Faggotization and The Extant Gender Ternary, The Sizhen System
really fascinating new analysis of gender as a system from a materialist lens

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano
I saw this on a display table outside of used bookstore in Hamilton and picked it up immediately. I've read a lot of stuff from the 19th century, which is unfortunately but unsurprisingly almost always from the white colonial viewpoint. So when I saw an autobiography from 1789 written by an African man who survived enslavement and went on to travel the world and become a successful writer in the abolitionist movement, I knew I needed it. My copy is the Norton Critical Edition, which includes a detailed introduction and supporting documents and essays. I'm not very far into it yet, but this book is worth it for the introduction alone, which illuminates the abolitionist literary tradition that is most often ignored nowadays in favour of the "no one at the time knew better" excuse. Equiano is also just a good writer.

currently reading: The Devils/The Possessed
Very glad I got to this one after taking a class on imperial Russia, learning about the Westerner/Slavophile debate, Bakunin and Nechayev, and reading Turgenev, because that context makes Dostoevsky's most reactionary Slavophile novel much more interesting.

last book: Memoirs from the House of the Dead
Memoirs, the loosely fictionalized account of the author's time in prison in Siberia, is very different from his novels and yet very much the same. focuses much more on the existential, psychological effects of being made A Prisoner than on the more obvious injustices of incarceration.