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 MoreHistory Keeps Me Awake Some Night - David Wojnarowicz
Illustration by Nathan Kawanishi.
Crush Notes
I think of Nuwās as the incomparable soloist, the high, clear, castrati soprano rising above an innumerous chorus of Arab poets whose work touches on love or sex between men, dating from the dawn of Islam to the present.
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Ballroom Culture’s Rich Alternative to the Trans/Cis Model of Gender
“Butch queen” and “femme queen” are rooted in these shared experiences of queerness—these shared experiences of queen-ness—that connect both identities. They are terms designed to highlight the conceptual overlap between these categories, and also to celebrate it, turning the derogatory queer into the honorific queen.
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Why Everyone Can’t Be Queer
. This is the essence of queerness: To be queer is to be judged, and to find community with others who have been judged similarly. This is less a matter of radical “inclusivity” and more a kind of qualifying criteria for entry.
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Back in the Day, Lesbian Drag Kings Worked for the Mafia
Although it might sound surprising to hear about out lesbians working with and for the mob, there was a time in New York City when all the gay clubs were Mafia-run. Davis is an expert on those years, and the author of Under the Mink, a mystery set in the world of the lesbians and drag kings working in the mob-run nightclubs that dominated the Greenwich Village gay scene in the 30s and 40s. Davis, as a young lesbian academic in New York in the 60s, befriended many of these women and captured their stories in her novel.
Read MoreAIDS Without Its Metaphors
"The result is less an explanatory guide to the gay early ’90s than an experiential re-visitation. The nonlinear structure ambushes the reader with visceral recollections, replicating the uncertainty and confusion that swirled around those years when death was everywhere (and especially in our heads), when “the sick” were often indistinguishable from “the healthy,” and when our own status could be unknown and unknowable for weeks at a time."
Read MoreWonder Woman Takes a Big Step Back
On the cover, Wonder Woman resembles a 16-year-old model doing a pee-pee dance. Her first full scene is a shower sequence where she’s in a towel. She has ridiculous mood swings.
Read MoreThe Thrilling, Traumatic Lives of Teens: The Fall’s Best YA Fiction
Occasionally, I’ve gotten so involved in a book that I’ve missed my subway stop because I was reading; Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun might be the first time where I saw my stop and skipped it anyway.
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