Hil

DNF at 50% after reading reviews here and figured out the pay off for all these build up is not worth it.

3.5 stars, rounded up. Crisply written but doesn't tell me anything new (and another reviewer here has mentioned the “neutral” tone of the book does it disservice to the message). The gig workers profiled were quite interesting. I finished it in an afternoon.

I'm giving up at Chapter 7. Overall, it's quite interesting but for some reason (time period, perhaps?) I didn't find myself wanting to continue after having this book for months on my bedside.

This may be the first memoir from an Indonesian who is part of the LGBTQ+ community that I read—regrettably I don't think there's a lot of these and there should be more. This book coincidentally made a fitting answer to my partner's hypothetical question: what would you do if you want to get out of Indonesia and live abroad?

My answer was, as a sobat kabupaten, I didn't dream of living abroad. Moving to a city was already a sea change. But reading about Arozak's path was eye opening.

Compared to memoirs and essays l've read recently, this reads like Linda Sarsour's We're in This Together. My partner pointed out that there's a book with which this book shares common themes: Matt Ortile's The Groom Will Keep His Name (Ortile is a Pinoy in the US). I think would have liked this book even more if Arozak gave the readers more space for suspense, tension, and feelings before moving to resolutions.

DNF at page 66