So about the actual reading itself: Stone Butch Blues addresses not only gender identity and queer issues, but also how those issues interact with class and race issues, and how the folks who are working for justice within their communities often don't make efforts
to reach out across race and class lines. I might have heard a little nervous throat clearing from the audience there.
Last year, the folks at the Philly ACLU asked me to participate in their Banned Books Reading. Before we read the challenged/banned book of our choice, we were supposed to explain why the book was important to us. I chose Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg for a number of different reasons, but the first part of what I shared that night was as follows:
I once heard Dorothy Allison say "I'm alive because I picked up the right books at the right time. Some person on the page persuaded me my story wasn't over yet." Although Stone Butch Blues was published well after my growing up years, I remember reading a book called Tara is a Tomboy or something like that just about the age the boys wouldn't be my buddies anymore; and of course since I had always socialized with the boys, trying to hang out with the girls was like trying to learn another culture and language. I knew nothing about jacks and hopscotch. Tara was a Tomboy reminded me I was not the only girl like me. Read more about Banned: Stone Butch Blues
Although I don't think every major publisher is convinced of this, not every story is suitable to the graphic novel format. Alison Bechdel's autobiography Fun Home is not just suitable for a graphic memoir, it practically demands it. Read more about Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
I don't actually like dogs, but I did like this book.
Having recently lost a partner who left me with her grieving (with a walnut sized brain? I'm not sure) cat, I read this book because I've read other of Doty's books about grief, including the lyrical haunting and ultimately wise Heaven's Coast and because I'm interested in the relationship between grieving humans and grieving pets and, of course, grieving humans and other grieving humans. Dog Years illustrates both. Read more about Mark Doty: Dog Years
If you've not read I Am Not Myself These Days, you seriously might want to. And I'm not just saying that because I read the entire book in one sitting at a chain bookstore and cheated the author, Josh Kilmer-Purcell out of royalties. It's a beautiful, funny, creepy book and there are drag queens and a crack addict boyfriend and oh yes, I heard he's happy now, so that makes it a little easier to read. Read more about Josh Kilmer-Purcell: The Bucolic Plague
I admit. I do love me some Julie Andrews.
Enough to buy her memoir Home when it was still in hardcover. Considering I've been wearing the same shoes for two years and the same sweatshirt for the past decade (I am convinced that if I stick to it, this behavior will eventually become to be seen as “charmingly eccentric”) that is really saying something. I wasn't disappointed.
Julie Andrews is a bit of a strange bird in that she appeals equally to the queers who love her for her camp, plainspoken-ness and iconic movie roles and to conservative family types who love her for, well, being a star in a lot of Disney fills I suppose. There is something in Home for those families as well, but it's definitely no Disney tale. Read more about Julie Andrew's Home
“It’s safe to say your relationship is in trouble if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.”
- Remembrance of Things I Forgot by Bob Smith
I don't like comic novels. I don't like books about time machines. In fact if I were required to read a comic novel in which a time machine figures heavily in the plot (as a requirement, for example, in a very specific college class) I would want to take a time machine forward to a future in which I had already read the book. Read more about Remembrance of Things I Forgot by Bob Smith
At a recent reading in New York City, writer Casey Plett quipped, "I'm writing a memoir about my transition. Of course I am. I think it's required these day by the Standards of Care."
In Nina Here Nor There, author Nick Krieger's contribution to the transgender memoir cannon, he relates a story that is a departure from the classic trans narrative not only in tone, but in the basic plot points as well.
Historically, much of trans memoir is devastatingly tragic. Some of the authors of the earliest first-person stories of open transgender lives detailed continual struggle and conflicts with oppressive authorities and suffering at the hands of medical personnel, cops and mental health professionals. These are important books and important stories. They are also—at times-- extremely difficult to read. Read more about Nick Krieger's Nina Here Nor There
I’ve read everything British novelist Sarah Waters has ever written. The London-based novelist has a way of absolutely engrossing her readers in whatever time and place she picks for her historical fiction—you can taste, smell and see the 1880’s England of her novel Tipping the Velvet, even though you’ve obviously never been. She takes the tools and specialties of an academic—she has a Ph.D. in Literature—but uses the presentation and sensibilities of a novelist to create her books. Here are short reviews of her novels: Read more about Sarah Waters and all her amazing novels
Recently I was ecstatic to have my first blog post published at Teaching Tolerance. Its subject was introducing children to LGBT concepts through children’s literature. My belief is that anyone has the capability of falling in love with anyone, and I want my daughter to feel comfortable in our home with any and all relationships she develops—as well as to accept and embrace all of the people that she meets. Read more about Molly's Family