Reader's Place: June 1, 2021
PRIDE MONTH
It is once again the time of year where we celebrate our LGBTQIA selves and community in all its varied splendor. It this column we’ll see members grapple with pregnancy loss, growing up multi-racial and multi-religious, voracious sexual appetites, perfecting our physical body, and making meaning out of our daily lives. For more Pride month reading suggestions, check out our Book Recommendations page.
Red rock baby candy, by Shira Spector, 2021. (Library Catalog)
Spector literally paints a vivid portrait of the most eventful 10 years of her life, encompassing her tenacious struggle to get pregnant, the emotional turmoil of her father's cancer diagnosis and eventual death, and her recollections of past relationships with her parents and her partner. The visual storytelling eschews traditional comics panels in favor of a series of unique page compositions that convey both a stream of consciousness and the tactile reality of life, both the subjective impressions of the author at each moment of her life and the objective series of events that shape her narrative.
100 boyfriends, by Brontez Purnell, 2021. (Library Catalog)
Filmmaker, dancer, musician, performance artist, Whiting Award winner, one of the New York Times Magazine's "32 Black Male Writers of Our Time"—Purnell has it all. His queer characters move from the warehouses and upscale bars of Oakland to Alabama's farm towns, trying not to sabotage themselves.
The power of Adrienne Rich: A biography, by Hilary Holladay, 2021. (Library Catalog)
Biographer Holladay shows Rich's (1929-2012) relevance today through mining meaning from her poems, which reflect both an earlier time as well as our current political moment, and help to tell the story of her life, which Holladay interprets through events happening to the poet at the time she was writing.
The secret to superhuman strength, by Alison Bechdel, 2021. (eBCCLS, Library Catalog)
Divided into the decades of Bechdel’s life, this graphic memoir is as much a cultural history of the last half-century as it is Bechdel's story of pursuing physical strength, which it turns out is not so different from surrendering to her art. In full color, with vibrant watercolor washes, Bechdel's comics show her practicing various exercise obsessions—skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga—writing her books, falling in and out of love, dealing with injuries and other bodily changes. Ultimately, it's an effort to see beyond herself and recognize her oneness with the world.
Black boy out of time, by Hari Ziyad, 2021. (Library Catalog)
One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛiṣhṇa mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes readers on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Looking back in tenderness as well as justified rage, Ziyad forces us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminates the possibilities for the future.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau