Queer Rock Love: A Family Memoir
by Paige Schilt
Transgress Press. 226 pages, $19.99
PAIGE SCHILT’S new memoir Queer Rock Love opens with Schilt embedded in graduate school, immersed in radical political thought and queer theory, and only beginning to realize that she is “not only politically gay” but actually gay. Schilt, not a transgender person herself, would tell herself that her “interest in trans subcultures was merely academic.” Then she met Katy, adorned in a rubber prosthetic “man-chest,” who “with his or her butch chivalry … was the sexiest thing I had ever seen.” As Schilt came to consciousness with respect to both her identity and her desire, she maintained a multifaceted perspective—aware and unafraid enough to interrogate her own hang-ups and assumptions, to own her blind spots and desires, and to keep her feelings in perspective. This prismatic viewpoint carries through the book and gives each page a layered richness.
