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well, it made me insane so it does get 5 stars. maybe better terminology would be it answers to things i feel insane about. i feel, with this being a letter to his son, a connection to coates as a paternal figure. i think a lot about what to do now that i have been racialized, to be made "of race." i guess in a similar way i used to think about gender and what we sometimes call coercively assigned sex... i guess sometimes i do wish i could say to an elder, "what do i do? there is cruelty in store for me, and there is subjugation, and there is oppression, and i am guaranteed a worse life, a worse life for me because of no reason, a worse and uglier life than the people doing cruelty to me, and what do i do? how do i live?" and i felt held by this work and the ideas and experiences coates shares with us. and a little more at ease, a little more figured out, or that it might be possible for me to figure it out.

gripping... not really a fiction reader but chang-rae lee's native speaker opened me inside out so you know how it is. hata in this book reminds me a lot of park from the native speaker. they're both assimilators by nature, while not being able to sustain connection to anything. excellent at assimilation, horrible at connection, what makes the difference? thank you chang-rae lee for your thoughts on the matter...

i have many thoughts but so unorganized... it's just so thrilling, lee's writing. the haunting, reconciliation, childhood, doom, and belonging. there's a morality to everyone, in a different way than, like idk, the hunger games when you wonder who will survive to the end of the book, just that we're always aware of whose heart is beating, still beating. but i just realized that's in the title, yes? life. a gesture life...

i remain in awe of lee's narration, his use of narrative... this book literally feels like a sleepless night and at the same time being heavily sedated under a deep slumber all the time. im ILL im literally ILL like he should not he able to do any of that. ALSO hes really funny and it's not a funny book but like there are moments . there are moments. every time i talk about him i feel like im rachel bloom fuck me ray bradbury

Quote: I know you dream of one but it doesn’t exist. This time won’t end. It will end for you, but not for me.

i really related to the author but i didn't like the audiobook narration by jully lee. it was nice to see my experiences with self hate and low self esteem and obsessions with all sorts of stuff put into words... however im not sure if the words had much of an impact on me. i didn't feel moved, i lost the train of thought many times, i listened to the last chapter twice and still wasn't really sure what to make of it, what she was trying to say...

huuuuge "male professor" vibes from this guy

obsessed with his haters

also idk i think his suggestions are bad mostly, he's like "social media is so bad parents need to get their kids off of social media" yeah man ok good luck with that

i mean, it was fun and fine. tender cozy sapphic novel. i like the central magical idea about magic and power quite a lot.

Quote: Power freely given isn't power halved, it's power doubled.