j/j hastain’s body is like paper…like this book…an isbn’ed version of texture and constantly
shifting translation. It folds and can be turned in several directions. It can be read upside
down and may splinter off if pulled too hard. It begs to be pulled apart. In our bodies are beauty 
inducers, j/j places speakers throughout the flesh-clothed skeleton, in crevices that often get
ignored, allowing a tongue and teeth to be placed sporadically in constructed mouth in order
to create sound. Our bodies are beauty inducers is as intimate as breathing in one’s morning or
fondling unhealed scars. It is a sensual and emotional portrayal of love, shifting gender and
relationship of what turns one on. The space and gaps j/j constructs on each page creates a
dialogue with digestion. It is a chant of the found self, due to years of searching and
transcribing. We may be locked up, drawers with rusted handles, too fragile to be opened.
Luckily, j/j whispers WD40 into the webbed/cracked/burnt places of the hidden gender, the
hidden desire, the watered down body that craves various measures of tidal waves. We are
reading the hieroglyphics beneath skin, below the moans and pressed against pulled out
orgasms. This is a breakdown, breakthrough, and break-in of bodies colliding,
communicating and growing new cells through slow-motioned language.

Reviewed by:
Aimee Herman

Queer Mojo [A Rebel Satori Imprint]