by Ai Jiang
What came to mind while putting this list together were all the themes of anOther Nemesis—femininity, oppression, rebellion, and resistance; truths unheard; racial and religious tenders; gender and the body; violence both mental and physical; myth and illusions both cruel and tender; freedom and censorship; the intersections between the past and the present; and of course, estrangement and otherness, and the violence of language. I discovered upon reflection that the commonality of all these things is the idea of connection and the lack of, both to the world, to ourselves, and to each other; the way that everyone wishes to be heard, yet no one is listening, and how there are so many voices lost in an onslaught of static. The following list includes books told by people I believe need to be heard.
anOther Mythology by Maxwell I. Gold
A chilling yet beautiful exploration of mythology and otherness from queer perspectives.
I Do Not Apologize for My Position on Men by Rae Wild
A collection filled with tales of disparate survival, struggle, vengeance told through unexpected and beautiful prose.
Apparitions by Adam Pottle
A raw novel focusing on trauma, injustice, accessibility, resource, and about a world made unequal and does not understand.
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
A heartrending collection of migration, diaspora, struggle and how it all manifests in familial dynamics and individuals grappling with straddling cultures.
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
A documentation of stories and experiences that illuminate the power of words, of writing, of sharing it with the world, unravelling the truths of an history of injustice, and the hope that it would make a difference.
About Ai Jiang
Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist born in Changle, Fujian, currently residing in Markham, Ontario. Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, Clarkesworld, The Masters Review, among others. She is the author of A Palace Near the Wind, Linghun and I AM AI. Find her at www.aijiang.ca
This dark and thought-provoking poetry collection is co-authored by four multi-award winning authors and poets, Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold.
anOther Nemesis unravels sinister speculative poems themed The Colonizers, Primal Sources, Nameless Others and Crooked Ontologies. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.
The extraordinary assemblage interrogates the ways cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof are used as means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all… and more!
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