2026 Writing Log, Part Two
Jan. 11th, 2026 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling- This week’s post on my book review blog (here) is about Strange Map, the latest horror-mystery novel from the creepypasta YouTuber Uketsu. This one is about how the ruins of an abandoned village are discovered by the grandson of a woman who more than likely killed most of the people who lived there. To give my honest opinion, I wasn’t convinced that the writer (who specializes in short stories) had the chops to write a proper novel, but I was wrong. I had a good time with this book.
- My review of the academic monograph Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan was published in the online journal Studies on Asia (here). This book’s title is a bit of a mouthful, but what it’s essentially about is how the creators of classic shōjo manga were engaged with real-world feminist politics, as well as how their writing and art contributed to conversations about what it meant to be a “feminist” in postwar Japan. I feel like I’ve been waiting for a book like this for years, and I love it just as much as I hoped I would.
- I gave a talk about the work of the superstar manga artist Kyō Machiko at this year’s Modern Language Association conference in Toronto! I posted an informal abstract of my paper on my public-facing blog (here) if you’re interested, but the argument I tried to make is that comics don’t have to use a “gritty” art style or focus on shitty adult men in order to stage a meaningful political critique.
- As something of a palette cleanser, I drew a small mossy terrarium. I posted my illustration on Tumblr (here).
Not much to report this week. I’m a fan of Toronto, but the weather has been miserable. In retrospect, maybe I should have brought my sunlamp with me. That’s normal, right? In any case, I managed to do a successful academic conference, but I’m woefully behind on everything else.
- My review of the academic monograph Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan was published in the online journal Studies on Asia (here). This book’s title is a bit of a mouthful, but what it’s essentially about is how the creators of classic shōjo manga were engaged with real-world feminist politics, as well as how their writing and art contributed to conversations about what it meant to be a “feminist” in postwar Japan. I feel like I’ve been waiting for a book like this for years, and I love it just as much as I hoped I would.
- I gave a talk about the work of the superstar manga artist Kyō Machiko at this year’s Modern Language Association conference in Toronto! I posted an informal abstract of my paper on my public-facing blog (here) if you’re interested, but the argument I tried to make is that comics don’t have to use a “gritty” art style or focus on shitty adult men in order to stage a meaningful political critique.
- As something of a palette cleanser, I drew a small mossy terrarium. I posted my illustration on Tumblr (here).
Not much to report this week. I’m a fan of Toronto, but the weather has been miserable. In retrospect, maybe I should have brought my sunlamp with me. That’s normal, right? In any case, I managed to do a successful academic conference, but I’m woefully behind on everything else.
