September-October 2020
“BLACK LIVES MATTER” started as a slogan, a response to a spate of police killings of unarmed black men in 2014, a rebuttal to the message that Black lives were expendable. The slogan turned into a movement, re-awakened last year by the murder of George Floyd, and the phrase “BLM” came to mean more than “Please don’t kill us.” It’s a reminder of the vast contributions that African-Americans have made to every field of endeavor.
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The big discovery for me was Simeon Solomon (1840–1905)— a name I didn’t recognize—who had two works in the Yale show: Babylon Hath Been a Golden Cup (pen and ink, 1859) and Bacchus (oil painting, 1867). With a little research, I found that Solomon, younger than the first wave of PRB artists, was considered an equal by his peers.
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Circus of Books and Hollywood, a documentary and miniseries, respectively, share an interest in the margins around Tinseltown, especially its LGBT subculture and what “hustling” means in various forms.
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Reviews of Female Husbands: A Trans History, and The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir
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“MAY I CONFESS to you a few things about myself?” Evan James asks in one of the 23 essays that make up I’ve Been Wrong BeforeI, an assessment of his young adulthood, globe-trotting adventures in his thirties, and daddy issues.
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Fiebre Tropical is a triumphant exploration of queer Latinidad in the 20th century.
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Real Life arrives at an important moment in our ongoing national conversation—now a global one—about race and racism in American society.
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Jesus and John is a story not only of love, devotion, and longing, but also a finely written and refreshingly liberating “queering” of the Jesus myth that has been so misused and misunderstood in relation to LGBT lives.
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Fire on the Island has one instance of sexual assault along with several depictions of ethnic racism and homophobia. These elements do not seem misplaced in any way but carry the story toward a satisfying conclusion. Smith has blended action, drama, romance, and mystery into an arresting tale set in an alluring part of the world.
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Curious Toys can be grim, filled as it is with incinerated corpses, poisoned candy, and filthy slums, but it also contains some hope, particularly for Pin. The final few chapters made me a little teary-eyed, and I realized that this novel, which is ostensibly a historical crime thriller, is really about something else entirely.
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