Wild Shrew Literary Review (WSLR) is Sinister Wisdom’s online book review project. To complement the longer list of suggested books available for review, each month we feature a selection of books being released that month. If you would like to write a review, or if you would like to be added to the WSLR email list to receive the monthly complete book list with book descriptions, please email the WSLR editor, Chloe Berger, at chloe at sinisterwisdom dot org.


December 2025 Featured Books:
1. Shine: Portraits in Queer Resilience, Embracing New Dimensions by Asafe Ghalib
2. Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia by Maria (Masha) Alyokhina
3. In Storm & Stillwater by Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano
4. Hysterical by Amber Dean


Book descriptions:

Shine: Portraits in Queer Resilience, Embracing New Dimensions by Asafe Ghalib: A deeply personal work of photojournalism from one of Britain’s most exciting young photographers working today

For many queer people, exile begins at home. The search for safety and freedom to express themselves drives millions of LGBTQIA+ people across borders. Their stories are full of contrasts—between isolation and community, freedom and nostalgia.

In their stunning compositions, photographer Asafe Ghalib explores the identities of members of the LGBTQIA+ immigrant community in Britain with striking beauty and poise. Brought up in a religious family, Ghalib draws from their own experience of leaving Brazil behind to depict the rich lives of their subjects who live at the intersections of multiple cultures. Their work, which evokes black-and-white newspaper photographs and classic portraiture that has been present since the dawn of photography, immortalizes the lives of a community that has been misrepresented for decades.

The latest in a groundbreaking series of photobooks that highlight queer lives and communities around the world, Shine invites the viewer to enter the world of Britain’s many queer communities and, in doing so, to challenge common misconceptions and prejudices about LGBTQIA+ people. An act of both confrontation and pride, this book is also an exploration of immigration as a human right and, above all, a celebration of the triumphs of a defiant community.

Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia by Maria (Masha) Alyokhina: From a member of the Pussy Riot collective: An urgent, intimate, firsthand account of grassroots dissent, bravery, art, and spectacle in Putin’s Russia

Picking up where Riot Days left off, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina takes us through her activist experiences between 2014 to 2022. In vivid, diary-like vignettes, we follow her as she goes in and out of Russian prisons, continually dodges police violence, protests at the Sochi Olympics, flies to Kyiv to stand in solidarity with Ukraine, defends the high-level dissident Alexi Navalny, drops banners at Trump Tower, and—in 2022—flees from Russia in disguise to escape a new prison sentence.

Spanning settings from Moscow to London to New York to Harvard, Political Girl has an artistic sensibility, a punk ethos, a deep moral clarity, and an inimitably dry Russian wit. It portrays not only Masha’s political activities but also her personal arc: the friends she makes in prison, the woman she falls in love with, her bond with her young son Filip, and her deep passion for art and history. As Trump attempts to bring Putin-style authoritarianism to the U.S., Masha’s message to Americans is one of solidarity and hope.

In Storm & Stillwater by Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano: Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano’s poetry collection is a challenge, a comforting, and a cry. In Storm & Stillwater gives us the poet’s life as a growth of words that have been trimmed, pruned, and grafted with care until everything about them is hybrid-phrases, lines, and silences borrowing from each other and giving to each other. Where the borrowing ends and the giving begins can be impossible to say: Where does love begin, or courage? Ezeano invites you to “wrap your fears up with a duvet, / pull your eyelids closer to each other” and find out.

Hysterical by Amber Dean: She’s not the final girl. She’s the reason there’s no one left.

In the chaotic allure of 2013 New York City, Jessie Anne appears to have it all sharp wit, quiet intensity, and a wild nightlife filled with underground raves and unconventional gigs. But beneath her composed exterior lies a fractured psyche consumed by unrequited love for her best friend, Tinsel, and a dangerous fascination with death.

As her infatuation with Tinsel deepens, Jessie’s double life begins to blur. The lines between love, envy, and obsession vanish, pulling her further into fantasies she can no longer control. People in her life become pawns—tools to process her frustration and rejection, leaving a bloody trail in their wake.

Hysterical is a visceral journey into the twisted psyche of a woman navigating love, obsession, and her most disturbing cravings. Amber Dean’s chilling debut blends biting humor with unnerving suspense, exploring the raw underbelly of city life where pleasure and peril collide.