This Way to Change

Jezz Chung's debut collection is searing, tender, and very much on time. I particularly appreciated how grief is navigated throughout this work - both from a personal storytelling lens of Jezz but also from a collective societal lens. These pages will resonate and provide comfort + clarity to empaths and sensitive souls living through today's world. A powerful debut!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately I am unable to download this format and cannot access it as of yet. Hopefully an option to view it in kindle will exist in the future. Until then, I look forward to find This Way to Change on shelves in March 2024.

The books is awesome!! There were so many things I liked. The practices weren't just one format- they came as "writing and reflection prompts, somatic exercises, guided meditations and more." This made it so that you could move around and do the one that you connect with and feel most capable of completing at that moment. I didn't always connect with the poetry, but I think the write person would really love that as well.

The author did a really great job putting together this resource and I would definitely recommend.

A beautiful compilation of poetry, suggestions, and best practices when it comes to:
-abolition, disability justice, neurodivergence, mental health, therapy, advocacy, deconstruction, power, deriving from other teachings, strength, power, accessibility, community care, and more!

There are venn diagrams, other drawings/visual paths, questions/guides, maps, fill-in-the-blanks, visual cycles, and more.

I would love this as a hard copy to keep and reference on my own journey, and I highly recommend it to everyone!

Thank you NetGalley and Publishers for the opportunity to read and review! I did find parts of the book interesting and it held my attention while other parts I ended up skimming or straight up skipping. I think this book would be better to read overtime rather than in all one sitting, and I think that could make my reading experience with this book better.

This Way to Change by Jezz Chung is a very helpful and meaningful collection that serves as a guide to transformation and liberation. It combines poetry, prose, to-do lists, and practices to guide readers towards a life filled with acceptance, freedom, joy, and growth.

There's such a huge variety of important topics in this book, which is why I think it's best read over a bigger space of time rather than in one sitting or anything close to that. It gives you a lot to process (in a good way). Some of the main themes are deconstructing the gender binaries, decolonisation, building a community, friendships, healing your inner child, and more.

When I first went into the book, I thought it was a poetry collection, but it's more of a non-fiction guide to building a better life. There are some poems but not the majority of the book. So if you want an interactive book with a lot of helpful advice and prompts, this is perfect for that. I definitely learned a lot from the pages, and I will go back and read through the different prompts so I can actually do them.

Powerful, emotional, and raw, while infused with humor and beautiful insights. I really enjoyed this collection of poetry and practices.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!
In many ways, I felt like this book was written specifically for me. I spend my time thinking about disability, gender, sexuality, white supremacy, abolition, and creating cultures of care… and while those are all very clearly connected, it’s rare to see anyone pull them all together like this.
I also appreciated that the book was a mix of poetry, essays, exercises, and questions to sit with. They provide a good mix of ways to take information in, as well as a mix of ways of accessing reactions within yourself.
Something I love about this book is the seemingly random order of pieces leads to sparks of inspiration. For example, there is an essay about the origin of the term “Asian American” and the evolution of that as an identity category, and it is followed by a poem about how the HIV/AIDS crisis has left us without many queer elders. Those two pieces together left me thinking not just about the lack of queer elders, but specifically the lack of Asian American queer elders because of the compounding impact of having multiple marginalized identities.
I’m looking forward to the release of this book, and I can see myself gifting it to friends!

Very excited for this transformational book by Jezz Chung. I admit it - I like self-help, and I also love poetry, reading about AAAPI and LGBTQ history and ancestry. Appreciate Chung's exercises & reflections. I look forward to incorporating THIS WAY TO CHANGE into a daily practice. My thanks to the author and NetGalley!

This is a good book to graze through, gleaning what speaks to you and leaving the rest. For me, the care compass is helpful. I like any ideas about pleasure, intuition, and curiosity.

It is also very… Brooklyn, though. Sometimes I play a game where I don’t look up the location or credentials of an author and try to guess based on the words; 9 out of 10 times I’m right when it’s Brooklyn. And by that I mean, it’s a particular flavor of the social justice world (and identitarianism) that will either be empowering or alienating, if not downright hypocritical, depending on your context for it.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.