Alice Sparkly Kat, Postcolonial Astrology: reading the planets through capital, power, and labor. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2021. ISBN: 9781623175306.
The book is arranged into 10 chapters; each chapter looks at the etymology of a planet, say Chapter 2: Etymology of the Moon. Each chapter then looks at the origins and historical development of the planet's name and any associated words and concepts with a postcolonial, labor, power, capital, and feminist lens. That is basically it. It does not offer much in the way of doing astrology. It is basically a long and fairly dry text of political theory applied to astrological concepts.
In addition, this is not a book for beginners. The book assumes readers come in with at least a basic understanding of astrology. Long time astrology practitioners seeking to politicize or add a more activist element to their practice could be interested in this book.
The book includes a works cited page featuring 166 works. Out of those only 10 are about astrology, barely. The rest are basically general political theory and history. Some of the authors featured I read back in graduate school when I did critical theory along with a few other things.
Overall, if you want a practical book about astrology and how to do it, this is not it. If you want a political treatise to add some leftist politics and decolonization to your established practice, this could be for you. For public libraries, this is highly optional. This is not a book for casual readers nor beginners. For academic libraries, still optional, mainly for academic libraries with strong interests in postcolonial studies, some political theory courses, and maybe peace and social justice studies. I'd order it for our library if a patron requested it.
In the end, for what it does, the book is OK.
2 out of 5 stars.
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