Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction>

Winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award in Nonfiction

"Slipping smoothly between stylistic registers and across time in a relaxed stream-of-consciousness style, this highly readable, lyrical autobiographical essay promises much for Low's further excursions into prose." --Publishers Weekly

"A consistently incisive and surprising new work of nonfiction. . . . The frequent meditations on global politics and contemporary works of art never feel like gratuitous digressions but constitute the most reliable pleasures of the text, and serve to deepen what is ultimately an intimate and complex portrait of a life." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"Low embraces the specifics of her own experiences and aesthetics . . . The result is one of the most evocative books you're likely to encounter this year." --Star Tribune

"Inventive, wise, and revelatory . . . a searching interrogation of identity, art, and a desire for a life beyond what we are told is possible." --Chicago Review of Books

"Few works of art. . . . offer as scintillating a vision of what it means to yearn for the comfort of home alongside the utter strangeness and sparkle of irresolution. . . . Low is at home in her electric mind, and we are happy to have been invited in." --The Believer

"Expansive and freeing, like the best kind of daydream." --Nylon

"Offers piercing reflections full of intellectual power and personal resonance. . . . a work that defies normativity in every way, as Low moves with a kind of vulnerable virtuosity from one illuminating entry to the next." --VICE

"Socialist Realism might itself be a parable, in that it dares the reader to interpret it too literally--mistaking the showing of a wound for vulnerability, or uncertainty about political or artistic effects for a lack of commitment - but I count myself among the believers." --Frieze Magazine

"Mostly earnest, always engrossing. . . . This book sees Low struggling mightily, with intention and passion and verve, to accommodate seemingly oppositional impulses." --Bookforum

"A book about what it means to try to fulfill our deepest desires." --Book Riot

"Reading Socialist Realism is like falling into a dream." --Overland

"Like a transgressive Binx Bolling . . . she takes away equally cathartic feelings from the experimental films of Chantal Ackerman as she does from a documentary about One Direction." --The Rupture

"Low writes about her queerness . . . performance art installations that ask identity questions, the socio-economic history of Singapore, and literary analysis of Patricia Highsmith's novels. To all of these topics, Low applies the full force of her compelling intellect." --Booklist

"In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one's life comes to the fore." --Cultura Colectiva

"It's a joy to watch Trisha Low's mind at work in this book as she contemplates utopia, identity, and how art expands her understanding of the world. Low doesn't just have an idea--she interrogates it, examines it, and cuts it open. Socialist Realism is sharp, inventive, and transformative."&