In Justin Torres’s lyrical new novel, “Blackouts,” these two forms — erasure poetry and queer history — collide to create one epic conversation between a pivotal 20th-century queer sexology text and two unreliable queer Puerto Rican narrators (or perhaps three, depending how you read the genre-bending conclusion).
Read MoreThe Unknown Librarian Who Saved Queer History
You probably don’t know the name Paul Fasana. But the librarian was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of artifacts of queer history.
Read MoreA Devastating Tale of War, a Tender Story of Love
It is this war, as much as that “Great” one, that “In Memoriam” explores. Winn shows us parents, siblings, friends and enemies all trying to reckon with the unspeakable, referencing gay desires only through allusions to poetry or meaningful (yet ultimately unfathomable) silences.
Read MoreA Memoir About Queer Identity, Told One Gay Bar at a Time
History, as it is taught, is a straight line of dominoes falling — the relentless clack of fact hitting fact, an orderly queue of causality stretching on forever. History, as it is lived, is a reeling spiral of flight and return; the iterative reawakening of new selves in familiar places;
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History Keeps Me Awake Some Night - David Wojnarowicz
Never Not a Poet
To those who argue that Wojnarowicz wasn’t a poet, I say this: his work is saturated with poetry, and poetry seeps upward through his life, like a water table importunate with spring.
Read More26 Amazing Books by LGBTQ+ Authors You Should Add to Your Bookshelf
With the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots coming up on June 28, it seems like the entire country is celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride. But what happens on July 1, when all the rainbow logos and flags get put away for the year? Don't worry—we've got a list of incredible books by LGBTQ+ authors to keep you occupied all year long. Like the queer community itself, this reading list is diverse and exciting, representing a wide variety of genres, time periods, and identities. Here are 26 great books to add to your bookshelf.
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Passion Can't Save Joseph Cassara's Short-Sighted AIDs-Era Novel
Unfortunately, that attention to detail seems lacking when it comes to other parts of his characters’ lives. Cassara was inspired by the subjects of Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning. But his knowledge of the ballroom scene begins and ends there; although he tried to contact some vogue insiders via email, he was ultimately unable to speak with anyone in the scene. And because he was writing the book while in graduate school at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he says he was unable to attend any ballroom functions.
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Review of The Angel of History
Midway through award-winning author Rabih Alameddine’s new novel-in-fragments, The Angel of History, his narrator Jacob compares AIDS to a river that drowned everything he knew but him. “I thought I had triumphed,” he says, “only to discover years later that the river’s persistence, it’s restlessness, trickled into tiny rivulets that reached every remote corner of my being.”
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