The 2015 non-fiction collection Crooked Letter i: Coming Out in the South edited by Connie Griffin is interesting and moving but sadly not very diverse. The book focuses on the coming out experiences of Southern lesbian, queer-identified, gay, and transgender people. The book’s unique title is inherently Southern. It comes from the chant that young Southerners use to spell Mississippi. These…
Fay Jacobs’ 2010 For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach Diaries is a hilarious, relatable and wonderfully quick read. The book is a collection of Jacobs’ columns from 2007 to 2010. Through these witty and concise columns, readers follow Jacobs’ life with her partner, Bonnie, and their ever-present Schnauzers in Rehoboth Beach, a small town in Delaware. Her writing also chronicles her travels…
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, by Kai Cheng Thom
[image description: a paragraph from Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars reading “Before we leave, Ivana pulls a can of spray paint out of her denim jacket. “Gotta leave a souvenir,” she says, smiling wickedly. And she tags the alley wall with the stain left by a lipstick kiss. Over that, she writes in huge, looping cursive:
YOU MESS WITH FEMMES YOU MESS WITH US
And we all shriek and applaud and then we are run, run, running away into the endless night.”]
What a useful, thoughtfully considered book.The ABC’s of LGBT+ is an introduction to a long list of LGBTQIA+ identifiers and terminology. This covers a huge range of labels. I am someone who’s been in queer communities online (and offline) for about 10 years, and I feel like I’m pretty well-read in LGBTQIA+ topics, especially current use, but I encountered quite a few words I didn’t recognize, which was exciting!
I think this would be such an awesome book to have in school libraries, GSAs, public libraries—any place where people are questioning their identities! This could be hugely affirming for lots of people, especially since so many identities are accompanied by personal stories by people who share that identity
“I expect our letters to be someday public property, and, though I write with little self-consciousness about being overheard at some future date, talking intermittently to you and to myself, it seems to me what has concerned us is richly human and significantly focused on the concerns of our time and our tribe.”
After stumbling upon the announcement of Elizabeth Gilbert’s coming out last month, l thought I’d key a quick Google search in order to become acquainted with the woman who’d rocked her world. It took the perusal of only a couple results to discover that Gilbert’s relationship with Rayya Elias is no fly-by-night romance; rather, Elias has been her dearest friend and confidante for the past…
After reading The Raging Skillet, I’m not certain whether I’m desperate to marry the legendary culinary mastermind known simply as Rossi or to live within her skin. It would be futile to deny my appreciation for the handful of openly lesbian chefs whose careers have blossomed in spite of – or perhaps due to – their determination to manifest a passion for food while remaining true not only to…
When Portia de Rossi first released her memoir, I was just testing the waters of an eating disorder and six years past admitting to myself that I wasn’t straight. I desperately wanted to search the book for weight loss tips, but it had been described as so inspiring that I was afraid it would convince me to recover before I even got started (Plus I was afraid everyone would think I was a lesbian…
