i feel that way too
jaz papadopoulos
Nightwood Editions, 2024
Reviewed by Erin Kirsh
jaz papadopoulos’ debut poetry collection i feel that way too (Nightwood Editions, 2024) draws “lipliner runes for protection” and gloves up against rape culture and the pillars of disbelief, dismissal, and defense that uphold it. Broken into four sections, “The Rules”, “History of Media”, “I Feel That Way Too”, and “Epilogue”, papadopoulos studies the virology of misogynist ideologies, puts their queer shoulder to the forces that subjugate. Pulling inspiration from products marketed towards young girls, text from the Jian Ghomeshi sexual assault trial, Bob Hoskins’ hallucinations following the filming of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the thorny territory of memory, i feel that way too is an incantation that names, reveals, then fortifies against the many-headed harms of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and cissexism.
i feel that way too asks who is considered reliable in the eyes of the public. In the section “History of Media”, papadopoulos illustrates how varying social norms and legal definitions have often meant that the news and the courts have demonstrated profound bias against those coming forward to seek justice. The poem “Lesson 2: Language” lays bare how victims of sexual assault have been labeled untrustworthy, conniving, or simply beneath caring about in order to uphold structures of power:
“until 1983 in Canada, any attempt to levy a charge of rape against a spouse would be ignored, thrown out, or tallied under the statistic of ‘false allegation’ since, after all, it is legally and linguistically impossible for a husband to rape his wife.
A false allegation here, there, another. Ah, yes, women: they are slick with lies, aren’t they.”[1]
Expanding this exploration, in “Lesson 3: Circulation,” the speaker asserts:
“It is impossible for anything shaped as a woman
to be well understood
especially in public.”
It isn’t just the public being examined in papadopoulos’ collection. The poems of i feel that way too dwell as much in the kingdom of the internal as they do the external, and the speaker themself is not above their own investigation. From the section “I Feel That Way Too,” the author quotes artist Adriana Disman from their performance art piece “care work (who cares?)”:
“Do you ever feel like violence and desire
are so closely intertwined you don’t know
what you want?”[3]
Here, there is a courageous subtextual question: Is it possible to empower and harm ourselves at the same time? How perfectly can we rely on ourselves to navigate these unsafe, entrenched societal networks without doing ourselves damage? This can be a frightening line of inquiry. There are those who would pounce on the opportunity to ascribe blame to a victim for questioning themself. Many would distort and pervert this responsible introspection into a mea culpa. From “The Rules”:
“Your confessions…
reluctance
eagerness
embarrassment
can and will
be used
against you.”[4]
One of the most heartbreaking threads in i feel that way too is the seeming impossibility of a clean escape from bias and enshrined violence. In sections that delve into the speaker’s past, readers are shown that ours is such a culture of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and ciscentrism that many young women and AFAB people are taught that efforts to kick back at harmful conventions should be met with derision. We learn it is safest and most acceptable to force ourselves into shapes and personas that don’t fit for the benefit of social belonging. From the section “I Feel That Way Too,” there is this wonderfully loaded stanza:
“I tell the other girls I’ve been invited
to be a model but my feminist mother is ruining my life.
She writes No Barbies Please
on birthday invitations, wipes my Bubble Gum
Yum Yum lip gloss on her sleeve. No lip colour,
no nail polish, no TV. Only rural Manitoba granite”[5]
It could be tempting to read this passage merely as an adolescent ignoring the wisdom of their mother, but there’s more here. In these ideas shuttled from mother to child, in this parent’s attempt to ward her “daughter” against the limiting, flattening, and otherwise hostile strictures of gender roles for women that she herself has had to contend with, there is also a demonization of that which traditionally belongs to the realm of the femme. Because things like lip gloss and Barbies have been foisted on so many of us as the correct and proper things to be interested in, because of these objects’ understood alignment with patriarchal demands of women, they have been tainted, rendered irredeemable, unacceptable. And here it is, beautifully illustrated: the brutal double bind in this resistance, this genuine act of motherly care. There’s nothing wrong with lipstick (the speaker later employs it on their own terms as a method of spiritual shielding), there’s no nefarious agenda in nail polish, and there is joy (so much joy!) to be found in Barbies. In our efforts to liberate ourselves from patriarchy, it’s easy to end up taking aim not against violent systems, but that which is linked (whether inherently or through socialization) to the feminine.
In addition to the strengths, knowledge, love, and bravery we gain from our forebears, there is a necessarily double-edged quality to what a child inherits from their mother in a woman-hating society.
“Everything that can be said about beauty
can also be said about pain.
…
Mom shrinks her body
with her teeth, pares nail beds
like potatoes. I will never be like that,
I think, but somewhere a hole licks its lips”[6]
There is no bruiseless extraction from these pervasive, oppressive systems. Our best attempts may bear barbs, but what is worthier than the pursuit of agency, of personal and collective safety?
i feel that way too is a book with so much to it that to read it only once would be a mistake. This book is the kindest kind of protector: it hears you. Tells you. Holds you. It is a work to revisit over and over again.
[1] jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too, (Nightwood Editions, 2024), 17.
[2] jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too, (Nightwood Editions, 2024), 18.
[3] Adriana Disman, “care work (who cares?)” as performed at the LIVE! Biennale in Vancouver, Canada in 2019, quoted in jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too (Nightwood Editions, 2025), 80.
[4] jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too, (Nightwood Editions, 2024), 10.
[5] jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too, (Nightwood Editions, 2024), 61.
[6] jaz papadopoulos, i feel that way too, (Nightwood Editions, 2024), 51–52.