Hi there and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Queer coming-of-age stories have power, writes Alex Marzano-Lesnevich at the New York Times:
“When I finally came out as trans a few years ago, I found myself devouring audiobook after audiobook of queer young adult literature. I never had the experiences I listened to: Although I went on high school dates and to the prom, my dates were always with cisgender boys, not the girls I had crushes on.
What the books offered me was an alternative history, one full of hope for the life I might have lived, and a kind of longing for a world that wasn’t once but might still be.”
Your inherent value as a person doesn’t come from being busy.
Here are the Pulitzer winners.
Objectivity in biography is a myth.
Do not donate these types of books.
At Lit Hub, Jamika Ajalon writes about biomythography, friendship, queer identity, and Audre Lorde:
“Audre Lorde described “Zami” as a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers. These alliances, even the ones forged only to be lost under the fickle and sometimes cruel winds of time, line the paths of our survival up to this very moment. These friendships, whether short-lived or for a lifetime, are not only an inextricable part of who I am today, but also a large part of the reason that I am today.”
In a review of Olivia Laing’s Everybody: A Book About Freedom at Electric Literature, Tia Glista writes:
“To write about the body can be a difficult task—inhabiting a body is something that we all experience (albeit differently), and yet pinning down what this is like can feel like trying to grab hold of smoke. There is something especially perilous or perplexing about navigating the ways in which the body is at once a site of pain, anxiety, and fragility, as well as one of immense pleasure and potential, the site at which we make contact with and even reshape the world.”
Read these nine books by trans authors. Read these monstrous books by marginalized writers. Read these fantasy books this summer. Read these queer books this season. Read these new books in midsummer. Read these books when you need a good cry. Read these books about teen friendships. Read these queer memoirs. Read these memoirs by blind authors. Read these 10 short story collections this summer.
