Book Reviews

The Dispossessed: Travel of Sound through Time and Space

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Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. Harper & Row, 1974

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed uses literary activism to reflect on the social and political tensions of the United States during the 1970s. This anarchist utopian science fiction novel follows the journey of a physicist, Dr. Shevek, who travels from the anarchist planet Anarres to the capitalist world of Urras in an attempt to launch his theory of cross-planetary communication. Through his eyes, Le Guin examines the constructs of gender, corruption, human existence, and freedom—revealing that both utopia and dystopia are flawed systems. The resolution, Le Guin suggests, lies not in perfection but in open dialogue and exchange of ideas.

The people of Anarres—also referred to as Odonians—hold a distorted perception of Urras due to their near-total isolation. Anarres has no prisons, and its citizens’ understanding of punishment comes only from history books. Their concept of Urras is shaped by distant memory and political myth. As Shevek observes, “You heard it: detest Urras, hate Urras, fear Urras” (41). Their fear and contempt arise not from experience, but from alienation—a societal narrative built on inherited prejudice rather than truth.

Le Guin emphasizes this disconnect through the story of Odo, the prophet and ideological founder of Anarres. Shevek reflects on the irony of her legacy:

“Odo had never set foot on Anarres. She had lived and died and was buried in the shadow of green-leaved trees in unimaginable cities, among people speaking unknown languages, on another world. Odo was an alien: an exile.” (96)

Even on his home planet, Shevek shares this sense of exile. His desire to travel to Urras is not born of rebellion but of curiosity—of wanting to understand both worlds more deeply and to find common ground between them.

Despite minimal contact, the two planets depend on each other for trade and survival, yet their lack of communication perpetuates misunderstanding. When Shevek arrives on Urras, he is celebrated as a brilliant visitor, but his observations soon reveal the same inequalities that plague his own society. His experiences on Urras force him to question the political system of Anarres and the illusion of safety that its collective ideology provides. He begins to see how even an anarchist world can fall into subtle forms of control through conformity and fear.

On Urras, Shevek encounters the harsh realities of gender inequality, economic disparity, and human suffering—from the poor conditions of hospitals to the fragile survival of children. His invention of a communication device becomes a symbolic act: a bridge not only between worlds, but between ideologies. By reopening the flow of information, Shevek helps both planets see themselves more clearly.

Le Guin’s work continues to inspire me as both a reader and a writer. Her exploration of imperfect societies encourages me to build realistic worlds in my own fiction—worlds that mirror our own struggles between freedom and control, justice and comfort, idealism and survival. Like Shevek, I am drawn to explore communication across divides, and how connection—through art, science, or empathy—can dissolve the barriers we construct between “us” and “them.”

The Unbinding of Mary Reade

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McNamara, Miriam. The Unbinding of Mary Reade. Reprint ed., Sky Pony Press, 2019.

The Unbinding of Mary Reade is a historical fiction novel about a transgender pirate named Mary, who lives as Mark and joins a crew led by Captain Jack. Jack’s female companion, Anne, takes a romantic interest in Mark, and their evolving relationship becomes the heart of the story.

Mary’s life of disguise begins when her mother forces her to live as a boy in order to secure her grandmother’s inheritance, binding her chest with a sheet to conceal her gender. Over time, Mary becomes accustomed to being perceived as a man and develops fluid attraction, forming a close relationship with a servant named Beth. When Beth exposes Mary’s secret, Mary is forced to flee and eventually takes to the sea. Living as Mark the pirate, she earns respect among the crew—but her growing affection for Anne threatens to expose her again. When Anne learns the truth, she expresses a desire to bind herself and live as a man as well. Mary warns her of the hardships that come with this life, but Anne insists that being a woman in the 1700s is far worse.

In this annotation, I explore some of the controversial and allegorical themes McNamara weaves into her narrative—many of which still reflect social struggles in our world today. The novel uses historical fiction to examine class systems, gender identity, and freedom through a lens of political allegory.

One passage captures the novel’s commentary on class inequality:

“If only everything worked that way.”
If only Granny had just double what Mum did. If only Baas had double what his sailors did.
“Imagine if the king himself could only have twice as much as the poorest beggar. That world would be a different place.” (75)

Here, McNamara critiques the imbalance of wealth and power by imagining a world where those in authority could earn no more than double their subordinates. This reflection feels remarkably relevant in today’s world, where similar inequalities persist across class lines.

Later, a heartfelt conversation between Mary and Anne highlights the struggle for autonomy and freedom, particularly for women and those living under oppressive rule:

“You’re never free, so long as you’re subject to someone—to a captain, or the crown, or whatever good-for-nothing man decides to lord over you.” (82)

This line resonates deeply with the current political climate. Though America was founded as “the land of the free,” modern politics challenge that promise. During Donald Trump’s presidency, many saw the erosion of democratic norms—the undermining of separation of powers, the targeting of free speech, and the questioning of birthright citizenship. McNamara’s words remind us that freedom must be continuously protected, and that systems of control—whether monarchies or modern governments—can threaten that ideal.

As a writer, I am inspired by McNamara’s ability to weave political allegory into personal narrative. I aim to do the same in my own work—addressing tyranny within communities, advocating for women’s rights, championing LGBTQ+ acceptance, and encouraging open dialogue across divisions. In my fiction, I want to support characters who use zie/zir/zirs pronouns, model resistance against unjust authority even at great personal risk, and portray diverse people working together to rebuild communal, earth-centered lives.

Through The Unbinding of Mary Reade, McNamara demonstrates how storytelling can both preserve history and challenge it—reminding us that identity, justice, and freedom are battles that transcend time.

Us Against the World: The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin

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Us Against the World

The Fifth Season: Every Age Must Come to an End
by N.K. Jemisin

The Fifth Season is a science fiction novel set on a supercontinent called the Stillness. The narrative alternates between two third-person perspectives—Damaya and Syenite—and one second-person perspective, Essun. Syenite travels with her assigned mentor, Alabaster, and their relationship begins in hostility but evolves into mutual understanding and respect. Meanwhile, Essun journeys with Hoa and Tonkee in search of her daughter, Nassun. Through her grief and drive for revenge, Essun gradually rekindles her hope in others, even those of a race that once shattered her past. Damaya’s story, told from childhood, introduces the world of the Fulcrum and the deceit of the Guardians, which shapes the novel’s class system. In the end, all three main characters—Damaya, Syenite, and Essun—are revealed to be the same person, leaving readers eager to continue the trilogy in search of an answer to the haunting question: Where is Nassun?

In this essay, I closely examine Syenite’s relationship with Alabaster, focusing on the literary device of the relationship arc, and tracing the development of their connection over time. I also explore how this arc reflects Syenite’s relationship to herself across her three identities.

Syenite faces a social obligation to maintain a sexual partnership with her mentor, Alabaster. As an orogene, the Guardians have trained her to obey. Because of her strength, she is expected to breed with Alabaster as part of their mission:

“If Syen isn’t careful, if she pisses off the wrong people, if she lets herself get labeled difficult, they will kill her career and assign her permanently to the Fulcrum, leaving her nothing to do but lie on her back and turn men’s grunting and farting into babies” (71).

Alabaster’s response to this forced intimacy defines the tension in their dynamic:

“Because that’s hate in his face” (72).

From their first interactions, the reader senses an unjust world—one that both characters resist in their own ways. After their first encounter, Syenite feels ashamed, while Alabaster remains emotionally distant. Their sex continues, mandated by the Fulcrum’s breeding program, and Alabaster observes:

“I think you hate me because… I’m someone you can hate. I’m here, I’m handy. But what you really hate is the world” (149).

Alabaster knows that any child they conceive will be enslaved to power a node, “chained to a wire seat and drained.” Though the Guardians paired them for power and procreation, Alabaster instead mentors Syenite to question authority and imagine freedom. When they reach the island of Meov, he remarks,

“They don’t kill their roggas [slur for orogene] here. They put them in charge” (296).

Later, their relationship deepens when they take on a third lover, Innon. This is the turning point—their intimacy becomes mutual, and the idea of a child shifts from duty to love.

“It’s just been so long, Syen… Not since he’s had a lover he wanted” (354).
This love trio embodies a sense of hope and agency:
“‘Baster doesn’t want her that way, nor she him. And yet it’s unbelievably arousing for her to watch Innon drive him to moaning and begging…” (372).

Syenite’s relationship arc with herself mirrors the world’s cyclical “seasons” of disaster and calm. As Damaya, her relationship with her parents is dark:

“…and hates herself, because of course Mother and Father are selling Damaya if she can think such thoughts” (27).
When she is handed over to Schaffa, her Guardian, he breaks her hand to enforce obedience, saying,
“Never say no to me… I am your Guardian. I love you” (99).
Her belief that “the Guardians are the closest thing to safety a rogga will ever have” (329) exposes the depth of her conditioning. We see this again in Syenite’s awareness:
“…that she is a slave, that all roggas are slaves, that the security and sense of self-worth the Fulcrum offers is wrapped in the chain of her right to live and the right to control her own body” (348).

When Syenite later faces Schaffa again, she must finally say no—to end the cycle of control. Through this, the reader understands the whole arc of resistance and self-realization across her identities.

The novel’s structure allows us to recognize how Syenite’s history shapes Essun’s present. “Once you lived surrounded by the walls he built for you, in a home you made together, in a community that actually chose to take you in” (407). The rise and fall of peace between “seasons” parallels Essun’s struggle for survival. When Alabaster is taken by a stone eater and Syenite is left alone to protect their son, Coru, the irony deepens when we later discover that Hoa—also a stone eater—genuinely cares for Essun.

“But I wanted to travel with you… I like you” (396).

Relationships are central to both my storytelling and personal philosophy. Self-discovery often begins through connection with others—through those who choose to invest their time and care. This truth is mirrored in Syenite and Alabaster’s relationship: although it began as an obligation, they ultimately choose one another. Alabaster gives Syenite a glimpse of happiness and freedom she has never known—from her family, the Guardians, or herself. The relationship among the three versions of Syenite reflects the many selves that exist within every human life and how our past continually shapes our present. This lesson inspires me to write deeper, more honest relationship arcs in my own characters and to embrace how lived experience can transform the people we become.

Work Cited
Jemisin, N.K. The Fifth Season. Orbit, 2015.

Body Work: Writing the Bare Truth

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Febos, Melissa. Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Catapult, 2022.

In Body Work, Melissa Febos writes from her own experience as a former dominatrix struggling with addiction, and through the act of writing, she takes control of her narrative. Her memoir functions as both craft guide and manifesto, asserting that writing one’s truth—particularly for women, queer writers, and other marginalized voices—is an act of resistance. Febos argues that telling our stories is not self-indulgent but revolutionary; to write from lived experience is to fight against oppression and reclaim authorship over the self.

Though personal narrative is inherently subjective, Febos reframes this “bias” as authenticity. Writing from memory becomes a way to unearth silenced voices and heal from trauma. She states that even though writing may seem self-focused, it offers transformation both for writer and reader, allowing the veil of secrecy and shame to be lifted.

Febos confronts the cultural fear of what she calls “navel-gazing”—the critique that memoir writing is narcissistic. She quotes William H. Gass:

“To have written an autobiography is already to have made yourself a monster” (17).

The notion carries a sting of truth: society often punishes those—especially women and queer people—who dare to name their wounds. Febos insists that writing is not an act of vanity, but of courage. To face one’s own history, to process pain through language, is to step into transformation. For those who have been silenced or made invisible, writing becomes a form of survival.

Febos notes that writing has long been undervalued as a healing tool, particularly in patriarchal cultures that discourage emotional expression. She points out how journaling or personal writing is often mocked as feminine or “unserious,” yet it serves as a deeply therapeutic practice that supports both individual and collective healing. Febos celebrates the bravery of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ writers who risk their reputations to speak truths that society prefers to ignore:

“Native women’s personal narratives explored the racialized, gendered, and sexual nature of their colonization” (15).

She continues, addressing the silencing of trauma narratives:

“Still, the dominant culture tells us that we shouldn’t write about our wounds and their healing because people are fatigued by stories about trauma?
No. We have been discouraged from writing about it because it makes people uncomfortable. Because a patriarchal society wants its victims to be silent. Because shame is an effective method of silencing” (19).

Through this, Febos identifies writing as a radical counteraction to shame. She makes clear that those who write about sexual abuse, addiction, or marginalization do so not to shock but to reclaim their dignity and voice.

The memoir intertwines themes of feminism, oppression, sex, religion, and repentance. Febos reflects on her past as a dominatrix and the spiritual implications of both power and submission. In doing so, she destabilizes cultural taboos around sex and morality, positioning confession and writing as parallel acts of liberation. She writes:

“Not because it’s important to make them squirm [straight readers] but so the rest of us know that it’s possible to make a white man your bitch or get spat on without shame…” (34).

She also quotes essayist Nancy Mairs:

“That is, there is no shameless man as there is a shameless woman…” (24).

These reflections link sexual power and writing as shared acts of truth-telling and autonomy. Febos suggests that healing begins when we speak the unspeakable and strip shame from our stories.

By the end of Body Work, Febos invokes the language of recovery, aligning the act of writing with the Twelve Steps:

“Only by recognizing my deed as my own can I hope to know myself as the author of my own misdeeds” (60).

Confession becomes redemption; to write one’s truth is to acknowledge the past without being imprisoned by it. Through her interweaving of sex work, religion, and feminist theory, Febos asserts that our experiences do not define us—our willingness to understand them does.

Body Work is both a craft book and a spiritual guide—an invitation to write the stories we fear most. Febos’s work has inspired me to approach my own writing as an act of self-realization and collective healing. Like her, I want to draw from my background, my fears, and my encounters with both darkness and light to create work that reflects not only my personal truth but also the cultural and social moment I live in.

Febos offers more than instruction—she offers permission. To write the “bare truth,” no matter how uncomfortable it makes others, is to reclaim one’s humanity. Through her book, Febos grants writers like me—and all readers—the right to tell our stories unapologetically.

Buffalo Hunter Hunter: Faith, Flesh, and Survival

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By Natascha Pearson
Jones, Stephen Graham. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. First Saga Press hardcover edition, Saga Press, 2025.

Stephen Graham Jones’s Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a historical horror novel that blurs the boundaries between myth, memory, and morality. Set across multiple timelines, it follows Pastor Arthur Beaucarne, who in 1912 records the confession of Good Stab, a Blackfoot vampire recounting his experience during the 1870 massacre of the Blackfoot people. As settlers destroy both Native lives and the buffalo that sustain them, Good Stab becomes a living symbol of survival, guilt, and decay.

Generations later, Etsy, Beaucarne’s great-great-great-granddaughter, discovers his logbook and, as a journalist, seeks to understand the past that haunts her family. Her search culminates in a confrontation with Good Stab himself—a scene that serves as both a power shift and a moral reckoning. With Good Stab’s identity and survival in her hands, Etsy must decide whether to end his life or allow him to continue feeding. Her choice becomes an allegory for agency, accountability, and inherited trauma.

The novel’s tone is brutal yet strangely meditative, combining the grotesque intimacy of horror with the restrained rhythm of oral storytelling. Jones describes the settlers’ violence toward the Blackfoot people and the buffalo with chilling precision, but Good Stab’s narration delivers these horrors with such calm that the reader feels both repelled and mesmerized. His storytelling maintains a balance between intimacy and distance, as if ritualizing pain into memory.

Good Stab’s voice grounds the story in Indigenous experience and language. Phrases such as

“Beaver Medicine wasn’t for me anymore” (115)
and
“…and my eyes are slitted down like this because I’m already looking ahead…” (41)
root the narrative in Blackfoot cadence and worldview. Even when recounting unspeakable acts, the tone remains measured, spiritual, and deliberate—echoing the endurance of a people who have seen everything taken from them and still continue.

Good Stab’s recurring reference to Pastor Beaucarne as “Three Persons—Father, Son, Creator” (28) interweaves Christianity and Indigenous spirituality, merging sacred language with horror. Jones collapses faith and flesh, the cross and the fang, into a single mythology. The calm precision of his prose heightens the horror:

“The hide-hunters pulled the boy’s pants down and bent him over one of their knees, and the other one dropped down behind him, was untying his pants that were sticky with blackhorn blood” (211).

The violence is shocking, yet the narration remains detached, forcing the reader to inhabit the same emotional distance the traumatized narrator does.

In classic Western stories, settlers are often the heroes, but Jones subverts this entirely. Here, the Native vampire—traditionally cast as the monster—becomes the moral center. The reader roots for Good Stab even as he drinks blood, because his existence reclaims power from the colonizers who destroyed his people. We come to trust him, even during the most brutal moments, as a vessel of justice and remembrance.

Jones also threads a powerful commentary on religion, assimilation, and identity. The vampire becomes an apt metaphor for colonization—feeding on the living, erasing culture, and leaving behind bodies stripped of spirit. After the massacres, Native survivors are forced into Christianity, captured in images of children dressed in Western clothes, their hair cut, their heritage erased. The transformation from free people to “civilized” captives mirrors Good Stab’s own curse—immortality as a form of damnation.

As a writer, I’m deeply inspired by Jones’s craft, particularly the way he merges historical realism with supernatural horror. In Discordia, I aim to draw from similar techniques—using rhythm, diction, and cultural voice to create immersive worlds that echo the truths of history. Jones’s prose captures the daily life, geography, and humor of the Blackfoot people in brief but powerful glimpses:

“This is how we’re born into the world, and this was what was happening to me, I was being born again, but not like the Black Robe said when he baptized all the Pikuni in Big River, when I was throwing up Whitehorn milk and Wolf Calf was patting me on the back and smoking his short pipe and chuckling” (95).

In just a few lines, he conveys rebirth, cultural duality, and embodied experience. His language carries both the sacred and the horrific, allowing the past to haunt the present without losing its humanity.

By drawing from Jones’s approach—merging brutality with stillness, history with myth—I hope to create worlds where horror and hope coexist, and where the act of storytelling itself becomes a form of survival.