THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence, including rape, murder, cannibalism, and animal abuse.)

He doesn’t call it special meat. He uses technical words to refer to what is a human but will never be a person, to what is always a product. To the number of head to be processed, to the lot waiting in the unloading yard, to the slaughter line that must run in a constant and orderly manner, to the excrement that needs to be sold for manure, to the offal sector. No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would prefer not to have to call them by any name herunterladen.

“I know that when I die somebody’s going to sell my flesh on the black market, one of my awful distant relatives. That’s why I smoke and drink, so I taste bitter and no one gets any pleasure out of my death.” She takes a quick drag and says, “Today I’m the butcher, tomorrow I might be the cattle.” He downs his wine and tells her he doesn’t understand, she has money and can ensure she’s not eaten when she dies, a lot of people do. She gives him a look that could be pity: “No one can be sure of anything. Let them eat me, I’ll give them horrible indigestion.” She opens her mouth, without showing her teeth, and lets out a guttural sound that could be a cackle, but isn’t. “I’m surrounded by death, all day long, at all hours of the day,” she says, and points to the carcasses in the fridge. “Everything indicates that my destiny is in there. Or do you think we won’t have to pay for this?”

In this instant, he thinks he’d like to die here, in this terrarium, with these puppies. That way at least his body could serve as food and these animals could live a little longer.

The first few times Tender Is the Flesh popped up on my radar, I decided to pass on it, or at least on the early review copies: as a vegan, I knew there would be A LOT to unpack in a review, way more than I have time for rayman kostenlos downloaden. (I tend to go overboard on novels involving animal rights themes, okay.) And there is! But a glowing review from a fellow animal advocate made me reconsider, and I’m glad I did. Tender Is the Flesh is far from what I’d call an easy or even enjoyable read, but it’s a haunting tale that will hopefully force some readers to reexamine their relationship to nonhuman animals.

Marcos Tejo works at the Krieg Processing Plant, as the second-in-command to the plant’s owner. (It’s hard not to picture Dwight Schrute here, for reasons I’ll elucidate later.) His job involves fostering relationships with suppliers and buyers, finding and training new workers, and cleaning up the messes Krieg would rather not deal with. Unlike his father, who also worked in animal agriculture, Marcos does not deal in pigs and pork, but in “special” meat: the flesh of human animals. (But not “people.” Never “people.”)

Tender Is the Flesh is set in a dystopian near-future where a virus called GGB has made consuming animals – or interacting with them in any way, shape, or form – unsafe for humans anonym illegal downloaden. Naturally, this led to the end of animal agriculture as we know it; but the effects are far more extensive than the book’s synopsis suggests. In the wake of GGB, all the world’s land mammals – from dogs and cats to chickens and cows – were wiped off the face of the planet, supposedly to protect humanity from the virus. In the process, we have all but annihilated our connection with the natural world.

(From the psychological benefits of animal companionship to the ecology of community, please pause and take a moment to truly imagine what sort of impact this might have on our individual and collective psyches. Like, it’s kind of wild, in a bad way: the feelings of alienation and disconnectedness Bazterrica conjures in her barren, humans-only landscape. I, too, would like nothing more than to die at the bottom of a dog pile if faced with such an existence.)

But back to the Krieg Processing Plant, where we follow Marcos through the soul-crushing monotony of his day: visits to buyers at laboratories and game reserves, interviews with prospective new employees (who have to be crazy to want to kill other people for a living, or else will be driven mad in time), frantic sex on a table with an eccentric butcher lady friend. Depressing updates from the senior care facility where his father, who suffers from dementia, is counting down his days. Inescapable family dinners with his sister, whom Marcos cannot stand. Illicit trips to the now-abandoned zoo, where he and his father once shared happier times. Fruitless calls to his estranged wife Cecilia, who’s been staying with her mother ever since the loss of their son Leo to SIDS.

And then everything is suddenly and thoroughly upended with a simple gift: one of Marcos’s clients surprises him with a very pricey purebred female, conveniently delivered right to his door, Marcos’s property with which to do as he wishes.

Well, not exactly: there are strict (albeit convoluted) rules in this dystopia. For starters, “reproduction of head is only permitted by artificial means.” (Even the head are not allowed to copulate amongst themselves.) Slavery – either sexual or otherwise – is outlawed; we’re not savages, after all! Marcos can eat his new female – one cut at a time, if he so desires – sell her for a profit, or leave her there to starve. But rape is where his society draws the line (if only).

While he initially views the female as a problem to be taken care of, slowly she becomes a receptacle for all his repressed emotions, chief among them his grief: over the death of his son, and the extermination of the animal world. He even gives her a name (Jasmine), which is strictly forbidden: just ask any 4-H kid how humanizing the meat worked out for them.

I think you can guess what happens from here. Thankfully – and again contrary to what you might expect from the synopsis – THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY. Had Bazterrica tried to twist it into one, this would be a much more venomous review. But she gets it: there cannot be any semblance of a consensual relationship between a person and his property, and any sexual activity within the confines of such unequal power dynamics is necessarily rape. From Marcos’s imprisonment of Jasmine when he’s not at home, to the story’s (not-so-) shocking denouement, it’s always clear that this is not a romance, trappings of such be damned. (Nazi offer/Jewish captive trope, I’m looking at you.)

Tender Is the Flesh is a shocking and graphic horror story, but it’s so much more: a window into the world of animal agriculture (and if you’re appalled at what happens to Jasmine and her peers, what of the billions of nonhuman animals that are imprisoned and killed by animal ag., every year, in the US alone?); political satire (between the virus and the many conspiracy theories swirling around it, it’s hard not to draw parallels to the modern day); and a critique of capitalism (One of those conspiracy theories? GGB was simply a hoax to reduce overpopulation by killing off the poors, the disabled, and the otherwise marginalized. Not so far from the truth, I don’t think.)

From a vegan perspective, Bazterrica’s attention to detail is spectacular, if in a sickening sort of way. The mechanisms of animal agriculture, rather than being upended by the absence of nonhumans, were rather superimposed onto their human cousins – and seamlessly, at that. From the mental tricks we actively adopt to dehumanize and objectify animals – denying any and all evidence of their sentience and intelligence; giving them numbers instead of names; using euphemisms to make cruelty sound more palatable; carrying out the torture and killing in nondescript, remote buildings – to the process of enslaving, murdering, deconstructing, commodifying, and selling an individual, Bazterrica has clearly done her homework.

In Marcos’s world, head aren’t just food: they’re also research subjects, organ and tissue growers, entertainment, game, trophies, sacrifices, and offerings. Sex slaves too, or at least for those rich and powerful enough to evade the law. (Before you object to this last comparison, consider: bestiality is legal in three US states & DC; crush videos are a thing; and undercover investigations have documented countless cases of sexual abuse and rape in animal agriculture facilities.) No part of the human is wasted: their skin is harvested to make leather; their hair, wigs. Penises are touted as an aphrodisiac.

Some of the elements of Bazterrica’s world seem like they’d be at home in a Margaret Atwood novel (this amounts to high praise from yours truly). To wit:

On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs. He looks away. He knows that at many breeding centers it’s common practice to maim the impregnated females, who otherwise would kill their fetuses by ramming their stomachs against the bars of their cage, or by not eating, doing whatever it takes to prevent their babies from being born and dying in a processing plant.

Right now I’m picturing Oryx & Crake, particularly HelthWyzer’s creation of animals lacking in central nervous systems, so that they’d be unable to feel all the cruelty inflicted upon their genetically “modified” (read: ruined) bodies. (A science fiction contrivance which has become all to plausible IRL.)

There’s also the exquisitely obscene irony baked into this spectacle (pun most certainly not intended):

The smell of barbecue is in the air. They go to the rest area, where the farmhands are roasting a rack of meat on a cross. El Gringo explains to Egmont that they’ve been preparing it since eight in the morning, “So it melts in your mouth,” and that the guys are actually about to eat a kid. “It’s the most tender kind of meat, there’s only just a little, because a kid doesn’t weigh as much as a calf. We’re celebrating because one of the farmhands became a father,” he explains.

Marcos’s peers seem to have (d)evolved from merely tolerating cruelty to actively celebrating it – and nowhere is this more evident than in the latest culinary fad sweeping the nation, “death by 1,000 cuts”:

Off to the side on the countertop, he sees a book. His sister doesn’t have books. The title is Domestic Head: Your Guide to Death by a Thousand Cuts. There are red and brown stains in the book. He feels he might vomit. Of course, he thinks, she’s going to carve the head up slowly, serving pieces every time she hosts an event. The death-by-a-thousand-cuts thing must be some sort of trend, if all her guests are talking about it. An activity for the whole family, cutting up the living being in the fridge, based on a thousand-year-old form of Chinese torture. The domestic head looks at him sadly. He tries to open the door, but it’s locked.

Enter: “Burger On the Go” by Dwight Schrute.

I could go on and on – Marcos’s veganism, for example, is just begging for analysis – but you really have to read this book for yourself to feel the weight of it. It’s as shrewd as it is horrifying.

Incidentally, the various international book covers are strongly evocative of both PETA’s women/animals campaign imagery, as well as advertisements that equate (meat) animals with (sexy) women.

That’s a whole ‘nother series of essays, I’m afraid.

(This review is also available on Amazon, Library Thing, and Goodreads. Please click through and vote it helpful if you’re so inclined!)

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll flash an areola auto spielen kostenlosen.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)

It all started with a strategically exposed tit dinner for one downloaden.

Based on a twitter thread started by writer Nicole Tersigni, Men to Avoid in Art and Life pairs classic paintings (some of them creepy AF all by their lonesomes) with the gross things men say to women in the wild inkscape for mac. From the always popular “you’d be so much prettier if you smiled” to the very meddlesome breastfeeding instructional, Men to Avoid in Art and Life is a veritable smorgasbord of white male privilege and awfulness kann 888poker nicht downloaden.

There are your MANSPLAINERS:

Your CONCERN TROLLS:

Wannabe COMEDIANS:

So-called SEXPERTS:

And, not to be outdone, PATRONIZERS:

Books based on memes and Twitter feeds can sometimes be a little repetitive – too much of a good thing, etc super bubbles kostenlos herunterladen. – but not so here. With just 76 pairings, this is a quick read that left me craving more. Sadly, there’s no dedicated Twitter feed where you can whet your appetite, just the original thread herunterladen. Still, it’s something.

fwiw, I have no idea why they omitted “thanks I’m gay now” by norman rockwell from the book; this is something that will keep me up at night hubschrauber flugsimulator kostenlos downloaden.

Ditto:

"maybe

if I take my tit out

they will stop explaining my own joke back to me" pic.twitter.com/WhJ7j21kgk

— nicsigni (@nicsigni) May 6, 2019

Really the only thing that could have made this book better is if Tersigni paired this with screenshots of actual tweets wetter.com kostenlos herunterladen. Still, it works. What woman among us hasn’t had a painfully unfunny joke explained back to us ad nauseam, as if the teller’s sexism will suddenly metamorphose into a sidesplitter upon the umpteenth retelling garmin express voor mac?

(This review is also available on Amazon, Library Thing, and Goodreads btd6 herunterladen. Please click through and vote it helpful if you’re so inclined!)

“I’ve always been a voracious reader, and this is quite the story.”

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for racist violence, including a scene involving an ICE raid, and violence against women, including rape.)

“Manuela de La Mancha,” says a deep voice. It sounds strange to hear such a long name, but that’s the manada I’m pretending to be from.

“Hola, Marilén,” I say to Tiago and Saysa’s great-grandmother, whom I met moments ago kostenlose hintergrundbilderen.

“No sos bruja.” You’re not a witch.

My tongue feels like sandpaper, and my mouth seals dry. Since our wolf-shadows roam outside the Citadel, and my fangs and claws are retracted, I didn’t think there would be any indicator of my identity—

“No te preocupes, no vengo a interrogarte.” Don’t worry, I’m not here to interrogate you.

She moves closer, and the way her steely eyes seem to see more than others reminds me of Perla. “Toda la vida soñé con conocerte,” she whispers. My whole life I’ve dreamt of meeting you.

Her long black hair is in a tight, elegant bun that pulls her skin, stretching it so that if there’s a single wrinkle, I don’t see it Combine pdf for free Download. “La primera de nosotras que nació fuera de su jaula.”

The first of us to be born outside her cage.

“Anything you do that’s traditional wolf territory could be challenged by some zealot, and you could wind up before the tribunal. I’ve been studying their decisions, and they tend to be led by their pragmatism. Our world is gray, and rapidly gray-ing, and the tribunal navigates it by sticking to a determinedly black-and-white approach. They rule by the book and can’t be swayed by emotion. If you don’t fit the exact letter of the law, they see you as going against it.”

“So what do I do?”

“You can’t break a law that doesn’t apply to you.”

“Meaning?”

“If you’re undocumented, you’re unwritten zeichentrickfilme kostenlos herunterladen. Embrace that.”

“You’re saying if no one’s told my story before … I get to tell it the way I want?”

“Exactly.”

“Sometimes reality strays so far from what’s rational that we can only explain it through fantasy.”

Sixteen-year-old Manuela “Manu” Azul lives on the fringes of society, in more ways than one; in more ways than even she knows.

For starters, she and her mother Soledad are undocumented immigrants, living in Miami illegally while Ma applies for visas through her employer, a wealthy Cuban immigrant named Doña Rosa. As the story goes, Soledad was forced to flee Argentina more than a dozen years ago after she had an affair with Manu’s father, the reluctant heir to a powerful criminal organization download old typo3 versions. When he tried to leave his family for his lover, they had him killed. Soledad’s only saving grace? She ran before her treacherous in-laws discovered she was pregnant with Manu.

Now Manu spends most of her time in lockdown, confined to the relative safety of an apartment complex known as El Retiro, her invisible bars shaped by Ma’s maxim: “Attention breeds scrutiny. Silence is your salvation. Discovery = Deportation.” But it’s hard to evade both ICE and the Argentinian mob when you share a rare genetic mutation with your infamous father: “Because you can’t be invisible when your irises are yellow suns and your pupils are silver stars.” Barred from attending school or socializing, Manu’s only friend is Perla, her ninety-year-old roommate, teacher, and surrogate grandmother bilder fürs handy kostenlos herunterladen.

Manu’s precarious existence is upended when Perla is attacked in their apartment, and Soledad’s employer is raided by ICE – all in the same afternoon. Manu discovers that so much of her life has been a lie; while in other ways, the half-truths and creeping sense of isolation have only been harbingers of things to come. The magical place she dreams of during her period – when her “lunaritis” becomes so severe that Ma has to sedate Manu for her own good – really does exist, and it’s the key to finding her place in the world amazon film kaufen downloaden. Worlds, plural: her mother’s and her father’s. For her father’s people are Septis, powerful lobizonos and brujas who move back and forth between earth and Lunaris.

There’s one thing Soledad wasn’t lying about, though: if the Cazadores learn of Manu’s existence, she will be executed. Human-Septis hybrids are considered abominations, and Manu has yet another beautiful deviation up her sleeve: one that threatens to upend the entire patriarchal system on which Septis culture is based. She’s not a bruja, as gender essentialism would dictate, but rather a powerful lobizona. The first of her kind.

Lobizona is such a great story, and I’m worried that I’ve already dropped too many spoilers, so I’ll shut up about plot specifics how to. Let’s just say Manu’s quest involves surreptitious enrollment in a boarding school for young Septis; a search for her missing father, Fierro; a found family involving classmates Tiego, Cata, and Saysa (among others); smashing the patriarchy; and a trip to another world that’s both enchanting and lethal.

Garber’s world building here is simply spectacular: the twin locales of El Laberinto and Lunaris, anchored by a sentient, bigger-on-the-side, magic police box tree called Flora, are as beguiling as they are complex and detailed. There’s so much to love here, from Flora’s “living library” to Lunaris’s rainbow colored waterfalls and wolf-shaped shadows that seem to exist apart from their owners sketchup download mac kostenlos.

And the racial and gender politics! While I was fully expecting parallels between Manu’s dual “outlaw” status – as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, and as a hybrid in Lunaris – Garber’s decision to throw gender into the mix made things extra deliciously complicated. And I am so here for it! The scenes where Manu’s bruja sisters (and more than a few lobizono brothers – yay for allyship!) rooted for her gave me all kinds of feelings, and Diego’s coaching Manu to write her own story – to own her race and gender and species membership – is inspiring AF.

There’s a bit of a Handmaid’s Tale meets Harry Potter vibe here, but with a much more nuanced interrogation of race on both counts need for speed world. (Or interrogation of race, period.)

Like The Handmaid’s Tale, I feel as though I could write an entire thesis on the themes explored in Lobizona (that’s one way to pass the time until the sequel, am I right?); Garber’s attention to detail is impressive, and leads to some rather interesting and unexpected reveals. The bit about brujas being required by law to birth at least two children – nevermind that doing so saps them of their magic – is particularly chilling, and sadly as relevant as ever.

(This review is also available on Amazon, Library Thing, and Goodreads firefox browser herunterladen. Please click through and vote it helpful if you’re so inclined!)