On Community

(Paperback)

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Description

We need community to live. But what does it look like Why does it often feel like it's slipping away

We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges.

Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community's boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another.

Reviews

Praise for Casey Plett

"Plett's trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity."
Autostraddle ("Best Queer Books of the Year")

"Plett tells beautiful stories of trans women as they exist in the world: tangible, fallible, tender and hardened.
Xtra

"I've always admired Plett's ability to capture the tenderest and most complicated intimacies between characters. Exploring addiction, loss, consent, and shifting desires, each story in her extraordinary new collection is somehow even more tender and emotionally complex than the last.
Megan Milks, The Rumpus

"Plett has a characteristic style that manages to merge tenderness with Prairie toughnessa style on display in these stories of trans women seeking somethinggroundedness, maybe, but that dreamlike quality of desire, too.
Globe and Mail

"Both bittersweet and beautiful, Plett writes perfectly imperfect characters that make you feel less alone."
The Independent (UK)

Author Bio

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers, and the Publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for the New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, The Guardian, Globe and Mail, McSweeneys Internet Tendency, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ontario.