and not easily coded or refined by altering a sequence in a program. Rather, relationships and learning take time, patience, empathy, and determination, characteristics that many in the tech industry suggest that we bypass in order to bring us short-term satisfaction or joy that eventually leaves us isolated and alone and possibly with misguided ideas about relating to other people. In fact, I was surprised to read how many individuals that Turkle met with who repeatedly opted for digital relationships with chatbots because they are easier to manage and control and do not offer the give-and-take negotiation that is an essential part of growing a relationship. Another important factor that Turkle stresses is the role of the pandemic in accelerating the move towards chatbots as a kind of replacement for human relationships. She notes her own challenges with the limited connections that social distancing enabled, and presents the turn towards digital relationships with AI as part of a result of the social isolation from the pandemic. Yet, Turkle’s own research on our relationships with technology also indicates that this was an inevitable destination as one of her books, 2011’s Alone Together is subtitled Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. While much of her prior research examines children and the elderly and how the use of technology presents them with a simulated connection that they often accept as real. Yet, Artificial Intimacy touches all areas of human relationships, work, and life, examining how people from across different communities and backgrounds have all begun to replace real, human relationships with artificial intelligence.

Turkle frames this simulated connection through artificial intelligence as an emergency that has further enhanced anxiety and stress while also delaying typical markers of adulthood like intimacy and trust. She also documents case studies of AI that have done harm to children and adolescence, and how tired and time-constrained parents sometimes turn to AI to fulfill their parenting duties, or how children respond to AI-enabled devices like Alexa or Siri. Turkle reminds readers that while we may gain efficiency, easy answers, and even short-lasting pleasure or joy, it often comes at the expense of our privacy and possibly our identities, ability to trust, initiative, or intimacy. While the chapters on childhood and adolescence are concerning about how AI is impacting developmental milestones, I found the chapters looking at love and work even more shocking. Learning more about how people depend on AI for companionship and work skills opened up new insights into how AI is replacing these areas of our lives and making individuals less able to confront the typical challenges of life. There were two other chapters that also looked at how AI is becoming more of a part of therapy and how people (and companies) are using AI to manage mourning. I found these last two chapters equally concerning and somewhat disturbing. It seems that AI would be counterintuitive to therapeutic practices, especially those in psychoanalysis and Rogerian therapies, but it seemed like therapists and individuals who Turkle interviewed were of the belief that AI’s use in therapy was inevitable and would bring benefits. While therapists viewed its use as a means to provide further insights into analyzing patterns, dreams, and suggesting treatments or practices, patients seemed to appreciate the accessibility that AI therapists provide in relation to cost, time, and customization. As Turkle noted in some of her research participants, AI therapists don’t necessarily challenge these patients, often allowing patients to dictate the terms. What was also surprising was that not all companies promoting AI therapy need to issue disclaimers either. The chapter on mourning was also shocking to read, but also understanding. As Turkle notes, accepting death is one of the most challenging tasks of being a human, but it allows us to resolve the grieving process. Not accepting death creates a sense of melancholy on the individual level. AI companies have begun to exploit the desire to address death by creating digital avatars and AI-recreations of loved ones by uploading text messages, emails, videos, photos and other digital documents. Not only does it raise moral and ethical concerns, but Turkle notes the issues of privacy and consent, as most likely the deceased have not provided consent. Turkle’s research suggests that this willingness to revive the dead in an unliving manner prevents us from grieving and healing. It’s this kind of disruption, the inability to resolve the conflicts of life that AI has facilitated in the past few years.

Artificial Intimacy is an important book that many people should read. It’s a book that is especially important for parents and teachers, as it can provide us with a better understanding of the risks and consequences that AI poses to our children and students. While Turkle raises alarms and calls AI dependency a state of emergency, the presentation of the book’s subjects and research participants is empathetic and understanding. Yet, she also calls on readers to reclaim the real and reject the artificial, noting how AI not only limits our relationships with others, but it also reduces our agency and decision making. We are outsourcing our lives with the promise of efficiency and customization. The cost is our privacy, our identity, and our minds. With the recent attacks on empathy and the stress of efficiency, Turkle’s work and analysis throughout her career and this book in particular are relevant and meaningful. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown, and Company and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of this wonderful and important book.