Sticker - Henry Hoke

Genre: Non-Fiction | Memoir | Short Story

Release Date: Expected 13th January 2022

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Sticker is part of the Object Lessons collections from Bloomsbury Academic, a series of short books teaching about the hidden lives of ordinary objects.

Like many, I have vivid memories of growing up that include stickers - the ones annoyingly stuck to the fruit in my lunchbox, the ones over my school books, the ones that come with sweets, the ones I wasn't meant to stick to the wall but did anyway - and they still appear in my adult life. They somehow remain a constant and despite their age hold an important part in popular physical media.

In stickers, Hoke creates a memoir using twenty different stickers to mark different phases in his life from infancy to adulthood - exploring growing up in a disabled family, racial segregation, queer childhood and living in a heavily facist and neo-nazi environment that fell victim to fatal terrorist attacks, extreme racism and homophobia - Charlottesville, USA. Rather than just a matter-of-fact history of his hometown, this explores deeply personal history and the emotions contained within, branching out into the wider social issues he's either experienced or observed coming from a place of being both priviledged and a minority at once.

At the same time, this collection also had sections that simply filled me with childhood nostalgia - the iconic gold star to the warning stickers on a bottle of bleach - invoking emotions I haven't thought of in over a decade.

In just under 150 pages, this was a very easy read despite some of it's more sensitive content. Hoke managed to curate a style that felt more like a personal, informal conversation with the reader that made the pages turn far too quickly and still remain fully engaging.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Henry Hoke, Bloomsbury Academic and Netgalley for this ARC in return for an honest review.

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