Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind

by Chavisa Woods

Fiction. Women's Studies. Chavisa Woods' LOVE DOES NOT MAKE ME GENTLE OR KIND is a collection of fiction focusing on the formative and tumultuous moments in the lives of two women as children and adults, whose relationship to one another is cast in an ambiguous light, and whose characters are abstracted within the context of each story. Primarily set in rural America and other transient realms, this book combines realism with elements of meta-fiction, magnifying the extraordinary interpersonal worlds created by the circumstances of their outer reality. "Woods writes about love with a calloused hand, filling the spaces left by others. Her words etch a dotted line across your heart, instructing it precisely in where to break" -Sabrina Chapadjiev.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, LGBT

195 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Chavisa Woods is the author of three books of fiction, Things to Do when You’re Goth in the Country, The Albino Album, (both released by Seven Stories Press), and Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind (Fly by Night Press/ Autonomedia/ Unbearables).

Woods was the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award, The Kathy Acker Award in Writing, the Cobalt Fiction Prize, and the Jerome Foundation Award for Emerging Writers. She was also a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, The Evergreen Review, New York Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, Full Stop Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, Quaint, and many others.

Woods has performed and appeared as a featured author at such notable venues as The Whitney Museum of American Art, City Lights Bookstore, Town Hall Seattle, The Brecht Forum, The Cervantes Institute, St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and others.

"This Book is tight, intelligent, and important, and sure to secure Woods a seat in the pantheon of critical twenty-first-century voices." — Booklist



"Think of Woods as a literary exorcist, calling out certain entities that possess rural America: isolation, working-class poverty, drugs, incarceration, military dogma, and evangelical religion." — The Rumpus


"You can say that these stories seem like they were ready made for a post 2017 election but they were written during the Obama presidency; the experience of America that many people have woken up to in the last six months is the America that has been happening since the beginning of this country. Chavisa Woods writes with vision and experience from “this moment between” delivering us into the world that’s always been here.” — Electric Lit

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chavisa Wood's stories and the voice(s) she employs to tell them are powerful, self-assured, and poetic. Echoing Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son", this is a ragged, surreal cry from the dark underbelly of the American heartland. I wish and expect a strong future for this writer, whose wisdom and technique are ahead of her years. But... here I must reveal one of my prejudices. I have to admit the annoyance I feel when the rudiments of copy editing and book formatting are ignored. The broken rules act as a distracting screen between me and the writer's expressions. She worked hard on this stuff; why put up barriers, when the technological tools to create a perfect book are so readily available? Chavisa should request from her publisher a revised edition that comes closer to basic industry standards. This is work that deserves better!

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

my inscription on my copy is just the first of the most amazing things in this book. i love it when my friends show off their total brilliance and creativity, and here's an absolutely lovely example. chavisa's vision of life growing up queer in rural illinois is deliciously twisted and incredibly resonating. i recently read a right-wing rant against this book. about the homos, the queerness, and the buffaloes. and i knew it was the review chavisa had most wanted.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raw talent in some remarkable stories, brutal, brave and unexpected.

Read my complete review here:

http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews...

[Akeiisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd collection of short stories about love and the many twisted forms it can take. Not always easy to read, these stories do make you think about how complicated love can be.

[Molly Roach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind by Chavisa Woods

Boy oh boy. These stories were.......a lot. Very very heavy subject matter coupled with fantastical storylines made for a rollercoaster of a read. The stories are intertwined, telling the story of two girls from childhood to adulthood. It takes a few stories to understand the interconnectedness, as there is a lack of explicit character names, but once it clicks, so does everything else. Overall, a good read. My favorite story was ‘Never Enough’
4/5⭐️

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bastard Out of Carolina meets darker stranger Miranda July meets Old Testament fairy tales meets young queer Catcher in the Rye. CW below if you want them: fatphobia in the Catcher in the Rye-like centrepiece story, child abuse, domestic violence, bestiality, incest.

[Melanie Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended for: deep thinkers, philosophers, feminists, fairy tale lovers, college classrooms, and abstract artists.

This short story collection took me longer to get through than most others. Chavisa Woods has a way of being difficult with her stories, whether she presents an abstract image or begins in one place and ends somewhere totally different. The more I read, though, the more it became clear that this is not a woman who fits into the collections I'm used to (fiction collections are getting too cute/homogeneous).

She's different. She's stops you and makes you think when you thought you wanted to be entertained. And I liked that...

Read the rest at Grab the Lapels

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember where I read about this author or these short stories, but I'm really glad to have found this wonderful collection. This is an author whose voice is so thrilling and vibrant that I want to seek out her other writing immediately. Not every story in this collection worked, but the honesty with which the author addresses difficult love is impressive and refreshing. Her obvious empathy with characters fighting bias is compelling and vulnerable at the same time.

[Sabrina Chapadjiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant debut by an intensely talented writer. The language is gorgeous, the genre shifts are haunting, and topics of race, class, gender and sexuality are musically woven into the seemingly innocent scenarios. Read it.

[Mersini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grisly familial stuff.