I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

It's a really hard question: when can someone be forgiven? When must someone be expelled from community? What is the alternative, particularly for queer people, of scapegoating particular individuals who may indeed have acted badly, but where the community is not consistent in how it practices reparative justice? It's all handled with sensitivity and thoughtfulness, whether you end up agreeing with the author or not, its really helpful for thinking through what self-management means for a community, and what community actually obliges of us.

This book is fabulous. My copy is covered with highlighter. I will turn back to this book again and again to ponder and investigate justice, healing, and community. The poems are beautiful. I love how the author talks about storytellers, integrity, honesty, relationships and community.

This is probably my favorite book of the year. it's very easy to read, and the ideas are brilliant. It suggests a different framework by how we can transform harm in our communities that doesn't create further harm. Very thought-provoking.

I Hope we Choose Love is pretty gorgeous. It addresses a kind of queer community I've never been a part of, and actually made me quite grateful that I came into my queerness a little bit older, a little less reactionary, and with a little better understanding of transformative justice than I might have had as a teenager. Some of the essays hit on things I don't think any of us want to talk about- like why we let people kill themselves, or how we enable abusers in our lives- and I'm infinitely grateful that this work exists. This work is easy to read and thought-provoking.

About abuse and trauma, how we survive it, how we perpetuate it, while questioning white queer culture and assumptions. With so much love and hope (tempered by distrust).

Important subject matter but this book comes off extremely whiny. Unbearable to read.

I don't know who exactly to recommend this to, I read it as someone following the author for some years on Twitter, and trying to figure out their own relationship with gender and identity. But the book and the author are not defined by being trans, or by being diaspora, it's not some manual on how to exist as part of some imagined monolithic group. Sometimes it is deeply personal, sometimes it is much more broadly contemplative. I cried at times reading it, other times I felt a knot in my stomach as I got angry, it brought a lot more to bear than I had expected. As I said at the start, I don't know who exactly to recommend this to, but I *do* recommend it.

This book is amazing and powerful!! For one thing, the author is a brilliant writer. Their writing feels poetic even when they're writing prose essays. Their use of language is beautiful! And then, of course, they tackle some of the toughest issues facing social justice work in these times. And they do so with delightful snark!! But they also take on these issues with really awesome generosity, love and compassion, and real honesty. They also do a really great job of letting the personal experience that informs this work keep their analysis solidly grounded in the concrete materialities of life and human relationships, avoiding the overly abstract and theoretical. Thus, I would very highly reccommend this book for anyone with an interest in contemporary social justice politics and struggles!!

There's really nothing more to be said than what some of the online reviewers have already said, but truly - as a queer PoC working in the not-for-profit industrial complex, this body of work spoke to me on so many levels, challenging me to think and rethink our movement. It's also clearly written from a place of such empathy - for the author to have gone through so much, she really does choose love and hope we do so too.

This is a lovely and timely read. Highly recommend for folks who feel the pain or frustration of how violent queer activist communities can be with each other.

It's a really hard question: when can someone be forgiven? When must someone be expelled from community? What is the alternative, particularly for queer people, of scapegoating particular individuals who may indeed have acted badly, but where the community is not consistent in how it practices reparative justice? It's all handled with sensitivity and thoughtfulness, whether you end up agreeing with the author or not, its really helpful for thinking through what self-management means for a community, and what community actually obliges of us.

This book is fabulous. My copy is covered with highlighter. I will turn back to this book again and again to ponder and investigate justice, healing, and community. The poems are beautiful. I love how the author talks about storytellers, integrity, honesty, relationships and community.

This is probably my favorite book of the year. it's very easy to read, and the ideas are brilliant. It suggests a different framework by how we can transform harm in our communities that doesn't create further harm. Very thought-provoking.

I Hope we Choose Love is pretty gorgeous. It addresses a kind of queer community I've never been a part of, and actually made me quite grateful that I came into my queerness a little bit older, a little less reactionary, and with a little better understanding of transformative justice than I might have had as a teenager. Some of the essays hit on things I don't think any of us want to talk about- like why we let people kill themselves, or how we enable abusers in our lives- and I'm infinitely grateful that this work exists. This work is easy to read and thought-provoking.

About abuse and trauma, how we survive it, how we perpetuate it, while questioning white queer culture and assumptions. With so much love and hope (tempered by distrust).

Important subject matter but this book comes off extremely whiny. Unbearable to read.

I don't know who exactly to recommend this to, I read it as someone following the author for some years on Twitter, and trying to figure out their own relationship with gender and identity. But the book and the author are not defined by being trans, or by being diaspora, it's not some manual on how to exist as part of some imagined monolithic group. Sometimes it is deeply personal, sometimes it is much more broadly contemplative. I cried at times reading it, other times I felt a knot in my stomach as I got angry, it brought a lot more to bear than I had expected. As I said at the start, I don't know who exactly to recommend this to, but I *do* recommend it.

This book is amazing and powerful!! For one thing, the author is a brilliant writer. Their writing feels poetic even when they're writing prose essays. Their use of language is beautiful! And then, of course, they tackle some of the toughest issues facing social justice work in these times. And they do so with delightful snark!! But they also take on these issues with really awesome generosity, love and compassion, and real honesty. They also do a really great job of letting the personal experience that informs this work keep their analysis solidly grounded in the concrete materialities of life and human relationships, avoiding the overly abstract and theoretical. Thus, I would very highly reccommend this book for anyone with an interest in contemporary social justice politics and struggles!!

There's really nothing more to be said than what some of the online reviewers have already said, but truly - as a queer PoC working in the not-for-profit industrial complex, this body of work spoke to me on so many levels, challenging me to think and rethink our movement. It's also clearly written from a place of such empathy - for the author to have gone through so much, she really does choose love and hope we do so too.

This is a lovely and timely read. Highly recommend for folks who feel the pain or frustration of how violent queer activist communities can be with each other.