Ellis
Ellis grew up in Seattle and still loves cuddling up on their couch reading and watching rain fall out the window. In their time not thinking about books they like to vroom around on their bike, dance for the simple joy of dancing, cook soup, say hi to dogs, and eat really great fruit!
Reviews & Recommendations
Zora Neale Hurston goes on a mission to collect southern black folktales and hoodoo! Blending storytelling and anthropology, Zora collects stories as well as the way they are told. Funny, smart, and glowing with love, Mules and Men is a treasure.
Yeong-hye has a nightmare and decides to become a vegetarian. Her decision, a small act of independence, sets off a series of events that cascade outward into her marriage and family-life with unforeseeable consequences. This book is feminist and freaky and I love it.
Is there anything Roxane Gay can’t write? In a very general sense, this book is about the way experiences shape the body and the body shapes experiences. I really want to be friends with Roxane and I felt like she was telling me her story, which was an experience I thoroughly enjoyed.
The central thesis of this lyrical collection of essays from botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is that indigenous knowledge and Western scientific thought need to be used together to save our planet. With great content about alternatives to capitalism, motherhood, how language influences the way we treat the natural world, the delight of the first strawberry, indigenous myths, innovative experimental design, and more, Braiding Sweetgrass is impossible to put down.
(This book cannot be returned.)
This short book straddles the line between poetry and prose. Each word was an iron filing and I was a magnet who didn't know how lonely I had been for them. Dyke (Geology) is the story of a breakup and of the ways we are hardened and roughened and yet still sizzling and molten underneath. Science has never been so sexy.
This book hinges on the destruction of the titular Yellow House by Hurricane Katrina, which sets Broom and her siblings adrift. Broom shatters conventional conceptions of memoir, which allows the light of her writing to illuminate the ways that Black lives are systemically erased and neglected in New Orleans and this country as a whole. Poetic yet direct and with wry humor, I wanted to put entire paragraphs of this book into my pockets.
Subduction begins with Claudia, a Latina anthropologist, in her car on the ferry on her way to the Makah Reservation, weeping because her husband has left her for her sister. This is a gorgeous story of the ways we simultaneously are harmed and cause harm. The slippery emotions are balanced beautifully by Young's journalistic flair. Written by a local author!
Disability justice centers sick and disabled people who experience other forms of oppression due to race, gender identity, sexuality, class, immigration status, incarceration history, and more and celebrates their gifts, or as Leah would say, their sciences. Leah writes with such joy about the abundant pleasures of creating an accessible world. Also great stuff about organizing and queerness and survivorship!
This is a sweltering masterpiece of grief and longing and gender discovery. There’s an art mystery and a LOT of birds. Read this if you need reminding that queer people and trans people have always existed. Winner of the 2020 Lambda for Transgender Fiction!
