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Senthorun Sunil Raj, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025, 240 pp.

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Abstract
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Time and time again we have had to temper our anger, cool down, step away, or smile as injustice unfolds. Redeem these moments of restraint in the face of indignity. Heal the emotional wounds from the accusation and restriction whiteness has placed over our feelings, as it is unable to reckon with its own deformed emotional life. Undo the epigenetic consequences of emotional constriction. Release us from feeling shame towards the grins that have kept us alive, and remind us that the moral liability for oppression is on whiteness. As we continue on the path of liberation, let us scream. Let smile become scowl. Let our rage boil enough to melt chains themselves, in holy remembrance of the masks our ancestors were forced to wear. Give us our faces back. 1 Discussions about the law, including its reform and its analysis, are often understood under the guise of neutrality, particularly by those who benefit from it. Neutrality as the default-whether with respect to who is drafting the law and/or who is applying the law-has serious consequences on communities and individuals who exist at the margins of their intersectional identities. Despite being understood as having no context, emotion or imagination, the law is a contextual imagination that has emotional resonance. I am a Black queer nonbinary femme whose legal practice and its articulation engage imagination as justice work. I also have deep feelings about individual, institutional and systemic misogynoir in Canada, including, but not limited to, the ways in which "[…] complex layers of racialized, gendered, and xenophobic

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