Frequencies: Volume 2

by Kate Zambreno (Contributor), Roxane Gay (Contributor), Alex Jung (Contributor)

From the essay "Feel Me" by Roxane Niche dating sites are interesting. You can go to JDate or Christian Mingle or Black People Meet or any number of dating websites. If you have certain criteria, you can find people who look like you or share your faith or enjoy having sex in furry costumes. No one is alone in their interests. When you go to these niche dating sites, you can hope you are working with a known quantity. You can hope that in love online, a lingua franca will make all things possible. From the essay "An American Sex Tourist in Thailand" by Alex After I booked a plane ticket to Bangkok, the first thing I did was type "gay Thailand" into the Google search bar. Frequencies is a biannual journal of artful essays, sharply illustrated by artist John Gagliano. Volume 2 features Roxane Gay writing on issues of belonging in middle class black America, Alex Jung on the gay tourist sex trade in Thailand, and Kate Zambreno on the brief career but lasting impact of actress and director Barbara Loden. much more to come!

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

102 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2013

About the author

Kate Zambreno is the author of the novels Green Girl (Harper Perennial) and O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial). She is also the author of Heroines (Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents) and Book of Mutter (Semiotexte(e)'s Native Agents). A collection of talks and essays, The Appendix Project, is forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in April 2019, and a collection of stories and other writing, Screen Tests, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in June 2019. She is at work on a novel, Drifts, and a study of Hervé Guibert. She teaches at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Reviews

[Margaret Adams]

I found Frequencies while searching for more work by Kate Zambreno after finishing her book, Heroines. I didn’t realize until it arrived that this volume (Vol. 2) also had an essay by not-then-as-famous-as-she-is-now Roxane Gay. Frequencies is a journal of essays published by the indie press Two Dollar Radio “that aims to reconsider the current nonfiction prescription.” They only made four of these, and of those I’ve only read this one, which was patchy, but overall a good find.

Standouts:
--Alex Jung's essay on the Thai sex trade and how sex for money/the fantasy of hetero-flexibility is often misinterpreted (deliberately?) as being cultural.
--Roxane Gay’s excellent essay on belonging in Black America, and the difficulties and importance of connection and inclusion.
--Kate Zambreno’s walking essay dissecting the life of writer/director Barbara Loden and her lost film Wanda, an ex-roommate, and the depression that lies behind muteness.

[Leiki Fae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roxane Gay's essay was good, but I'd read it before in Bad Feminist. Kate Zambreno's essay was great, like reconnecting with a good friend after a long absence after reading Heroines earlier this year. The "interview" with T.S. Eliot was funny for like a minute...I don't know if it failed only in execution or if it was really just silly from the conception. The Guatemala essay was weird. I'm a white American expat in Asia, and I wanted to get down with what the writer was saying, but instead of being like self-examining in his observations about expats in Rio Dulce, I thought what he was saying was generic and still pretty self-indulgent. The first essay about the sex trade in Thailand was really interesting, though. That's actually why I started with this Volume 2 instead of Volume 1. I have all four volumes, I think mostly because of Gay and Zambreno, so we'll see how the others go down. As of the time I am writing this, they are all still availble on the Two Dollar Radio site.

[Marcella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat uneven collection of essays and found literature. The first essay, "Thailand's Great Gay Imaginarium" by Alex Jung, is a compelling and insightful examination of the origins and evolution of Thai sex work.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm beginning to think this publication may be too highbrow for me.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like these Two Dollar Radio essay collections are better suited for my college self than current self. They're a bit on the pretentious and academic side, and that's not really my jam these days.

What puzzles me about these collections is that there's no theme tying everything together- it is a truly random assortment. A grab bag in terms of quality, topic, form, everything!

In this volume, the first essay about the sex industry in Thailand was interesting. Roxane Gay's essay was great, though I'd read it before in another collection. It was neat to see that TDR had picked her up before she became well-known! I moderately enjoyed the ghost girl essay, though it was weird. Not a big fan of the ghost thoughts/quotes or the T.S. Eliot piece (trying too hard). The Guatemala piece didn't feel like it fit at all. Kate Zambreno's long essay gave me a lot to think about re depressed muses, miserable women, muteness, the time we spend with ourselves- but it didn't thrill or wow me.

An interesting collection, but I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't have bought all 4 volumes of Frequencies!