Socialist Realism

Moving West—from Singapore to America, from New York to California—a woman examines the myth of “finding home” even as she comes to terms with its impossibilities.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better”—someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia.

In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore—sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find. Attempting to reconcile her desires with her radical politics, she asks: do our quests to fulfill our deepest wishes propel us forward, or keep us trapped in the rubble of our deteriorating world?

Publication date: August 13, 2019 

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Page count: 168 pages

ISBN: 9781566895514

Trisha Low is the author of The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions 2013). She earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in performance studies at New York University. She lives in the East Bay.

Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Nonfiction

Winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award in Nonfiction

An Autostraddle Best Queer Book of 2019

“A consistently incisive and surprising new work of nonfiction.”

—Los Angeles Review of Books

“One of the most evocative books you're likely to encounter this year.”

—The Star Tribune

“Inventive, wise, and revelatory . . . a searching interrogation of identity, art, and a desire for a life beyond what we are told is possible.”

—Chicago Review of Books

“Low is at home in her electric mind, and we are happy to have been invited in.” 

—The Believer

“Expansive and freeing, like the best kind of daydream.”

—Nylon

“A work that defies normativity in every way, as Low moves with a kind of vulnerable virtuosity from one illuminating entry to the next.”

—VICE

“Socialist Realism might itself be a parable, in that it dares the reader to interpret it too literally—mistaking the showing of a wound for vulnerability, or uncertainty about political or artistic effects for a lack of commitment—but I count myself among the believers.”

—Frieze Magazine

“A book about what it means to try to fulfill our deepest desires.”

—Book Riot

“Reading Socialist Realism is like falling into a dream.”

—Overland

“It’s a joy to watch Trisha Low’s mind at work in this book as she contemplates utopia, identity, and how art expands her understanding of the world. Low doesn’t just have an idea—she interrogates it, examines it, and cuts it open.”

—Chelsea Hodson

“Equally candid and courageous, this meditation from the dark side of the heart may have arrived in the nick of time.”

—Blake Butler