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Interestingly enough, I bought this book in undergrad, lent it to a floormate who made art with lint, and never got it back. I bought a used copy in 2019, in an effort to recollect the anthologies and books of my youthful coming out, but didn't read it until now. Mattilda has always been one of my favorite anthology editors, and this anthology did not disappoint. In an age where so many anthologies about non-binary experience are being produced (with mixed reviews), it felt good to return to an
Nobody Passes is about gender, but it’s also about all the many other ways that people can pass or fail to pass in their lives. It’s a collection of essays, stories, conversations and interviews by all sorts of people that Mattilda has brought together, and it covers class, race, religion, sexuality and gender. It’s quite specific to US culture, but I found gaining a closer and more personal insight into US identity politics really interesting, especially as we (in the UK) import many of these i...
Sometimes, I have trouble reading non-fiction at a decent pace. I'm far more of a fiction reader, and so it is usually very easy for me to take weeks to finish a book like this.Except I read all of this one in less than three days, because it was that awesome.Like all collections of this sort, there were some essays that weren't quite as good as the others. In this case, though, there wasn't a single one I thought was bad- just some that were vaguely incoherent in what they were trying to say. B...
I really wanted to like this book. I love the work that Mattilda does to fight assimilation and the erasure of an honest queer culture. I find stories of how people are read by others and how that structures and shapes interactions to be fascinating. I quite purposefully don't pass as much and when I do, I'm always a bit amused at the interaction. I'll be honest - this book was A LOT OF WHINING. And posturing. I don't need to read pages about how you are "really butch" or "really biracial" - jus...
Although this book is 10 years old, many of those essays could take place today. Reading, I could see here and there details that have changed over the years (in Canada at least), but we are still far from being able to say most of these people could "pass" without performing an act that is not inherently them.Once again with books from the early 2000s, the words "they/them" seem to not have existed to qualify a person whose gender is known, even if that gender doesn't fit the society-recognized...
This is a book of essays which started out as a work about gender and ended up including race, religion, sexuality, ad a few other things. All the works center around the idea of passing: who can and can't, feelings of whether one should or shouldn't, and what do you give up in order to do so. I'm nonbinary and I will never be able to pass as what I am, but instead often unintentionally pass for something else; reading the experiences of others with these lines we blur was an interesting experie...
This books takes everything you think you know about queer theory and feminism and identity politics, connects it all, rearranges it, and spits it all out in a thought provoking never before seen way. No one will hold your hand as you try to understand how being FTM makes someone understand their mixed latina heritage, all you can do is try to keep up and keep your mind open.
There were a couple essays I had to skip because of triggering content, but overall this is a really good collection, with a lot of sincere and very vulnerable parts. I cried a couple times. It was really interesting seeing all the different ways the authors explored the concept of passing (and not "just" issues related to being trans), as well as how passing has affected the authors' lives and their perceptions of themselves. The essays by people of multiple ethnicities were often the most enga...
A lot of great stories that made me stop and think about how society perceives/treats certain groups of people. However, a lot of these stories came off as people complaining about not being understood? At the end of the day, who cares what others think of you? Either way, these are all conversations we need to have in order to be better to and more understanding of others.
Incredible,there may be a few essays in here that are a bit dull and don't go anywhere, but the majority are outstanding. Such a variety of perspectives from different backgrounds and different issues, the only thing I felt was lacking was a bisexual - oriented essay, but this is only a minor, personal complaint. The connection this gives to so many different sexualities, gender expressions, gender identities and races really reinforces the commonality in the issue of passing, and the way in whi...
My first experience with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: I appreciate her radical politics, such as Gay Shame, a way for queer folx to distance themselves from archaic notions that the goal of queer activism is assimilation, that the be-all-end-all should be gentrification of gay neighborhoods and legalization of gay marriage, to illuminate that rainbow capitalism is no longer a risky decision of economic solidarity but rather contributes to the predatory of cycle of LGBT+ youth homelessness and ob...
This is a dizzying collection of narratives from all across identities.I loved the variety in narrative style, ranging from coolly academic to deeply and dramatically personal. Mattilda does an excellent job bringing voices from all across the map together to collaborate (or really, collectively deconstruct) identity politics. So many of the essays in this collection express a simultaneous anguish over not passing and a conscious rejection of the boundaries and expectations placed upon us as hum...
With how much queer politics change and how fast they evolve, I sometimes wonder if anthologies more than a couple of years old will still touch me today. This one definitely does. As usual, Matthilda's anthology has surpassed my expectations, creating a diverse range of issues and related identity in which we (don't) pass each day. There wasn't a single essay in this that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. And I related to many personally.
Just what an anthology should be: diverse, utterly readable, thought-provoking, of generally high and uniform quality. Nobody Passes is a can't-put-down tour de force of race, gender and cultural queering, eye-opening, provocative, moving, often hilarious. Really just a wonderful, readable book.
each essay is at least somewhat interesting, and there r a few rly terrific ones like the essay on homohop. superbly edited/collected overall, good sampling of topics/voices/styles of essay.many of the issues addressed, like the evolution of the battered womens movement, have since 2006 become relatively popular/well-known narratives among the queer social justice literati, so someone ~in the kno~ (like myself) might find a lot of familiar material; but the essays r skimmable enuf that i dont th...
As with many anthologies, the essays here can be very good-or-bad, depending on what's being talked about, what the writer's experiences are - and specific to this book: how it relates to the concept of passing. In my reading, I feel there are about 10 good essays out of 27 total. But those ten are mostly really fantastic.First, let's talk about the bad stuff. The essays I didn't like were typically the ones written by self-entitled name-reclaimers missing the point. For example, in "Passing Las...
This anthology is a very mixed bag--the author also rejected rules of what to include. So most stories are about gender, but others are about any differences that cause difficulties. That would be fine, if broad, as a theme. But the quality is very uneven. For me (maybe not other readers), there is way too much self-righteous convoluted conceptual thinking, to the point of polemic. Some of it is political correctness that denigrates other people's ideas of what is politically correct. Worse, muc...
an assortment of essays on different topics of "passing" and critiquing social constructs of gender, some that are better than others, but all offer insight to the topic. also, does not soley look at gender but also intersections with race, sexual orientation and class. very interesting and thought provoking.
(3.5)A mixed bag of essays, some enlightening and some confusing or a little off the mark. Content warnings for sexual assault, incest, homophobia, transphobia.
One of my favorite books of all time. Changed what I thought made gender relevant and wasnt afraid to be critical of dominant queer paradigms.My favorite essay is "The End of Genderqueer" by Rocko Bulldagger, and it has only gotten more prescient as time went on. Should be read in every gender studies class. Also give Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore her flowers while she's here--modern, anarchist queer theory would not be what it is without her and not enough people say so. To say this book changed