If I can’t disagree with you, then it’s not my revolution … And if it’s not our revolution, then let’s build a new one.” Packing this opening essay with a mix of humour, cheek, and honest critique, Thom is both calling her community to work alongside her as well as contending with her own political disenchantment: “And my crisis of faith, I suppose, is the realization that maybe I’ve escaped an iron cage for a softer, ore sparkly one. In “Righteous Callings: Being Good, Leftist Orthodoxy, and the Social Justice Crisis of Faith,” Thom uses the essay form to not only speak directly to her peers but also to chant for a more speculative revolutionary future: “If I can’t fuck up and learn from my mistakes, then it’s not my revolution.
Skilled at stylistic hybridity, her voice throughout is both conversational and incantational. I Hope We Choose Love weaves personal storytelling with poetry, criticism, folklore, and political theory. Her expertise as a former therapist enriches her advice column and is also what makes her latest book with Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World, an especially thought-provoking read. Kai Cheng Thom may be best known for her personal essays and her advice column in Xtra, “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse,” though her contributions to feminist, queer, and trans literary culture also include the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press) the poetry collection, a place called No Homeland (Arsenal Pulp Press) and a children’s book, From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Arsenal Pulp Press). –Kai Cheng Thom, “How Neoliberalism Is Stealing Trans Liberation” My dear trans kindred-weird sisters, brothers grim and gay, siblings-in arms: What kind of world do you want to live in? Reviewed by Jane Shi Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), 144 pp., $17.95.
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