Arts in ReviewChicken soup for the academic’s soul

Chicken soup for the academic’s soul

This article was published on November 29, 2019 and may be out of date. To maintain our historical record, The Cascade does not update or remove outdated articles.
Reading time: 3 mins

The Cascade was given a copy of this book for honest review purposes. 

Love Speech by Xiao Xuan / Sherry Huang is an auto-theoretical book released mid-September by Montréal-based publisher, Metatron Press. It’s a meditation by Huang on the expression and manifestation of love in her life as a queer immigrant, which reads like poetry while seamlessly integrating academia into its prose.

The genre of auto-theory is described as contemporary art and literature that combines autobiographical elements within the discourse of philosophy and theory. It’s a way to push the boundaries of genre conventions, and in  Love Speech the genre displays itself in what feels like an intimate diary but with added citations. 

Notably, Huang doesn’t shy away from incorporating negative space into her storytelling. Interspersed within Love Speech are full-paged photographs featuring grainy, overdeveloped shots of cityscapes displaying a rainbow of blue, orange, and red tones. An entire page will display a lone sentence, encouraging readers to pause and reflect on statements like, “To know that the time between us will have been.” It has a powerful effect of having readers experience a moment of palpable silence in the narration before continuing. 

Allowing these observations to breathe and take up entire pages feels necessary largely because Huang’s thoughts are often not related or cohesive together. One page will be a thoughtful comment on witnessing the change of oneself while another will jump to dissecting a sentence from an academic essay; they’re united by the overarching theme of exploring manifestations of love, but not necessarily to each other. If Love Speech is a wholesome soup of ideas, each spoonful reveals a new flavour. 

Love Speech is a short piece at only 84 pages. Its prose is made up of ominous revelations  such as a blank page devoted to the phrase “I will lie down in a field exactly for you”, given without explanation or warmth. Its abstract subject matter is only furthered by its academic elements. Citations in the footnotes sometimes include paragraphs from the source material for context, but for the most part they still leave readers with the notion that they’re not grasping the full message Huang intended.

An example is early in the book when Huang expresses: “I have always felt that the moment of address is the tear in the air we need to get going. ‘A wager… we become’12 when we move into the subject position ‘I.’” There’s a poetic flair, and individually the words make sense, but it feels like context is missing that detracts from the average reader’s understanding — despite a citation explaining the quote’s meaning. One gets the sense that Huang’s intended audience is made up of intellectuals and academics despite being available outside of their circles. However, it’s unfortunate that ***Love Speech isn’t more accessible since the implications of Huang’s work and her unique perspective would greatly benefit the average reader. 

***Love Speech does, however, leave readers with an emotional imprint and in a state of self-reflection. The book ends with the words: “Some encounters are not the event, but its residue — in gerunds, ongoing verb formations, still arriving.” This could very well describe ***Love Speech itself as a generator of afterthought in readers, partly because it doesn’t simplify itself for nonacademic readers and partly because of its poetic prose.

Most importantly, Love Speech discusses a tender subject often unexplored in our current cultural landscape: love and relationships through the eyes of an LGBTQ+ person of colour, specifically an immigrant citizen. Emphasis is often placed on migrants to be hardworking, functioning members of society, and less is placed on allowing their personal lives and stories to flourish and be heard. Furthermore, women and people of colour aren’t well represented in the upper levels of the academy, and this makes Huang’s perspective in these circles especially crucial.

Love Speech is an intimate and philosophical reflection on the manifestation of love in the life of a queer immigrant-settler. It’s a mood piece in literary form that utilizes negative space and abstract ideas to, as the author puts it, create “perfect [units] capable of making a mood reoccur.” Huang carefully balances poetry and academia in this auto-theoretical piece that, admittedly, can go over the heads of readers but nonetheless has earned its place amongst academic circles focused on gender studies and philosophy.

 

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Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.

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