The Reading is Resistance Book Club is a reading group dedicated to new books and classic texts that are relevant for one to remain informed and engaged. For questions about this book club, click here to email us.
The Reading is Resistance Book Club will meet to discuss This Has Always Been a War by Lori Fox on Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 at 7:30pm.
A powerful, personal critique of capitalist patriarchy as seen through the eyes of a queer radical.
Capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of our personal, social, economic, and sexual lives. By examining the politics of gender, environment, and sexuality, we can see the ways straight, cis, white, and especially male upper-class people control and subvert the other - queer, non-binary, BIPOC, and female bodies - in order to keep the working lower classes divided. Patriarchy and classism are forms of systemic violence which ensure that the main commodity of capitalism - a large, disposable, cheap, and ideally subjugated work force - is readily available. There is a lot wrong with the ways we live, work, and treat each other.
In essays that are both accessible and inspiring, Lori Fox examines their confrontations with the capitalist patriarchy through their experiences as a queer, non-binary, working-class farm hand, labourer, bartender, bush-worker, and road dog, exploring the ugly places where issues of gender, sexuality, class, and the environment intersect.
In applying the micro to the macro, demonstrating how the personal is political and vice versa, Fox exposes the flaws in believing that this is the only way our society can or should work. Brash, topical, and passionate, This Has Always Been a War is not only a collection of essays, but a series of dispatches from the combative front lines of our present-day culture.
Lori Fox is a queer, non-binary, working-class writer and journalist. Their work, which focuses on issues of class, gender, sexuality, the environment, and the messy places where these things intersect, has appeared with The Guardian, Vice, and The Globe and Mail, among many other outlets. This Has Always Been a War is their first book.
