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Incredible.

We've read a number of books for #SFFBookClub that have a short story structure with interconnecting themes and worldbuilding (How High We Go in the Dark, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird) but In Universes is my clear favorite among all of these.

Structurally, this book is a series of short stories with a single point of view. Each story takes place in different adjacent-ish branching multiverses, some of which veer into more magical realism and externalized metaphors while others are more realistic. Thematically, this book is about dealing with internalized homophobia, trauma, depression and grief. But it's also about (queer) possibility and transformation and acceptance.

It's interesting to me just how many things I underlined (virtually) while reading this book. Delicious turns of phrase. Devastating sentences seemingly directly targeted at my feelings. Interconnecting thematic ideas everywhere. I found myself utterly engaged in its writing and imagery.

What is most striking about In Universes is that even when some chapters veer off in fantastical directions ("my mother is a horde of bees", "I am pregnant with an octopus", horse telepathy), there is such a coherent emotional progression for Raffi across the entire book. A lot of similarly structured books suffer from meandering too far afield with their ideas that they fail to come together, but In Universes feels so intentional with how it deploys its imagery and pacing. If anything, the final part of the book, consisting of a single chapter, resonates the strongest of all of them and I love the way it reprises the previous stories to bring everything together.

This book is another step along the path toward the formation and realization of Black womanist thought. I am 46 years old and grew up with a copy of The Color Purple in my home. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God for the first time when I was in high school and I minored in Women & Gender studies in college, reading bell hooks, Assata, Audre Lorde and so many others. In the last several years, I've become intimately familiar with the writing and work of Patricia Hersey. For someone like me, this book was mostly review--and I think that's a good thing. It was a good opportunity to refresh my memory and to witness younger generations building on the knowledge passed on by our ancestors.

That being said, I think what is needed now is the centering of the most vulnerable and oppressed among us. I think that womanist thought will benefit from centering the voices and perspectives of trans and disabled individuals and may also make these kinds of books less repetitive for those of us who have been following womanist theory for a long time.

There were moments in the book when I thought for sure that the author would turn her focus to transgender experiences (such as the chapter on the importance of names), but she did not. She calls out transphobia on at least a handful of occasions in the book, so it's not that she is transphobic. It's just that she is limited by her own identity and personal experience, which is absolutely natural. So, it's not that I have major critiques of this book, it's more that it makes me want to seek out more womanist writing from queer, immigrant & first gen, trans & non-binary, disabled, etc. perspectives. And not just for the sake of "diversity," but because womanist theory is so potentially revolutionary, and we can only complete the mission if all of these voices are allowed to shape it.