Doechii DENIAL IS A RIVER (2024)
Jovana Reisinger describes herself as “a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist based in Munich”—but that hardly covers it. There’s the Jovana Reisinger, whose sharp, fearless storytelling won her the Bayern 2-Wortspiele Prize for her debut novel Still halten. There’s the Jovana Reisinger, whose second novel Spitzenreiterinnen was nominated for the Bavarian Book Prize. Then there’s the Jovana Reisinger, whose work dismantles norms with humor, boldness, and an unapologetic feminist lens. The list could go on…
Her latest book, Pleasure, dives into luxury, fashion, food, and rest—not as indulgences but as battlegrounds where questions of power and identity are negotiated. But Jovana doesn’t just write about pleasure; she interrogates it, reshapes it, and claims it on her own terms.
What truly defines her, though, is her relentless engagement with contemporary culture—whether through film, visual art, or texts about menstruation like her column Bleeding Love in VOGUE. Her novel Enjoy Schatz even made its way onto the stage at Berlin’s Schaubühne, proving that her words are not only meant to be read but to be heard, seen, and felt.
When we asked Jovana for a track for The Rest, she sent us three because, in her words: “How are you supposed to decide when on one hand, you're in the middle of dissecting your own history (“Denial is a River” by Doechii), picking apart the stories you’ve told yourself for years, and on the other hand, spring is crawling under your skin (“I Think” by Tyler, The Creator), making everything ache in that hungry, all-consuming way, and all you want is to be close to someone, physically, in a way that feels new and devouring (“Freak” by Doja Cat)?”
Fair enough.
Still, for the sake of the newsletter, we had to choose just one—so we went with Doechii’s “Denial is a River.” Because even with over 250 million plays, this firecracker still hasn’t been played enough.
And the other two? They’re more than close seconds. We know where Jovana’s coming from. Play them all.
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