Sam Franzini

1 week ago | ourculturemag.com | Sam Franzini

Akari has arrived at a particularly tough moment in Mariko and Dan’s relationship. The cinematographer has just arrived at her sister’s place in New York to crash on their couch after a particularly long conversation in the middle of the night about sex, literature, and their future. It only gets more tense from there; as the three interact (but mostly worry about each other), they can feel their identities and plans dissolve.

1 week ago | spectrumculture.com | Sam Franzini

If Torrey Peters introduced herself as a fearless and astute chronicler of modern trans life in her 2021 debut novel, Detransition, Baby, she cements her place in Stag Dance, a novel and three stories about the absurdity, horror and misunderstanding of gender. Her closeted crossdressers, hulking self-reflective men and fetishists don’t conform to morality, nor should they. Peters’ fiction is particularly refreshing.

2 weeks ago | ourculturemag.com | Sam Franzini

After a string of random attacks by Vietnamese Americans, the president signs an executive order demanding their immediate incarceration. A mirror and uncomfortable echo of World War II’s Japanese Internment, Viets are forced into camps, detaining half of one family. While their jobs at Google and a news company, Alvin and Ursula are exempted, but their half-cousins aren’t so lucky. Along with their mother, Jen, an NYU freshman and Duncan, a high school athlete, make their way into the camps.

3 weeks ago | ourculturemag.com | Sam Franzini

Linda is a totally normal tech worker living in San Francisco, except that she’s sexually attracted to planes. A large part of her salary (and her life) goes to planespotting, flying, and hoping that she’ll be the lucky woman a plane chooses to be her mate for life, consummated in an explosive plane crash. For Linda, that’s true love.

1 month ago | popmatters.com | Sam Franzini

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves Penguin I don’t remember much of the 2000s, the decade I was born, but I remember NBC’s The Biggest Loser (2004-2016), which came to mind while reading Sophie Gilbert. The Biggest Loser was a game show by way of humiliation, pitting overweight Americans against each other to drop body fat through grueling workouts, and as quickly as possible.