Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The ace world is not an obligation. Nobody needs to identify, nobody is trapped, nobody needs to stay forever and pledge allegiance. The words are gifts. If you know which terms to search, you know how to find others who might have something to teach.” (Bingo Blackout & Cannonball!)

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

by 9 Comments

Books have answers, and that is one of the reasons I love them. The past few years I’ve spent some time digging into me, and how I work, and how much of what I have presented to the outside world was authentic, and how much was what I had been expected to do. I had some knowledge of aces and asexuality before reading this particularly as one of my friends is ace and has been out for at least the decade I’ve known her, probably […]

Asexual Cake

A Quick and Easy Guide to Asexuality by Molly Muldoon and Will Hernandez

by 6 Comments

I really wish I had something like Molly Muldoon and Will Hernandez’ A Quick and Easy Guide to Asexuality when I was struggling to figure myself out. I did not hear the term asexual outside of very specific conversations about cellular reproduction. When I did start hearing the term in relation to human sexuality I initially confused it with androgyny, which is an entirely different thing. Fellow Cannonballers started reviewing Angela Chen’s Ace and I was very curious. Further investigation gave me an almost cartoonish […]

A world of compulsory sexuality and how it hurts us all

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

by 1 Comment

This book claims to provide an important perspective of what asexuality can teach us about intimacy and sex more generally. Boy does it deliver. I picked this book up on recommendation from the cannonball brain trust and am only too happy I did. I heard about asexuality first a few years ago and it made very little sense to me. I didn’t know anyone personally who identified that way, so I sought out documentaries to help fill me in. These did not help clarify what, […]

A detailed, non-science based theorem I have no business sharing with anyone

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

by 4 Comments

So I 100% blame narfna and Dome’Loki for this. I am linking their reviews because they’ve both done a much better job explaining this book than I could ever hope to accomplish. I have discovered this book through their reviews and I was very excited to read it. I read Loveless, which was centered around an ace protagonist, and I knew I needed more information about this. So I roped a bunch of people into reading it with me. 🙂 This was the book for my […]

Narfna, thank you for reviewing Ace, the book I didn’t know I needed.

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About, Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

by 23 Comments

During Cannonball Bingo, I read The Sound of Stars in which a character identifies as ace or maybe demi-ace.  The use of ace as an identifier was unfamiliar to me and a google search later brought me to the definition of ‘ace’ being a shorthand for asexual.  My initial thought was that was interesting as I hadn’t been familiar with the term but then ‘ace’ got tucked away. Then I read Narfna’s review  and had the realization that asexuality was something I needed to look further […]

“It is cause for celebration whenever anyone is, to the best of their ability, making their own choices free from pressure—and also working to change the social and political structures that will let everyone else have that same sexual freedom, and freedom of other kinds, too.”

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society & the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

by 9 Comments

Quick review (ha! possible for me?) for a book that’s been holding up my review queue. This was an excellent book about what it means to be asexual, and how we think about sexuality in general. The best thing about it isn’t the way it explains asexuality, or the ace identity (which is extremely varied! as is all sexuality and forms of identity) but the way that it takes that premise and then opens it further. Chen posits that by acknowledging asexuality and striving to […]



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