2024 Ursula Mention: Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin

People compare Native Tongue disparagingly to The Handmaid's Tale, but first of all, Native Tongue was published a year earlier, in 1984. Second, Native Tongue has a vision not just that women can resist oppressive patriarchy in subtle and in dramatic ways, but how. And that's through... the sapir-whorf hypothesis. How fun! The Handmaid's Tale doesn't have ~cool aliens~. Native Tongue is a feminist classic and a scifi classic. What more could you ask for.

For the record, the 2023 Ursula Mention was The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, and 2022 was Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer (trans. Ursula Le Guin.) The Ursula Mention is whichever book I read that year that Ursula Le Guin was compared to or connected to somehow that I liked the best/thought was the most Guinlike.

biogenesis by tatsuaki ishiguro (trans. brian watson & james balzer)

Each story is somehow less interesting than the last but since the first story (It is with the Deepest Sincerity that I Offer Prayers…) is very interesting, the book is still readable. It's not really biology-scifi but ecology-epistemologyfi, so plot-wise, the closest point of resemblance is probably The People In The Trees by Hanya Yanagihara.

the afflictions by vikram paralkar

 this book clearly wants to be compared to Borges and Calvino, but my experience reading it was more like The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim, or kind of like watching a season of mushi-shi. Although the biggest departure from those kinds of media is the academic-Catholic themes. Which just made me want to reread The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. 

The Afflictions is very short, but not too short. It contains a thesis about three-quarters of the way through. 

mina's matchbox by yoko ogawa (trans. stephen snyder)

this book only has a short film's worth of content, in my opinion, stretched out to novel length. there's some interesting content here and there but the prose isn't as evocative or imaginative as the works it (frequently) referenced.

i'm laughing because i'm crying by youngmi mayer

 this super-quick read took like two hours, which would be disappointing if i had paid $25 for it. but i liked this memoir's writing style more than the (few) others i've read, because although the prose is still clipped and abrupt-sounding, it's not too much so, and i think the author's constant referencing of previous points in the book helps to keep the reader going. i liked the parts that anthropologically criticized white people; i found it 'refreshing'. those same parts for korean people were well written and probably true but for obvious reasons i didn't find reading it vindicating.

female chauvinist pigs by ariel levy

 i can't estimate the rhetorical power of this book since i already largely agreed with the author. but this book is from 2005 and since then, i think another round of women's empowerment plus reactionary "sex-positive" culture has happened. so everything about it is still relevant. if anything, i wish she'd update it just because i want to hear her say it.

valentino & sagittarius by natalia ginzburg (trans. avril bardoni)

these stories go really well together - recountings of quiet family tragedy that is so mundane yet so fascinating when told through these resigned, listless, but loving young women characters' point of view. perfect one-act drama.