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Neotenica - by Joon Oluchi Lee (Paperback)

Neotenica - by  Joon Oluchi Lee (Paperback)
Store: Target
Last Price: 13.99 USD

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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>A slippery novel set in the Bay Area of the early aughts, where femininity, race, and class tangle together. <p><b>2021 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER</b></p> <p><b>Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction</b><p><p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><i>Neotenica</i> is a novel of encounters: casual sex, arranged-marriage dates, cops, rowdy teenagers, lawyers, a Sapphic flirtation, a rival, a child, and two important dogs. At the center of it are Young Ae, a Korean-born ballet dancer turned PhD student, and her husband, a Korean-American male who inhabits an interior femininity, neither transgender nor homosexual, but a strong, visceral femininity nonetheless. This novel is an adrenaline filled ride sliding across the surface of desire and chance through the quotidian turned playful. </p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p><i>Neotenica</i> is sentence-level sexy and surprisingly funny, my kind of thriller. Joon Oluchi Lee cracks open a window onto a very familiar Bay Area, yet one I've never before seen in fiction. I am obsessed with this book!--<b>Andrea Lawlor, author of <i>Paul Takes The Form of A Mortal Girl</i></b></p> <p>In <i>Neotenica</i>, observation is a way of life, a structure of not-quite-feeling. Wielding aestheticism as a gleeful tool for cultural inquiry, Joon Oluchi Lee undermines the ambivalence of mostly-affluent twentysomethings in the multicultural city by cataloging their detachment. Each chapter offers its own path between awareness and self-expression, boredom and curiosity, sensation and stasis. Clinically described, sexually candid, and viscerally detailed, this is a novel in fragments that builds toward a sadness almost like hope. If you know what this book is when you finish it, then you might not have really finished it.--<b>Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of <i>Sketchtasy</i></b></p> <p>Hot, electric, and funny as all hell. This tiny kaleidoscopic explosion of a book is a beautiful dream examining desire, race, tenderness, class, femininity, family, children, and dogs. Inject <i>Neotenica</i> into your fucking veins.--<b>Casey Plett, author of <i>Little Fish</i></b></p> <p><i>Neotenica</i> resists easy codifications. Through their refracting, and converging identities, the characters of <i>Neotenica</i> function in tandem; a warm ball of sweet matter hurtling through space and yearning for the freedom to exist as itself, not as its facsimile.--<b>June Lei, <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i></b></p> <p><i>Neotenica</i> is a tiny masterpiece. It's rowdy, alarming, sexy, and gives a deeper exploration of the messy, discursive texture of everyday life. Joon Oluchi Lee has written a novel with such verve and tenderness that you will become obsessed by page one.--<b>Cristina Rodriguez, Deep Vellum Books</b></p> <p>Lee (<i>Lace Sick Bag</i>) trains a droll, analytical eye on sex, desire, and gender in this delicious avant-garde novella.--<b><i>Publishers Weekly</b></i></p> <p><i>Neotenica</i> trolls desire like a twitter thread but it reads with far more presence and vulnerability. This novella, the third work of fiction by Joon Oluchi Lee is a hot read of the mundane as characters encounter one another in details glowing under blacklight. Told in vignettes, the narratives pivot around the only named character: Young Ae, a Korean born ballet dancer and kaleidoscopes through her straight, though gay-cruising, Korean American husband; his hook up; her hook up; a flirtation; a dog; a child. It is a book meant to be answerless and a temperate tangle but the impressions left unearth sensation and possibility through embracing femininity and altering --craft-wise and desire wise--where a climax can be.--<b>Corinne Manning, <i>Lambda Literary</i></b></p> <p>In all, <i>Neotenica</i> presents itself as a balletic maze of grace and wonder in the minutiae; the erotic poetry of the body and its attendant quality of tactility; the sometimes chuckling, stark but never unpleasant, clear-eyed but not vulgar...What remains is a certain glib playfulness and delight in sensation that makes <i>Neotenica</i> unpretentious but uncavalier, light-footed yet unflinching, and genuinely surprising.--<b>Marilyn Tran, <i>Singapore Unbound</i></b></p> <p>A totally original narrative that could perhaps only be published by a dynamic, independent press.--<b>Stephen Sohn, <i>Asian American Literature Fans</i></b></p> <p>A series of vignettes from the life of a married couple in early 2000s SF. A dainty 100 pages of characters exploring identity & navigating various things like random encounters, casual sex, arranged marriage, public transit. It's filthy and funny and unexpected and entirely delightful.--<i>Book Snack</i><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Joon Oluchi Lee lives and writes in femininity and feminism. The author of two works of fiction, <i>94</i> (Publication Studio, 2015) and <i>Lace Sick Bag</i> (Publication Studio, 2013), as well as various essays on queer theory, feminism, and fiction writing, Joon also blogged about life as a femme feminist gay male at lipstickeater.blogspot.com. Joon is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Creative Writing at Rhode Island School of Design, and with his partner Roderick, co-parent of their rescue dog Nella.

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