MAY - Moonstruck

May review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Moonstruck Vol 1: Magic to Brew by Grace Ellis, Shae Beagle, and Kate Leth, 2018. [one-sitting category]

I read Moonstruck in one sitting, in bed next to my fiance on my birthday morning. I had purchased it from Queen City Bookstore on a derby road trip earlier this year for a number of reasons: because Kate Leth was a contributor, one of the other contributors spelled her name like I do (Caitlin!), it was created by the fantastic Lumberjanes creator, and there are two ladies googley-eyeing each other on the cover. Queer stories with magic in them! What more could you ask for!

I was absolutely not disappointed. "Monsters, romance, and magical hijinks--oh my!" cries the back cover gleefully (and don't think I didn't swoon over that Oxford comma. I did). The blurb continues with a slightly confusing if not entirely-lesbian-appropriate sentence: "But all heck breaks loose when she and her new girlfriend Selena go on a disastrous first date that ends with a magician casting a horrible spell on their friend Chet." Girlfriend and first date in the same breath? I am intrigued. There's a human with snakes for hair on the back! It's rated E for Everyone! Sold.

Chapter One opens right in the middle of the story. More and more I am finding that I fucking love in medias res. It jumps right into the close-up brewing of a cappuccino while two characters discuss how perfect this girl is. The cappuccino almost drops when surprise! horse hands catch it. Bam, magical creatures on page 1. This is Chet, the flamboyant centaur barista, who is listening to our protagonist Julie gush about a girl she likes. So many good things are happening already. Julie is a bookworm, obsessed with a fictional series I can only assume is the magical equivalent of The Babysitter's Club, which also allows for a fun story-within-a-story complete with protagonist commentary on the page. In this world, lots of people seem to be part-animal-part-human, and it is insinuated that Julie is too, but there seems to be some shame around it from the beginning. (Some closeted queer coding, mayhaps.) Turns out Julie is a werewolf, but it's great because Selena is too! And they spend some time working through some of Julie's issues while they work to solve what happened to Chet's butt! (no spoilers...) There are some fun Easter eggs to watch out for, and just a really pure good time.

Moonstruck was so much fun, and I am looking forward to picking up the next collection of issues. I am committed to supporting queer art and artists wherever I come across them, so if you have any suggestions for me, let me know!

JAN - She Came By The Book

January review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: She Came By The Book (An Emma Victor Mystery) by Mary Wings, 1996. [mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author category]

Any story that opens with "As a lesbian," is going to be a good story. And so begins She Came By The Book, a mystery written by Mary Wings that I picked up when an LGBTQ+ Center was having a library sale. I had never heard of Mary Wings before, but apparently she's a pretty established queer mystery fiction writer, so I'm excited to have a new author to look for.

This book was a lot of fun. Sure, it was a little dated, but it was pretty visceral and descriptive: I've only visited San Francisco once, last year for a few hours before my flight back home, but I felt like I could gather the feel of the place with Wings' words. She Came By The Book is set in San Francisco and follows Emma Victor, a sort of jack-of-all-trades PI who has her foot pretty solidly in the gay scene and community's elite. She is entrusted with the care of the remaining papers of deceased State Representative and Gay Icon Harold Blooming, whom she worked for before he died. She is assaulted shortly after she receives this assignment, and shortly after a woman is poisoned at the gala at which she is meant to present the papers for posterity. She digs into the politics of the SF gay scene at the time, which was interesting but slightly tired and cliched in terms of it falling on a lot of stereotypes. Like I said, this is not to say that it wasn't a fun read, but it was not the most thrilling mystery nor the most eye-opening commentaries.

National Coming Out Day

Feminist Apparel

Today, October 11, 2017, is National Coming Out Day. I have a lot of feelings about National Coming Out Day. I have happy feelings because I love seeing the diversity and strength of this community that I have found. I am an out queer woman who is engaged to another woman and has had past relationships with both men and women. I am proud that I can say that and not fear for my job or my personal relationships, but I know that it is not always the case.

I never really "came out" to my parents in any official way. I had broken up with my then-boyfriend of five years, and I just sort of intimated that I had a new crush, and that this one was maybe sorta on a girl. My parents took it in stride, not getting bogged down with "well, what do you call yourself now" or "what has changed to make this a thing," two of the most tired and sad questions anyone can face when they opt for such vulnerability. Because honestly, I didn't know what I was calling myself but I knew that I had always sort of been that way. I had just been conditioned to ride the hetero train and didn't necessarily question the broader implications until recently.

I am incredibly lucky to have had a mind-blowingly supportive family and friend structure who has made this shift in my life not such a big deal. The thing about that is, not everyone has that option. Some people can't come out or won't come out or do not want to come out. The thing about "coming out" is that it assumes that out is the norm, the good, the appropriate place. It reinforces the idea that there is a norm--generally cis and hetero--and if you do not fit that norm, if you are something "other," you are required to disclose that, over and over again, to the world. In Cameron Esposito's Queery podcast this week, she talked to Rebecca Sugar (creator of Steven Universe, the best queer show on TV), who is an out bisexual. Cameron makes the analogy of going to a bagel shop and ordering two bagels, to which the worker responds, heteronormatively, "Oh, takin one home for the boyfriend?" There are two options: One, you are disingenuous and play along, getting through the interaction; or two, you essentially come out to this bagel shop worker even though this information has nothing to do with the completion of your interaction. Because coming out is not just one single thing. As a friend pointed out today, you don't just automatically get a rainbow above your head from then on to denote you as LGBTQIA+ like the Sims. The choice to come out and live authentically is constant and heart-wrenching and complicated. 

I hope some day just being visible will be enough. I hope that some day there wont be an assumed normal. I hope one day that coming out won't be necessary. But for right now, I understand the celebration in those who can.

MAR - The Well of Loneliness

March review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, 1928. [book that has been banned frequently category]

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall is often hailed as a lesbian classic, and it almost ruined Hall's literary career. It is the story of Stephen Gordon, a wealthy girl born to parents who really wanted a boy and so they kept the only name they'd picked even when their daughter was born. This does not do terribly much damage, as Stephen grows up and is consistently at odds with her ostensible femininity, preferring to dress like a boy, and even coming up with an alternate persona, Nelson, which she puts on to impress one of the house servants (whom 12-year-old Stephen also falls in love with). Offhand references are made to "inversion," a sort of opposite-feeling that a certain outcast set of society feels, and the term "lesbian" is never used once, although Stephen does befriend an undeniably lesbian couple later on in Paris. Well of Loneliness moves through Stephen's childhood and maturation and follows her few romantic relationships with (surprise!) women. It is a thinly veiled corollary to Hall's own life, critics say, hence the ruining-of-her-career bit.

It was banned pretty much instantly--and quite frequently thereafter--because LESBIANS. Never mind that the raunchiest Hall's descriptions of the Sapphic lovers get is "she kissed her full on the lips as a lover." However, recent readings have questioned Well as a lesbian versus a transgender story. Hall does use the term "invert," which seems to refer to an individual that feels sort of the opposite of what they were born to, but as it was published in 1928 and there wasn't really transgender terminology back then, it has often been classified as a purely lesbian story. With the increasing defining space between gender and sexuality in recent years, this becomes a more pertinent question, and I do think the tone of the narrative changes, depending on your opinion of Stephen as a butch lesbian woman or a trans* man. My own personal reading tends toward the latter.

**SPOILER ALERT -- I'm going to complain about the ending. If you're planning to read this book, skip this paragraph please. Or don't, who am I to say?** So. The ending. This entire book feels like an extended lashing of Stephen by the cruel universe, so much so that she internalizes it and begins to lash at herself, her own happiness, by the end. For the latter half of the book, Stephen is in a relationship with a woman called Mary, who she met in the army and has taken into her home as her partner and lover (I suppose, although no specifics were given; 1920s euphemisms, et cetera). Mary begins to have feelings for Stephen's friend (and one-time rejected lover) Martin, and cannot decide between her love for each of them. So Stephen forces her hand, fakes being another woman's lover and sends Mary into Martin's arms for a nice normal happy life. Self-sabotaging at its finest. I was very dismayed at the conclusion of Stephen's story, and it made me wonder if this was the beginning of no happy gay stories in fiction? Kill your darlings, and whatnot? I closed my book and hugged my girlfriend close, thanking whatever Powers That Be that I don't have to sabotage my own happiness.

Ultimately, as Alison Hennegan's introduction reads in my copy, "the very fact of the book's existence was a source of strength." Whichever way you read Stephen, she is revolutionary in her existence. (I use female pronouns because those are the ones used by the author, although it is possible gender neutral would feel more apropos.) I feel like I could spend a lot of time unpacking this book (I can imagine more than a few old professors I'd love to listen to wax poetic about it), but already this post is woefully overdue, and I should most likely cut it short.