She Is a Haunting
by Trang Thanh Tran
Content Warnings for She Is a Haunting
Feb 3, 2024 05:17
I have struggled to read anything for years and yet I am immediately hooked. The writing is both abrasive and flowery with poetic descriptions and swearing from the first page. I have immediatlely connected to the Vietnamese American who doesn't feel Vietnamese enough, the oldest daughter who is angry all the time and disconnected from her father and who was parentified at 13, and the closeted LGBT aspect - but I think the horror element is what grips me the most. So I am committing to reading this and will make updates here as I continue!
Feb 19, 2024 12:40
I could not pick this up for a while, but I read a substack essay from Ismatu Gwendolyn yesterday called "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)." The 4 main theses are: (1) the ruling class benefits from illiteracy, (2) short-form video entertains more than it sticks, (3) reading is a discipline distinct from listening, watching, or other forms of literacy and is a skill that needs to be honed separately, and (4) absolutely no one comes to save us but us. There's a lot of good lines in there like "You never have to burn the books if no one ever wants to read them in the first place." But what stood out the most to me was this part:
Reading fiction as a child opened up three very important conclusions: (1) that reading could feel good, (2) that other worlds were possible, and that (3) it was possible to make up worlds.
I'm going to heal my relationship with reading. I found my the Kindle I got for Christmas when I was 12 because I kept reading through books faster than it felt justified to buy physical copies. When I was 18 and on medical leave, I began renting books online through Libby and reading those on my Kindle and phone. Now I can read this on my Kindle, and the e-paper stuff is a lot easier on the eyes than a phone screen. I'll write about the book later, but just wanted to share this part first. I got through a couple chapters while making and sipping chai. I was in a terrible state yesterday but I feel more content reading in silence with a good book. I lost this part of myself.