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256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 22, 2022
The queer kids a few years ago liked to talk about trash, like Oscar the Grouch might talk about trash—I’m trash, I’m a heap, a pile, in a Dumpster, cartoon banana peels, a soft carpet of dead salad. […] But archives really are trash. Everything in the archives is something that somebody thought about throwing away and didn’t. To play in the garbage chute, to find out about all these old traumas and dramas—that’s where the glee comes in, glee like having someone scoop up the papers behind you and let them flutter down on your hand.Thematically, it was also very up my alley. There’s a lot of discussion of gender in all its messy complexity, with Elsie slowly realising she might not be as cis as she thought. Some very timely discussion of fandom and fanfic (although though bulletin boards and AOL newsgroups – god that made me feel young), touching upon ableism through Sol’s chronic illness about which so many characters talk with great concern then absolutely refuse to do anything to help him not die from sun exposure and call him selfish for just trying to survive, the way other people’s discomfort with him being disabled and/or trans is prioritised over his life…but the overarching theme for me was navigating the messy reality of being queer. Given that the author is also a transmasc archivist himself I can’t help but wonder (even though it’s, ultimately, none of my business) how much of himself did he put into it – for one, the knowledge of archive work definitely shines through, and I love when authors put something they’re clearly passionate about in their writing.
"We love a body slipping through time, and we cherish it as time strips parts of it away, and we feel good until it slips away from us entirely. You can give up some things that give you pleasure, if it means the ones you love can have joy."I do wish the pacing had been a bit more consistent in Dead Collections. For such a short book, I was surprised to find that parts really dragged. The story seemed more character-driven to me than the synopsis led me to expect.