Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls

Novelist/essayist/poet Thom (I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World), a Lambda Literary Award finalist and Chinese Canadian transgender woman, writes a series of beautiful, fragmentary letters of sorts, showcasing how life can be at once horrifically ugly and desperately, jaw-droppingly beautiful. She describes this work as a volume of poetry and nondenominational prayers written to the parts of oneself that are deemed unlovable and the parts of others that have violated some aspect of humanness in a way that feels hateful, harmful, or worse. Thom’s poems and fragments are followed by prompts, instructing readers how to find their way from hate to love. While not all of the writing or the prompts will resonate with readers, their vulnerability and rawness demonstrate how anyone can think about ugly moments and write through them to reach, if not to love, at a modicum of peace.