Zana’s Reviews > Names and Faces: A Graphic Memoir > Status Update

‘Later in Just Us, Rankine writes, “...blondness might be one of our most passive and fluid modes of complicity... It points to white power and its values as desirable, whether the thought enters one's head or not.”’

“I want to believe that the threat of invasive species is overblown, because I've internalized the language of invasion biology to the point that I identify with a beetle, a vine, and a fish.

Can we fully understand our ecosystems as long as xenophobia is part of how we see and name?”

”When we talk about invasive species, we tend to use violent metaphors and assign intention to plants and animals.

Infestations require us to wage war on and eradicate the invaders.

This language, says ecologist and scholar Brendon Larson, taps into the embodied horror of invasion that we experience as humans....”

“The ecological and economic impacts of invasive species are real and sometimes devastating.

Also real is the human desire to create order by imposing clean categories on an untidy world-

Good Native. Bad Invasive.

Within this framework, a war of extermination seems inevitable and righteous.”

‘Lise's name was pronounced "LEE-za," like mine.

But my name in German, spelled as it is, should be pronounced "LIE-za."

The pronunciation of my name doesn't follow the rules of English or German.’

Girl I feel you