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Listen, We All Bleed
Mandy-Suzanne Wong gives voices to those who cannot speak through the use of art and exhibition, specifically those whose art has subverted the narrative of human dominance over the animal kingdom. A collection of heartfelt and explorative essays that give the reader a view of the world through the eyes of a nonhuman.
- GenresNonfiction
170 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2021
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11 people want to read
About the author
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
10 books41 followersMandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is the author of The Box, a novel (Graywolf, House of Anansi); Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House), a Foreword INDIES literary-fiction finalist and PEN Open Book Award nominee; Listen, We All Bleed (New Rivers), a PEN/Galbraith-nominated essay collection and EcoLit Best Book of 2021; and Awabi, a duet of short stories, winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arcturus, Black Warrior Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Litro, and Necessary Fiction, winning recognition in the Best of the Net, Aeon Award, and Eyelands Flash Fiction competitions.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 12, 2021
So much of animal activism is focused around what one sees — witnessing the beauty as well as the suffering of the animals we share this planet with.
But what about focusing less on one’s eyes and more on one’s ears?
In Listen, We All Bleed Mandy-Suzanne Wong has compiled a rich array of essays that compel us to listen. To whales and insects. Singing cod, snapping shrimp and boisterous bats. She takes us into the worlds of some truly amazing artists who have devoted their lives to documenting not just the sounds of animals, but their ongoing effort to protect these animals.
Such as Dave Phillips, who records the sounds of African wildlife and not just the “charismatic” species. He focuses heavily on bugs, creatures who are just as critical to a healthy ecosystem, but too often overlooked. Wong writes “When wildlife conservations throw their energy behind charismatic animals and overlook the small, the ugly, the dirty, and the pesky, conservation is doomed to fail.”
Not every essay is just about sounds. Artist Colleen Plumb has spent years video-recording the repetitive movements that trapped elephants exhibits in zoos, such as pacing and the swinging back and forth of trunks. And she projects these videos against buildings in cities around the world in an effort to raise awareness. See her book Thirty Times a Minute in our best books list for 2020.
Kathryn Eddy founded the Urban Wild Coyote Project to foster empathy for animals that are too often vilified and slaughtered, to the number of 400,000 animals a year. Eddy uses art to show how blind we have become to these animals that share every major city with us, often just out of sight. And she also shows how sound is used by hunters to attract coyotes to the manufactured decoy sounds of wounded animals. But because these animals, like so many species, are labeled pest or nuisance animals, few people speak up for them.
I found myself writing down the names of a number of artists I can’t wait to learn more about. I’m always inspired to see artists embrace animal activism because they often approach animal issues in surprising and eye- (or ear-) opening. And as we’ve long believed as Ashland Creek Press, while science and facts may speak to one’s mind, art speaks to one’s soul.
If you’d like to be inspired by the work artists around the world are creating to open hearts and eyes (and ears) I highly recommend this book.
NOTe: This review was first posted on EcoLitBooks.com.
But what about focusing less on one’s eyes and more on one’s ears?
In Listen, We All Bleed Mandy-Suzanne Wong has compiled a rich array of essays that compel us to listen. To whales and insects. Singing cod, snapping shrimp and boisterous bats. She takes us into the worlds of some truly amazing artists who have devoted their lives to documenting not just the sounds of animals, but their ongoing effort to protect these animals.
Such as Dave Phillips, who records the sounds of African wildlife and not just the “charismatic” species. He focuses heavily on bugs, creatures who are just as critical to a healthy ecosystem, but too often overlooked. Wong writes “When wildlife conservations throw their energy behind charismatic animals and overlook the small, the ugly, the dirty, and the pesky, conservation is doomed to fail.”
Not every essay is just about sounds. Artist Colleen Plumb has spent years video-recording the repetitive movements that trapped elephants exhibits in zoos, such as pacing and the swinging back and forth of trunks. And she projects these videos against buildings in cities around the world in an effort to raise awareness. See her book Thirty Times a Minute in our best books list for 2020.
Kathryn Eddy founded the Urban Wild Coyote Project to foster empathy for animals that are too often vilified and slaughtered, to the number of 400,000 animals a year. Eddy uses art to show how blind we have become to these animals that share every major city with us, often just out of sight. And she also shows how sound is used by hunters to attract coyotes to the manufactured decoy sounds of wounded animals. But because these animals, like so many species, are labeled pest or nuisance animals, few people speak up for them.
I found myself writing down the names of a number of artists I can’t wait to learn more about. I’m always inspired to see artists embrace animal activism because they often approach animal issues in surprising and eye- (or ear-) opening. And as we’ve long believed as Ashland Creek Press, while science and facts may speak to one’s mind, art speaks to one’s soul.
If you’d like to be inspired by the work artists around the world are creating to open hearts and eyes (and ears) I highly recommend this book.
NOTe: This review was first posted on EcoLitBooks.com.
September 25, 2021
Midway through "Listen, we all bleed," her stunning collection of essays about art that challenges us to consider the needs and simple realities of the non-human animals struggling to live on our planet, Mandy Suzanne-Wong writes, “Oceans are not our empires. Oceans aren’t liquid slaughterhouses, goldmines, or oil reservoirs. Oceans live. But not for us. Art can sound this out, help us learn it with our bodies, make it emotional. When artworks make us feel that nonhuman animals are not us and not for us, those artworks do something very necessary.”
So does this book.
As a lifelong omnivore, I confess I wasn’t eager to read something that would amplify my shame about eating other animals, let alone motivate me to stop. But Listen, we all bleed is not some guilt-inducing screed. It is a lyrical, brilliant exploration of the music, installations, and immersive exhibitions being created by artists who exhort us to listen to what’s difficult to hear, to see what we choose to blind ourselves to, to feel what we’d rather numb ourselves to. With her expansive curiosity, deep insight, fascinating explanations, and sometimes wracking but always gorgeous prose, Mandy Suzanne-Wong compelled me to keep reading. With each essay about elephants, fish, cows, sheep, whales, and the artists who honor them, I found my soul expanding, not recoiling. She challenges us to pay attention even – no, especially – to who and what we don’t recognize as being “like us,” and cautions us against trying to make them so. As she says about a work by artist and composer Kathryn Eddy: “What Kathryn wants us to hear in Problematic Nature is how unhuman life can be and still be life.”
"Listen, we all bleed" is exhilarating, not punishing. It has awakened me and makes me want to change, not out of shame, but out of gratitude for all that I’ve shielded myself against. Read it.
So does this book.
As a lifelong omnivore, I confess I wasn’t eager to read something that would amplify my shame about eating other animals, let alone motivate me to stop. But Listen, we all bleed is not some guilt-inducing screed. It is a lyrical, brilliant exploration of the music, installations, and immersive exhibitions being created by artists who exhort us to listen to what’s difficult to hear, to see what we choose to blind ourselves to, to feel what we’d rather numb ourselves to. With her expansive curiosity, deep insight, fascinating explanations, and sometimes wracking but always gorgeous prose, Mandy Suzanne-Wong compelled me to keep reading. With each essay about elephants, fish, cows, sheep, whales, and the artists who honor them, I found my soul expanding, not recoiling. She challenges us to pay attention even – no, especially – to who and what we don’t recognize as being “like us,” and cautions us against trying to make them so. As she says about a work by artist and composer Kathryn Eddy: “What Kathryn wants us to hear in Problematic Nature is how unhuman life can be and still be life.”
"Listen, we all bleed" is exhilarating, not punishing. It has awakened me and makes me want to change, not out of shame, but out of gratitude for all that I’ve shielded myself against. Read it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews