Elevate Difference

Reviews by Chelsey Clammer

Shark Girls

Shark Girls presents the reader with something horrific, and turns it into something humane. When a shark attacks eight-year-old Willa, her older sister Scat realizes that their lives are about to shift. At school, Scat becomes the one made fun of, because her peers don’t know what to do with the traumatic situation, but they know it would be mean to make fun of the victim of a shark attack.

Truth Belt: The Westie

As more companies are becoming earth and animal-friendly, and the DIY movement has seen resurgence in the past few years, I have been on the lookout for a good selection of quality vegan belts. I’ve encountered a lot of hemp and vinyl belts, and even some belts made out of bicycle inner tubes, but I still haven’t found one company that offers a wide variety of both classy and funky vegan belts. Enter: Truth Belts. Truth is an animal-friendly accessory company based in Canada.

Home Free

Books with young female characters who love books make my heart smile. Home Free by Sharon Jennings made my heart shine with a full-faced grin. Meet Leanna Mets. She loves books, aspires to be a writer, and is trying to figure out what life means. This alone is no easy task, but it’s especially hard as she’s trying to navigate her blossoming life under the strict and watchful eye of her conservative mother. Leanna just wants to feel free.

The Woman You Write Poems About

Most of the time when I read poetry books, I’ll dog-ear the pages of poems I really like. I started to do this with Danielle (Dani) Montgomery’s collection, The Woman You Write Poems About, but within the first twenty pages I realized I didn’t have one non-bent-down page corner; every single poem in this collection is intriguing and amazing in its own way.

I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde

I Am Your Sister is a collection for those who want and need to be introduced to Audre Lorde’s thinking, and it is a great anthology for those who have read and been inspired by Lorde’s writing all of their lives. How is this possible?

Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, Burnt Shadows, is a well crafted story, centering on the life of a fierce and feisty Japanese woman named Hiroko.

Hot Boy Shorts

GirliePants is a fun company that creates cute and ironic designs for underwear and tank tops. The pair of underwear that I was sent were a royal blue color with a wickedly cute drawing of a flame on the butt that simply said “Hot” underneath. The design of the image is wonderfully playful, and I think I would wear the underwear all the time if they were actually comfortable.  Maybe mine were a size too big, but I experienced the underwear riding up my ass all day long. The cut on the boy shorts is simply awkward.

Red: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today

My teenage years have always seemed to be something that I’ve wanted to forget: awkwardness, feeling clueless about life, not feeling comfortable in my body, navigating love and friendships, hating my family, loving my family, not knowing who my family really was, and knowing that there must be something more to life than what I was doing. Ugh, high school. Now that I’m past my teens and well on to other decades of my life, I haven’t taken the time to look back and consider all of those big Life Questions I once had.

My Brain Hurts: Volume One

Liz Baillie’s character Kate Callahan is everything that I wish I had been in school, as well as everything that I’m glad I wasn’t: a punk dyke; Mohawk-wearing, patches held on with safety pins-styling, multiple girlfriends-loving activist; and all-around New York City street-roamer. Think Diane DiMassa’s _Hothead Paisan _before she turned homicidal and got a cat.

Brainscan #22

As a lesbian with an incredibly regular menstrual cycle, I generally don’t ever really think about birth control. It’s not something that affects my life, and other than the random conversations about birth control that I have with my friends and loved ones who do use it, I don’t usually find literature on the topic particularly interesting.

How Nonviolence Protects the State

Do anti-war protests really stop the United States from invading another country? Do pro-choice marches affect legislation on abortion? Did sit-ins during the Civil Rights movement help to end racism? These are the questions that Peter Gelderloos asks in his new book How Nonviolence Protects the State.

Maquilapolis: City of Factories

Who made that pen you’re using? Who put your television together? Who sewed your pants? And what does any of this have to do with women in Mexico? Well, thanks to the initiation of NAFTA in 1994, big US corporations can make maximum profit off of the cheap labor of women in other countries.

The Enigma Woman: The Death Sentence of Nellie May Madison

In her astonishingly well-written account of California’s first female death row inmate, Kathleen Cairns weaves the story of domestic violence and the influence of the media into her telling of one woman’s life. Nellie May Madison shot her husband in their Southern California apartment in March 1934. During this time period, the media easily conflated Nellie with the film noir femme fatal image that was popular at the time.

The Butterfly Effect

While reading the first half of Susan Hawthorne’s newest collection of lesbian poems, The Butterfly Effect, I found myself lost in footnotes. Each poem reads on the right page, while footnotes to the poem fill up the left page. Most of the time, the footnotes are as long as, if not longer, than the actual poem. At first, I thought this was a brilliant idea. Then I started to get slightly annoyed by the footnotes and felt that they were a little pompous and unnecessary.

Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

Usually when I read a memoir, I don’t really expect to learn anything. I might laugh or cry at the writer’s personal tragedies, but my expectations for experiencing some profound level of enlightenment is absent. After reading Kabul in Winter, I will now only read memoirs that are as thoughtfully written, educational and eye-opening as Ann Jones’s account of her time spent in Afghanistan. Even though this book will probably be found in the “Current Events” or “Politics” section of any radical bookstore, Jones’s account of her travels is better written than most memoirs.

Making Room: Finding Space in Unexpected Places

Living in a small studio apartment, I was excited to look through the home-help book, Making Room. The premise of the guide is to create new spaces in the home you have, instead of moving elsewhere or adding on extra rooms. With hopes set high, I eagerly dove into the book only to face-plant into glossy pages of disappointment.

The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border

I have always assumed that every feminist knows about the murders in Juarez, Mexico. I have been obsessed with the murders and available news reports (or lack there of) for the past couple of years. So when I saw that the first non-fiction book to be published about the Juarez femicide was coming out, I was incredibly excited to see that these events would finally be discussed in an accessible format. As I started reading the book, I couldn't put it down. I carried it with me everywhere, as these women's stories filled my head and my heart.

Baby Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing

Upon discovering Michelle Tea had edited a new anthology of queer girl fiction, I completely lost my butch identity as I jumped up and down and squealed in excitement. Before I even glanced at the first few pages of ­Baby Remember My Name, I assumed that each short story would revolve around some lesbian in San Francisco doing too many drugs, drinking too much alcohol and pining away over the wrong girl with endless packs of cigarettes. It’s the San Fran queer girl writing that I just can’t get enough of, and I was thrilled to see what new adventures I would read about this time.