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Socialist Realism
When Trisha Low moves west, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better”―someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one's life comes to the fore―sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won't find. Attempting to reconcile her desires with her radical politics, she asks: do our quests to fulfill our deepest wishes propel us forward, or keep us trapped in the rubble of our deteriorating world?
168 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
February 28, 2020
Absolutely lost my fucking mind when Trisha Low went from a paragraph about One Direction into a paragraph about Turkish political prisoners/death-fasters back into a paragraph about One Direction.
September 30, 2019
gotta go scream for the rest of my life!!! struggling in futility is really fundamental to the human condition in a way that makes me sick :-) she presents truly so much in 160 pgs that's alternately horrible and wonderful to think about. and in thee face of the gnawing anxiety of living in end-times the only option is to not give up even if you really don't believe anything better is coming. this is the most nihilistic optimistic book and the only one to meet me where I'm at in this godforsaken year of our lord 2019. brb got an appointment to get suffocated by late capitalism but in a kinky way.
August 17, 2019
My Review for the Chicago Review of Books:
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2019/08/...
ALSO:
"It's no wonder, as Wendy Brown points out, that suffering has always been the barometer of authenticity, and authenticity has in turn become proof of identity. Your bleeding wound is the evidence that allows you to name yourself part of a group; shared wounds have historically been the impetus for political solidarity. Movements are brotherhoods of suffering that gather numbers and grow, forming the bonds that are the basis of our politics, our shared homes. But for Brown, this increased focus on the shared wound also yields the compulsive policing of membership in any given identity group. It can become an unnecessary distraction. It can prevent us from focusing our energies against the process of the wounding. It stops us from detecting and addressing the structural and historical elements that harmed us in the first place.
"I think Brown is right when she points out how suffering, as the basis of identity, can curtail the possibilities for intersectional politics.It means we may end up forming movements that are exclusionary to those who cannot sufficiently prove themselves part of our identity group. often, this comes at the expense of building a true coalition with significant numbers. Svetlana Boym may warn us against letting emotional bonding outweigh our critical thinking, but what if this moment of emotional bonding is exactly what we need for collective activism, a platform from which critical thinking will be come relevant across difference? After all, when push comes to shove, one of my leftist friends of color reminds me, we might have more in common with the white kid standing next to us, masked up and holding an M18 smoke bomb, than the Asian cop in riot gear, or the Mexican border patrol agent.
But the power in belonging, in professing sameness, is still sometimes the only power afforded to the oppressed and disenfranchised. So I itch my wound."
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2019/08/...
ALSO:
"It's no wonder, as Wendy Brown points out, that suffering has always been the barometer of authenticity, and authenticity has in turn become proof of identity. Your bleeding wound is the evidence that allows you to name yourself part of a group; shared wounds have historically been the impetus for political solidarity. Movements are brotherhoods of suffering that gather numbers and grow, forming the bonds that are the basis of our politics, our shared homes. But for Brown, this increased focus on the shared wound also yields the compulsive policing of membership in any given identity group. It can become an unnecessary distraction. It can prevent us from focusing our energies against the process of the wounding. It stops us from detecting and addressing the structural and historical elements that harmed us in the first place.
"I think Brown is right when she points out how suffering, as the basis of identity, can curtail the possibilities for intersectional politics.It means we may end up forming movements that are exclusionary to those who cannot sufficiently prove themselves part of our identity group. often, this comes at the expense of building a true coalition with significant numbers. Svetlana Boym may warn us against letting emotional bonding outweigh our critical thinking, but what if this moment of emotional bonding is exactly what we need for collective activism, a platform from which critical thinking will be come relevant across difference? After all, when push comes to shove, one of my leftist friends of color reminds me, we might have more in common with the white kid standing next to us, masked up and holding an M18 smoke bomb, than the Asian cop in riot gear, or the Mexican border patrol agent.
But the power in belonging, in professing sameness, is still sometimes the only power afforded to the oppressed and disenfranchised. So I itch my wound."
August 16, 2020
Maybe I'm just like all the other girls after all.
Am I?
Well, this is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. Trisha Low is, in her own words, 'someone who routinely performs, of her own volition, suicide notes she may or may not have written at various points in her life.' The aestheticisation of mental illness is clearly something that comes naturally to our beloved narrator, given a later passage that is probably the most offensive piece of liberal writing I have ever read. But I'm putting the cart before the horse here.
Socialist Realism is all about Low, and a bit about politics. I've seen critics claim this work to be a 'book-length essay,' though if that is the case then two things are true. Firstly, this is the most narcissistic collection of essays ever published. Secondly, Low's 'essays' amount only to pedestrian summarisations of famous artworks and artists, liberal critiques of Trump and the patriarchy, and vague questions surrounding culture and heritage. Low's style is extremely self-pitying, riddled with that distinctive-of-our-time, pseudo-melancholic tone that plagues the vast majority of texts lapped up by mainstream literary circles.
Less than twenty pages into the book, Low quotes Kathy Acker (who, coincidently, is not a particular favourite of mine): Kathy Acker once wrote, "If we keep on fucking, I'm not gonna die," which, as desperate as it sounds, is still my favorite method of emotional blackmail. It's another way of saying, I will end my life if you leave. One step out the door and my body will collapse as though its skeleton were excised. A slack sack of meat and liquid pooling on the floor. I'm pouting: "You wouldn't do that to me, would you?" Not so much a plea as a guarantee that you will be held responsible for any bodily harm that I inflict upon myself. Yes, I will make sure of it."
"Oh no," I thought. "This book is going to fucking suck." I refused to believe Low genuinely saw this as a 'cool', 'relatable' and 'insightful' way of thinking. I tried to tell myself it couldn't get much worse, which would've been comforting had I not encountered far too many of these kinds of 'writers' before. Low and behold (get it?), it did, in fact, get worse. As I said earlier, Low loves to aestheticise mental illness - especially self-harm, which is, as we all know, a feminist statement. Right?
I'm thirteen. I want to be loved, but I don't know how to ask for it. I solve this problem with simple solutions, anorexia and cutting, because I am a fairly simple girl who finds it satisfying when she does what's expected of her - even when it comes to the forms her rebellion takes. I shred the flesh on my arm and hide it under the neat silence of a single Band-Aid because I am unhappy. [...] I buy pink Bank-Aids with Hello Kitties printed on them instead of the ordinary flesh-colored strips. They loudly announce my injury while obscuring and aestheticizing it, the pastel stars and smiling flowers cheerfully informing the world that I am hurt, hi, I cut myself, while all the time sanitizing the wound, making it affable, feminine, and pretty.
Ahh, now I get it. Cool! Wait, you're still not convinced that self-harming is a feminist statement? How about this:
Earle Dickson, inventor of the Band-Aid, was inspired by the fact that his wife, Josephine, often met with kitchen-knife accidents during the preparation of meals. The unfortunate phrasing of the internet article reads, "During the first week that she was married to Earle Dickson, she cut herself twice with the kitchen knife. After that, it just went from bad to worse. It seemed that Josephine was always cutting herself." I smile. The idea that Josephine intentionally inflicted harm upon herself in order to escape the banality of her domestic chores amuses me. But like every smart-ass man, Earle Dickson invented the compact and convenient "Band-Aid solution" so she could continue her work despite any messy injury, despite any blood. Poor Josephine Dickson, foiled. Just like all the other girls."
It seems as if Low is actually encouraging the act of self-harm as a means of shaping identity, which is obviously a dangerous and offensive thing to assert. Throughout the book, Low often uses mental health issues as a way to define or expand her character. Mental illness is all just a game to her, as can be seen when an ex-boyfriend has what is nothing short of a mental breakdown, only for Low to describe his issues as 'neither authentic nor exceptional'. She doesn't care, unless it's about her.
Which is all that this book is - an exercise in narcissism. Whether she's emotionally manipulating her partner, aestheticising self-harm, dismissing mental illness in others, rolling her eyes at someone for playing candy crush on a train (this actually happens, because she's just so much smarter and more cultured than the rest of them), or feeling annoyed with her boyfriend for 'not being a poet' but finding solace in the idea that 'Art is only good for suffering,' Trisha Low seems dead set on trying to convince the reader that she is very important and special. And clearly, for the most part, she has been successful. This is just the type of book that neoliberal ideologues will adore, affirming all of their beliefs and delivered through the mouth of an Asian millenial who dates and is friends with gender non-binary liberals. And if that's what they want, then that's fine for them. But it paints a sorry picture for the future of literature.
Anyway, reading this novel for a university module before the beginning of the semester has made me realise I should probably switch modules. So I guess in that sense I'm glad I read it, and you should be too, because it means there will be no more reviews like this one.
Am I?
Well, this is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. Trisha Low is, in her own words, 'someone who routinely performs, of her own volition, suicide notes she may or may not have written at various points in her life.' The aestheticisation of mental illness is clearly something that comes naturally to our beloved narrator, given a later passage that is probably the most offensive piece of liberal writing I have ever read. But I'm putting the cart before the horse here.
Socialist Realism is all about Low, and a bit about politics. I've seen critics claim this work to be a 'book-length essay,' though if that is the case then two things are true. Firstly, this is the most narcissistic collection of essays ever published. Secondly, Low's 'essays' amount only to pedestrian summarisations of famous artworks and artists, liberal critiques of Trump and the patriarchy, and vague questions surrounding culture and heritage. Low's style is extremely self-pitying, riddled with that distinctive-of-our-time, pseudo-melancholic tone that plagues the vast majority of texts lapped up by mainstream literary circles.
Less than twenty pages into the book, Low quotes Kathy Acker (who, coincidently, is not a particular favourite of mine): Kathy Acker once wrote, "If we keep on fucking, I'm not gonna die," which, as desperate as it sounds, is still my favorite method of emotional blackmail. It's another way of saying, I will end my life if you leave. One step out the door and my body will collapse as though its skeleton were excised. A slack sack of meat and liquid pooling on the floor. I'm pouting: "You wouldn't do that to me, would you?" Not so much a plea as a guarantee that you will be held responsible for any bodily harm that I inflict upon myself. Yes, I will make sure of it."
"Oh no," I thought. "This book is going to fucking suck." I refused to believe Low genuinely saw this as a 'cool', 'relatable' and 'insightful' way of thinking. I tried to tell myself it couldn't get much worse, which would've been comforting had I not encountered far too many of these kinds of 'writers' before. Low and behold (get it?), it did, in fact, get worse. As I said earlier, Low loves to aestheticise mental illness - especially self-harm, which is, as we all know, a feminist statement. Right?
I'm thirteen. I want to be loved, but I don't know how to ask for it. I solve this problem with simple solutions, anorexia and cutting, because I am a fairly simple girl who finds it satisfying when she does what's expected of her - even when it comes to the forms her rebellion takes. I shred the flesh on my arm and hide it under the neat silence of a single Band-Aid because I am unhappy. [...] I buy pink Bank-Aids with Hello Kitties printed on them instead of the ordinary flesh-colored strips. They loudly announce my injury while obscuring and aestheticizing it, the pastel stars and smiling flowers cheerfully informing the world that I am hurt, hi, I cut myself, while all the time sanitizing the wound, making it affable, feminine, and pretty.
Ahh, now I get it. Cool! Wait, you're still not convinced that self-harming is a feminist statement? How about this:
Earle Dickson, inventor of the Band-Aid, was inspired by the fact that his wife, Josephine, often met with kitchen-knife accidents during the preparation of meals. The unfortunate phrasing of the internet article reads, "During the first week that she was married to Earle Dickson, she cut herself twice with the kitchen knife. After that, it just went from bad to worse. It seemed that Josephine was always cutting herself." I smile. The idea that Josephine intentionally inflicted harm upon herself in order to escape the banality of her domestic chores amuses me. But like every smart-ass man, Earle Dickson invented the compact and convenient "Band-Aid solution" so she could continue her work despite any messy injury, despite any blood. Poor Josephine Dickson, foiled. Just like all the other girls."
It seems as if Low is actually encouraging the act of self-harm as a means of shaping identity, which is obviously a dangerous and offensive thing to assert. Throughout the book, Low often uses mental health issues as a way to define or expand her character. Mental illness is all just a game to her, as can be seen when an ex-boyfriend has what is nothing short of a mental breakdown, only for Low to describe his issues as 'neither authentic nor exceptional'. She doesn't care, unless it's about her.
Which is all that this book is - an exercise in narcissism. Whether she's emotionally manipulating her partner, aestheticising self-harm, dismissing mental illness in others, rolling her eyes at someone for playing candy crush on a train (this actually happens, because she's just so much smarter and more cultured than the rest of them), or feeling annoyed with her boyfriend for 'not being a poet' but finding solace in the idea that 'Art is only good for suffering,' Trisha Low seems dead set on trying to convince the reader that she is very important and special. And clearly, for the most part, she has been successful. This is just the type of book that neoliberal ideologues will adore, affirming all of their beliefs and delivered through the mouth of an Asian millenial who dates and is friends with gender non-binary liberals. And if that's what they want, then that's fine for them. But it paints a sorry picture for the future of literature.
Anyway, reading this novel for a university module before the beginning of the semester has made me realise I should probably switch modules. So I guess in that sense I'm glad I read it, and you should be too, because it means there will be no more reviews like this one.
September 21, 2019
Mid-read yesterday I realized why personal essays are so hit or miss for me — they're innately "me" and "them" with very little room in the middle for complexity. To write so completely in your voice, from your perspective with your opinions kind of erases the complexities of everyone else around you. It has too. Your family, your friends, your lovers, your enemies are all just characters in your life, distant if still alive, while you're the only one who is really real.
There are ways to get around this, for sure. You can interview or investigate. You can radically empathize. But when you're writing entirely from memory, weaving together childhood experience, sexual experience, dreams, and experiences with art, as Trisha Low does here, you can't help but write only about yourself. Your memories are you and everyone else is just a part of you.
That can be frustrating to read. I don't know how much I care about just you just as I don't know how much you should care about just me. To fully involve yourself in a singular story can be exhausting and I found Socialist Realism to be often exhausting. It's still very much worth a read but I didn't find myself leaving the book (essay?) feeling or learning anything new.
And that might be because Low, also, isn't necessarily learning or feeling or even growing. Many of the passages, frustratingly, reminded me of myself as a writer — she often makes a point before backtracking on the point before finally landing on a sort of, I don't know and I can't know and I shouldn't pretend but isn't utopia worth it anyway! She's smart and is constantly going back and forth before never truly landing on anything.
And that's ok. That's how the world works. It's contradictory (Marx talks a lot about this and I thought she might've quoted him but alas! another time) and never-ending and however truthful this may be it doesn't stop it from being any less frustrating.
I thought the strongest parts of the work were the moments of artistic analysis, especially when it came to pop culture. There's an especially strong passage about Jurassic Park and another on a WW2 film I found especially touching and one on One Direction that I won't even get into that I found myself laughing extremely hard at (not sure if that was the point). Low is perceptive when it comes to popular art.
Her recollection of personal experiences were mostly nice touches, even if they were too broad. I didn't really like, and often skipped over, the passages that recounted her dreams. I found them too faux-Freudian and often contradictory to the ways dreams actually work. They seemed sort of like passages from an introductory fiction writing course.
Anyways, the writing was good and some parts were really perceptive and emotional but the parts didn;'t really add up to the whole. Thematically, it was kind of vague. Enjoyed the One Direction scene though.
There are ways to get around this, for sure. You can interview or investigate. You can radically empathize. But when you're writing entirely from memory, weaving together childhood experience, sexual experience, dreams, and experiences with art, as Trisha Low does here, you can't help but write only about yourself. Your memories are you and everyone else is just a part of you.
That can be frustrating to read. I don't know how much I care about just you just as I don't know how much you should care about just me. To fully involve yourself in a singular story can be exhausting and I found Socialist Realism to be often exhausting. It's still very much worth a read but I didn't find myself leaving the book (essay?) feeling or learning anything new.
And that might be because Low, also, isn't necessarily learning or feeling or even growing. Many of the passages, frustratingly, reminded me of myself as a writer — she often makes a point before backtracking on the point before finally landing on a sort of, I don't know and I can't know and I shouldn't pretend but isn't utopia worth it anyway! She's smart and is constantly going back and forth before never truly landing on anything.
And that's ok. That's how the world works. It's contradictory (Marx talks a lot about this and I thought she might've quoted him but alas! another time) and never-ending and however truthful this may be it doesn't stop it from being any less frustrating.
I thought the strongest parts of the work were the moments of artistic analysis, especially when it came to pop culture. There's an especially strong passage about Jurassic Park and another on a WW2 film I found especially touching and one on One Direction that I won't even get into that I found myself laughing extremely hard at (not sure if that was the point). Low is perceptive when it comes to popular art.
Her recollection of personal experiences were mostly nice touches, even if they were too broad. I didn't really like, and often skipped over, the passages that recounted her dreams. I found them too faux-Freudian and often contradictory to the ways dreams actually work. They seemed sort of like passages from an introductory fiction writing course.
Anyways, the writing was good and some parts were really perceptive and emotional but the parts didn;'t really add up to the whole. Thematically, it was kind of vague. Enjoyed the One Direction scene though.
September 6, 2019
Reviewed for Bookforum 9/2019 -- here's an excerpt:
Where The Compleat Purge relished in performing the delicious narcissism of the morbidly melodramatic teen girl, Low’s new book Socialist Realism is decidedly Adult. More restrained, less indulgent, and properly, legibly, nonfiction, Socialist Realism is a mostly earnest, always engrossing long essay that charts a personal quest for utopia in the form of some kind of home. If this second book is not, frankly, as fun as her first, its pleasures are of an altogether different sort. Low has traded in the no-futurism of her suicidal phantasies in favor of dreams of revolution. A quixotic, improbably sentimental work, Socialist Realism longs for a better world while celebrating the minor joys of this one. This Low is not threatening to bequeath us her Franz Ferdinand CDs; she’s committed to life, for now, and to building a something else, a something more—what might be called home.
Full review here: https://www.bookforum.com/culture/soc...
Where The Compleat Purge relished in performing the delicious narcissism of the morbidly melodramatic teen girl, Low’s new book Socialist Realism is decidedly Adult. More restrained, less indulgent, and properly, legibly, nonfiction, Socialist Realism is a mostly earnest, always engrossing long essay that charts a personal quest for utopia in the form of some kind of home. If this second book is not, frankly, as fun as her first, its pleasures are of an altogether different sort. Low has traded in the no-futurism of her suicidal phantasies in favor of dreams of revolution. A quixotic, improbably sentimental work, Socialist Realism longs for a better world while celebrating the minor joys of this one. This Low is not threatening to bequeath us her Franz Ferdinand CDs; she’s committed to life, for now, and to building a something else, a something more—what might be called home.
Full review here: https://www.bookforum.com/culture/soc...
September 20, 2021
You know that sitcom trope of the New Yorker or Los Angeleno who cajoles their unwilling friends into coming to watch their self-indulgent, supposedly “vulnerable”, endless and uninteresting one-person show? That’s what Trisha Low’s SOCIALIST REALISM feels like, but in book form. Also, I am not her friend so I didn’t even have the luxury of being guilted into reading this exhausting, childish mess: I did it for free. My thinking was that, at 158 pages, it wasn’t terribly long—I could bear it—and, moreover, it would allow me to write this review.
Part memoir, part list of books she’s read, part… I don’t know, convoluted philosophical musing, the book is a stream of conscious collection of thoughts and memories with no unifying theme beyond Low’s disaffected aimlessness, about which she has nothing particularly insightful to say. It’s interesting she references LiveJournal at one point because that’s exactly what this feels like: the petty complaints of a teenager trying to sound profound. It’s hard to believe she was 32 and already a published writer when this book was released; she writes like a 15-year old novice.
If it makes a difference, you can read this review as 1.5 stars, because there are glimmers of ideas that could have been developed into something more meaningful. Low’s crisis of identity between her Singapore roots and California dreams seems like fruitful material, but it doesn’t really congeal into anything here. I also honestly thought the parable about the waterboarding S&M workshop, in which she was told she didn’t know “how to struggle correctly” was funny and held some deeper metaphor about life, but then Low beat it into the ground by repeating it again and again. Most often, though, it’s stories about pronounless theyfriends going to art shows or talking about fucking. She loves to talk about fucking and loves calling it “fucking”, because that’s super transgressive.
I stumbled across this book on the library shelves when picking up Cheryl Strayed’s WILD. I was intrigued by the title, SOCIALIST REALISM, and the blurb on the back which describes Low moving west to find utopia or revolution, and dealing with severed relationships, a family whose values do not align with her own, and the toxicity of right-wing politics. That synopsis seems similar to my own journey from Arkansas to the PNW so I thought I would find the book relatable, but my only thought is that I hope I am not as insufferable as Low and her clique are. The low point (no pun intended) is an extended section where she gets caught up in performative argumentation about a fictionalized poem about domestic violence posted on Buzzfeed. She feels compelled to have an opinion because she’s been compared to the author of the poem but then gets shut down on all sides no matter what position she takes. What she doesn’t appreciate is that neither she, nor anybody else involved in the kerfuffle, has anything of worth to say. It’s about their compulsion to be listened to more than anything. And though the phrase “socialist realism” is deconstructed three or four times, by the end of the book I still can’t tell you what it means or how it relates to whatever story Low is trying to tell.
I’m very disappointed in this book. There’s maybe some nuggets of good ideas buried in it, but those ideas are poorly developed here, and the writing has a distinctly teenage-y, uncritically self-involved, faux-poetic tone that makes the whole endeavor tiresome. It feels like it was really written for an audience of one: Low herself.
Part memoir, part list of books she’s read, part… I don’t know, convoluted philosophical musing, the book is a stream of conscious collection of thoughts and memories with no unifying theme beyond Low’s disaffected aimlessness, about which she has nothing particularly insightful to say. It’s interesting she references LiveJournal at one point because that’s exactly what this feels like: the petty complaints of a teenager trying to sound profound. It’s hard to believe she was 32 and already a published writer when this book was released; she writes like a 15-year old novice.
If it makes a difference, you can read this review as 1.5 stars, because there are glimmers of ideas that could have been developed into something more meaningful. Low’s crisis of identity between her Singapore roots and California dreams seems like fruitful material, but it doesn’t really congeal into anything here. I also honestly thought the parable about the waterboarding S&M workshop, in which she was told she didn’t know “how to struggle correctly” was funny and held some deeper metaphor about life, but then Low beat it into the ground by repeating it again and again. Most often, though, it’s stories about pronounless theyfriends going to art shows or talking about fucking. She loves to talk about fucking and loves calling it “fucking”, because that’s super transgressive.
I stumbled across this book on the library shelves when picking up Cheryl Strayed’s WILD. I was intrigued by the title, SOCIALIST REALISM, and the blurb on the back which describes Low moving west to find utopia or revolution, and dealing with severed relationships, a family whose values do not align with her own, and the toxicity of right-wing politics. That synopsis seems similar to my own journey from Arkansas to the PNW so I thought I would find the book relatable, but my only thought is that I hope I am not as insufferable as Low and her clique are. The low point (no pun intended) is an extended section where she gets caught up in performative argumentation about a fictionalized poem about domestic violence posted on Buzzfeed. She feels compelled to have an opinion because she’s been compared to the author of the poem but then gets shut down on all sides no matter what position she takes. What she doesn’t appreciate is that neither she, nor anybody else involved in the kerfuffle, has anything of worth to say. It’s about their compulsion to be listened to more than anything. And though the phrase “socialist realism” is deconstructed three or four times, by the end of the book I still can’t tell you what it means or how it relates to whatever story Low is trying to tell.
I’m very disappointed in this book. There’s maybe some nuggets of good ideas buried in it, but those ideas are poorly developed here, and the writing has a distinctly teenage-y, uncritically self-involved, faux-poetic tone that makes the whole endeavor tiresome. It feels like it was really written for an audience of one: Low herself.
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March 24, 2024loved this—of many things t writes about how it feels to be away from home and still inextricably entangled with ur past, to feel abject about and her yearn for revolution, and what happens when ur coming out is deeply, deeply mid. needed this this march!!!
April 4, 2022
Reading this felt like staying up all night reading someone’s blog
March 27, 2021
Surprisingly superficial. Once you get past the various references and quotations, it really is about a crazy rich Asian millennial moving to New York / California and realising, hey, America isn't utopia. Well, really.
The politics is... She uncritically regurgitates Singapore state propaganda, regarding the public(ish) healthcare and public housing systems, without reflecting on the fact that she uses(used) private healthcare and lives(lived) in private housing, so isn't best-qualified to discuss their merits, or living in Singapore generally for those not "extremely wealthy," like her family. The huge underclass of exploited foreign workers, not covered by Singapore's (still weak) standard employment laws, goes unmentioned. Apparently the country's success is all to do with Confucian values or something.
Back in the Bay Area, she goes to buy a $25,000USD Hermes bag for her mum, who collects $25,000+USD Hermes handbags, without reflecting on, I dunno, inequality, gentrification (could multimillionaires moving to the city to become activist-poets have adverse effects on the housing market, I wonder?) - anything of substance, really. This is a book called Socialist Realism. We learn she doesn't like Trump (her mum literally believes he's Satan). Radical.
On the plus side, there are a lot of brief summaries of films or pieces of art, ending with a tenuous link to the idea of 'home.' I guess if you've not heard of those films or artworks, some may pique your interest - you'll get some decent recommendations out of it. Also there's this paragraph:
"I put my head down on the wet pillow.
Potato."
The book is characterised by a complete absence of humour, so I assume that's not supposed to be funny, but it made me laugh.
Edit - there are some interesting recent allegations against the author, using ‘her power as a manager to make excuses for, minimize, & reinforce hostile & exploitative [working] practices’ at Small Press Distribution. I don’t know if those allegations are true; she did defend herself on Twitter (in trademark affected all-lowercase), a full 30 days after the allegations emerged, made sure nobody could reply directly, then later permanently deleted her account, which doesn’t look great. Is this relevant to the above book? Well, it’s a very personal book, in which she makes more than a few references to her left-wing / socialist beliefs, so IMO yes.
The politics is... She uncritically regurgitates Singapore state propaganda, regarding the public(ish) healthcare and public housing systems, without reflecting on the fact that she uses(used) private healthcare and lives(lived) in private housing, so isn't best-qualified to discuss their merits, or living in Singapore generally for those not "extremely wealthy," like her family. The huge underclass of exploited foreign workers, not covered by Singapore's (still weak) standard employment laws, goes unmentioned. Apparently the country's success is all to do with Confucian values or something.
Back in the Bay Area, she goes to buy a $25,000USD Hermes bag for her mum, who collects $25,000+USD Hermes handbags, without reflecting on, I dunno, inequality, gentrification (could multimillionaires moving to the city to become activist-poets have adverse effects on the housing market, I wonder?) - anything of substance, really. This is a book called Socialist Realism. We learn she doesn't like Trump (her mum literally believes he's Satan). Radical.
On the plus side, there are a lot of brief summaries of films or pieces of art, ending with a tenuous link to the idea of 'home.' I guess if you've not heard of those films or artworks, some may pique your interest - you'll get some decent recommendations out of it. Also there's this paragraph:
"I put my head down on the wet pillow.
Potato."
The book is characterised by a complete absence of humour, so I assume that's not supposed to be funny, but it made me laugh.
Edit - there are some interesting recent allegations against the author, using ‘her power as a manager to make excuses for, minimize, & reinforce hostile & exploitative [working] practices’ at Small Press Distribution. I don’t know if those allegations are true; she did defend herself on Twitter (in trademark affected all-lowercase), a full 30 days after the allegations emerged, made sure nobody could reply directly, then later permanently deleted her account, which doesn’t look great. Is this relevant to the above book? Well, it’s a very personal book, in which she makes more than a few references to her left-wing / socialist beliefs, so IMO yes.
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December 23, 2024this book is not easy or comforting. i kept wanting to give up and choose something that wouldn't put me into such close contact with the messy futility of idenitity and revolutionary politics, but then i would get engrossed in low's cultural commentary on one topic or another, and then i would see her, trying to put the deepest recesses of her experience into words, and i couldn't help but find some beauty/truth/togetherness. the aestheticized vulnerability of the writing is almost grotesque, like it's daring you to dismiss it as narcissistic and melodramatic. it very much comes out of and is speaking to a 2010s tumblr/queer feminism/radical performance art world. but i think the brilliance of the book is that the experience of reading it took me through the exact frustrations and specificities of discourse that motivate its creation and make its musings on utopia so relevant
December 27, 2022
The birkin anecdote pierced my soul and I lost it when she was talking about the pastor who compared being faithless to being frozen chicken shattering through the windshield of a train. Shout out to being waterboarded by late stage capitalism, but in a hot way. The part about gentle apocalypse from humans collectively agreeing to stop having children really reminded me of zekes plan in SNK. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”, it’s easy to bury yourself deep in nihilism, but much harder to struggle against it and leave. Theres radical optimism in believing in a better future and hoping for something better, in spite of being convinced of and resigned to its futility. I’m definitely not there yet, but at least I know it’s a possibility now
March 27, 2019
One of my favorites of this year so far - Trisha Low hits hard with precise sentences, a look at a move across California, art, sexuality, and the cultural impact of social media. I absolutely devoured this book and I felt excited about the exacting nature of Trisha's view of the world. Excited to see others dive into this beautiful portrait of life as it feels right this very moment.
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April 5, 2020The form is unusual - it's less a book than it is a long personal essay that jumps between registers and topics - but it really worked for me. Thoughtful and beautifully written. I couldn't put it down.
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November 18, 2021hmm. interesting? Read it for uni, some things I liked, some things I was a bit ‘eh’ on. This reminded me a lot of Maggie Nelson lol but overall, interesting and thankfully a short read because this reading slump is not doing me any favours right now, so it was nice to actually start and finish a book in one day again!
October 11, 2022
this is one of those books i will recommend to anyone remotely interested in what i care about these days
the last ~30 pages or so are incredible; i took photos of nearly every page so i could document my favorite sentences and passages
the last ~30 pages or so are incredible; i took photos of nearly every page so i could document my favorite sentences and passages
April 14, 2021
HOW DID SHE DO THAT?!
October 4, 2021
4,5*
August 27, 2019
"No matter what anyone believes, only she knows that Art cannot save a whale but can ruin someone’s personal life. She writes a poem that will ruin someone’s personal life – her own."
May 4, 2021
Another rambling book about art n stuff. Good if that’s what you’re looking for.
November 17, 2021
Made me want to die and live at the same time. Fucked me up in a beautiful way. I simply loved it
December 12, 2021
omd i finally finished a book and it was a uni book 😝 some parts were interesting some parts were traumatising but that’s like everything ive had to read on this course 😭😭
November 13, 2021
so when i was like 45 pages into this i wanted to quit. i was like ugh. i am sick of neat little book length essays about Life by guilty americans with rich parents who stop occasionally to talk about contemporary art installations. i make my compromises to enjoy ben lerner, the rest of you are also on thin ice. but my worry about socialist realism was that it would turn out to be riskless and it definitely wasn't that! there's some deranged moments in this book, some genuinely risky and interesting statements and avenues. and the art moments are good enough that i stopped rolling my eyes. new yorkers with rich parents may annoy me, but conflicted bisexuals with no attention span and a penchant for moving from one direction fantasies straight into discussions of turkish prisoners on death fasts? love that shit.
May 27, 2021
Trisha Low's writing is devastatingly gorgeous.
I could compare this to a variety of books that made me feel similarly, but nothing feels apt. There's just too many subjects that were seamlessly covered and need each their own reference to give this reading experience justice.
Paperback from Bookshop.org for May's JAVLN book club.
I could compare this to a variety of books that made me feel similarly, but nothing feels apt. There's just too many subjects that were seamlessly covered and need each their own reference to give this reading experience justice.
Paperback from Bookshop.org for May's JAVLN book club.
February 4, 2022
Is there a gender politics of buying rotisserie chicken?
I picked this book up at Scuppernong because it was maybe the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen. And I was not disappointed. The ability to hold my attention for a book-length essay is a feat. But the language was so beautiful. I got out my pen to underline on the second page and didn’t put it up.
What I’ll remember about this essay: utopias, protest, poppers at the One Direction movie, theoretical physics. Art, a simple gesture of refusal. Home, a chronic matter of wanting.
So. Good.
I picked this book up at Scuppernong because it was maybe the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen. And I was not disappointed. The ability to hold my attention for a book-length essay is a feat. But the language was so beautiful. I got out my pen to underline on the second page and didn’t put it up.
What I’ll remember about this essay: utopias, protest, poppers at the One Direction movie, theoretical physics. Art, a simple gesture of refusal. Home, a chronic matter of wanting.
So. Good.
June 21, 2020
i so appreciated the nuances, complexities and relationships that were subtly described and implied around ideas of home, belonging, desire and obligation, especially the tensions between a liminal sense of cultural and deeper belonging between the US and singapore/hk
January 24, 2021
this was so so good - just a brilliant little look at desire and masochism and art and life under threat of fascism. trisha low covers such a broad range of topics but the leaps between them almost never feel off or inappropriate.
December 15, 2021
Fascinating, engaging, surprising. Book long back and forth musings on film, gender identity, art and home. But the title? Really? This is anything but some dry treatise. How about changing it to something like "I Scald the Sleeve"? Will definitely be looking for more from Low.
January 12, 2023
3.75, some parts are beautifully written, others made me roll my eyes. really liked her poetic critiques of art/films/book. I didn’t care for the purely self-involved diary bits. reminded me of my frustration and enjoyment of maggie nelson’s stuff.
worth reading.
worth reading.
December 6, 2020
i can’t wait to read more of her work :)
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