Socialist realism

Low (The Complete Purge, 2013) offers a think piece on a range of subtopics, all connecting back to this long essay's focus on conceptions of home and identity.The author left her own home in Singapore for a British boarding school and then for the West, New York followed by California. From this experiential place, she looks backwards on her life. Where is the home she desires? Or, can home exist for anyone as it does in our own minds: a utopian, identity-based vision of desires fulfilled? The essay's structure is singular yet mosaic, chapter-less and broken into seemingly disconnected blocks of thought that are ultimately designed to be contemplated as a fractured whole. Low writes about her queerness, covering self-inflicted cuts with cartoonish band-aides, resenting the Confucian value system that compels her to pick up a $25,000 handbag for her mother, performance art installations that ask identity questions, the socio-economic history of Singapore, and literary analysis of Patricia Highsmith's novels. To all of these topics, Low applies the full force of her compelling intellect.--Emily Dziuban Copyright 2019 Booklist

This meditative work moves quickly, if not quite seamlessly, between memoir and cultural criticism, as poet Low (The Compleat Purge) describes how she has pursued both a passion for radical politics and a sense of belonging. Low grapples with her beliefs and life decisions in a non-chronological narrative that details her decisions for leaving Singapore for college in Philadelphia, followed by grad school in New York City, and then decamping for California. Among passages that recount personal moments--conversations with friends about how grief is displayed on Facebook, poignant memories of saying goodbye to her mother in an airport after a return visit to Singapore--Low scatters explanations of the development of her worldview. Only able to furtively explore alternative routes in politics and sexuality in Singapore's repressive atmosphere--a childhood viewing of The Talented Mr. Ripley is a revelation--Low finds her sensibilities maturing after her NYU professor, queer theory fixture José Esteban Muñoz, teaches her she can combine skepticism and optimism: "It was OK for my nihilism to be utopic, for my politics to also be a sensibility." Slipping smoothly between stylistic registers and across time in a relaxed stream-of-consciousness style, this highly readable, lyrical autobiographical essay promises much for Low's further excursions into prose. (Aug.)