Power To Yield

I’d like to get something out of the way before I review Power To Yield, the most recent short story collection from Bogi Takács. I was insanely flattered when the author filled out the BookishlyJewish Suggest a Book Form, and even provided a brief explanation of eir work as if I was not already a raging fan of eirs. So I went into this reading feeling pretty pumped, but also having read some of the stories in their original venues. It was intriguing to see them laid out in this way and several stories were new to me as I did not have access to them prior. The forward by Ada Hoffmann is dead on about Takács employing perspective in a unique way. The reader will encounter human perspectives that are orthodox, queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and many other things. And that’s before we get to the perspectives of AI, aliens, and plants. There are even humans that become plants ( twice!!!). 

As a writer, I’ve long struggled with the fear that the perspective I write from may not be welcome, or that every sale is just a fluke, and the novelty will soon pass for editors. It doesn’t help that I once got a rejection calling the setting of the women’s mikvah “exotic.”  As if a tradition still practiced by millions of people worldwide is nothing more than an endangered species spotted in a zoo. So to see Takács in And I Entreated have the main character describe another character with the phrase “They davka looked Jewish,” was particularly special for me. Like choke on water going up my nose in surprise special. Because migration is another one of Takács’s themes and that phrase is the language of home to me. It tells me that not only can I tell my stories, I should be doing so in my own words. 

I suspect a lot of people will favor the title story Power to Yield, and for good reason. It includes aro/ace characters with varying cognotypes that we Earth dwellers would likely call neurodivergence, engaging in a magical form of BDSM for ethically complicated reasons. They acknowledge that their choices are flawed, but still the best they can make at this time because sometimes freedom requires certain compromises. It’s the type of story that you sink into and think about for a good long while after finishing it. But it was not my favorite. That particular award goes to An Errant Holy Spark. 

An Errant Holy Spark, on it’s surface is about an AI, the people that invent AI, and alien communication. This is all good stuff, but that’s not why it’s my favorite story from the collection. I really, really enjoyed the character of Dani, a trans Jew who teaches the AI about Torah and why G-d bestowed a divine spark upon an AI. When the arrtificial intelligence comments,

“Mother always tried to look “American,” as she put it. Dani looked American and wore all this ethnic clothing. I could not figure this out for years.”

– it really encapsulated why varying perspectives are valuable in story telling. I loved that line, but when Dani says –

“I was thrown out of an Orthodox synagogue, not all of
Judaism itself. That would be quite a feat! …. I’m too Orthodox still to be Reform, ….Too trans to be Orthodox, at least in their eyes. And I believe because it feels right.” (The … represents text I removed for brevitys sake ).

– I felt a whole lot of feelings that are not easily quantified. It was like a dagger through the heart and a hug all at the same time. In a good way. I could see why the aliens chose to communicate with Dani specifically. I suspect I’d enjoy communicating with them too. Alas, they are fictional and reading the story is as close as I’ll get.

This is a book that will challenge ones own perspective even as it validates it. There are things to laugh about, things to ponder, things to make a person wonder in the best sense of the world. Your favorites will be different than mine, and that’s cool, because we each have our own perspective and voice that we bring to reading too. That’s the real take away here. That all these different ways of seeing the world are valid.

Note: BookishlyJewish received a free e-arc of this book from the author through our Suggest A Book form.

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