Reviews of Bodies and Barriers: Queer Activists on Health, The Real World, The Bionic Woman and Feminist Ethics: An Analysis of the 1970s Television Series, and A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America.
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WE’VE ALL come across people who say they don’t like fiction because it doesn’t teach them anything. I contend that a person could read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica website and not learn as much about human nature as they would by reading an especially fine novel, such as Peter Cameron’s What Happens at Night.
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Keith Haring’s Line is neither a biography nor a general assessment of Haring’s work as an artist. Rather, it is a queer musing upon the intersections of sex and race in Haring’s work, drawing heavily upon the influence of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and Jose Esteban Munoz’ Cruising Utopia. Montez writes with authority about photography, art, and queer theory, but the passion of this book lies in its interrogation of sex and race.
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The first half of The Shadowgraph centers on a dysfunctional Iowa childhood. …
… The second and more engaging half of the book consists of poems under titles of movies starring Stanwyck. Wonderfully witty as viewing companions, they function on other levels, too.
This book is about Jeremy’s transition and his family’s growth in understanding and acceptance, but it’s also the story of the Ivestors role in becoming advocates for transgender rights. Once a Girl, Always a Boy is a story of an intimate journey that informs the cisgender world about the complexities of gender identity and the importance of familial and social acceptance.
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THE QUEST to discover one’s true identity is a central theme in much of world literature. Zeyn Joukha-dar’s new novel, The Thirty Names of Night, explores this issue from a multiplicity of angles.
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[Unrequited Love] is filled with reminiscences about Altman’s friendships with authors like Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal, and Edmund White, as well as insightful commentary on other novelists. He notes, for example, that André Aciman, who is straight, gently avoids answering questions about whether Call Me by Your Name is based on his own life experiences.
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[Daryl] Palmer is especially good at digging deeper into Cather’s early stories, which have too often been dismissed or treated as journeywork by past critics.
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There are discussions of beauty and art here, including Wilde’s concern that art should not raise nature on high (reminiscent of J. D. McClatchy’s view that nature was an uncongenial subject for poetry, suitable only as a backdrop for human issues). One of the best is a revisit to Crane’s “The Bridge,” in which the phrase “Appalachian Spring” appears, the source for the title of Aaron Copland’s ballet score (courtesy of Martha Graham).
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The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In, edited by Janine Utell, contains essays by sixteen scholars in the fields of comics studies, gender studies, and popular culture. Bechdel, who lives in Vermont with her wife, artist Holly Rae Taylor, was awarded a Mac-Arthur Fellowship in 2014. This is the first book to focus entirely on scholarship about her major works: Dykes to Watch Out For, Fun Home, and Are You My Mother?
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