Hey hi, friends! Yashstreet’s Back (alright!) and I’m here to wish all of you all a profound, powerful, and perfect Pride Month!
I’m recovering from marathoning Our Flag Means Death at the recommendation of Laynie Rose Rizer, and by “recovering” I mean “not recovering, obsessing.” I’m into season two of Gentleman Jack now, catching up, but this new season is so STRESSFUL y’all! So I’m rewatching my favorite bits of OFMD in between. Those are my emotional support gay pirates.
In addition to rereading Rainbow Rainbow for the review I’m writing, I’m also gathering a pile of my favorite queer reads to revisit this month. I love a thematic read, what can I say? In the coming weeks, I want to reread parts of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, The Persistent Desire, Dagger: On Butch Women, Patience & Sarah, a fat stack of Bechdel, and the like. I love a thematic read, what can I say? Tell me your favorite Pride reads in the comments!
Alrighty, let’s make like a banana and split. On this week’s Rainbow Reading, we’ve got:
Shelf Care: Reviews, Essays, and other Things of Note
- Yet Again I Am Calling My Fellow Short Story Gays: Lydia Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow is FINALLY HERE! I’ve been banging pots and pans together about this collection for literal months and now it’s finally here and I need all of you to read it so I have friends to discuss it with, thank you. Keep your eyes peeled for my full review coming soon!
- Nina LaCour’s YA novels have had my heart for years, and her adult debut with Yerba Buena has been an unmitigated delight — this one’s out now, and it’s another one I’m really excited to be writing a full review of for Autostraddle!
- Imogen Binnie’s beloved cult classic Nevada is being reissued! It always makes me so happy to see new printings of queer classics, and this gorgeous new edition of the Lambda Literary finalist arrives next week. Preorder now, you know the drill!
- My TL has been COVERED in heart emojis, exclamation points, and unbridled enthusiasm for A Lady For A Duke — Alexis Hall’s latest is apparently literally perfect and I have it on good authority that it will cure whatever ails me.
- oHHHHH MY GOD!! Thee Jean Carlomusto is doing a documentary about Esther Newton, the groundbreaking butch cultural anthropologist whose work would become the bedrock of LGBTQ+/Gender & Sexuality Studies, and god himself could not make me be chill about this. If you haven’t read Newton’s iconic study of drag performers Mother Camp, or her memoirs Margaret Mead Made Me Gay or My Butch Career, now’s your time!
- Lovely and lively queer family chaos: All The Things We Don’t Talk About came out last week, and I’m, like, ninety zillionth on the library holds list for this one so tag yer spoilers, folks 😉
- More Akwaeke Emezi! You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty, Emezi’s latest novel, also came out last week!
- The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights, a graphic novel by Autostraddle alumni Archie Bongiovanni and A. Andrews (the artist behind this series’ beautiful banner!) arrived last week to some impressive fanfare — check out this glowing review from (famously difficult-to-impress) Kirkus!
- WHAT A TITLE: Just Your Local Bisexual Disaster is some top-notch titling. My compliments to the chef/author!
- Planning ahead for once in my life: circle up, team, Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under The Sea is my favorite novel of the year, Julia is a literal genius, and with the novel hitting bookshelves in the U.S. in July, you have one whole month to savor her debut short story collection Salt Slow before sinking your teeth into the novel. Order both now, and thank me later.
- Bonus points: Salt Slow is one of the books shared by Florence Welch as an inspiration behind her latest album!
- A love letter to internet friendships, anime, and indie rock? Oh fuck yes! Lio Min’s YA Beating Heart Baby is also coming out later this summer and you can preorder now!
- Jules Ohman’s novel Body Grammar is out in two weeks — “A coming-of-age queer love story set in the glamorous but grueling world of international modeling” sounds stunning, and I adored Ohman’s essay in LitHub about how writing the novel expanded her own queer community
- X by Davey Davis comes out at the end of June, and I’m really excited for their Pride event at Book Passage!
- Turned the Freakin Frogs Gay: I’m charmed by this book about queerness in the animal kingdom!
- Included For No Timely Reason, I Just Rly Love It Okay: This 2016 piece about the queer history of children’s books in the Los Angeles Review of Books is a delight.
- Putsata Reang’s memoir of queerness, resilience, and generational healing in her Cambodian family sounds absolutely breathtaking
- “a romantic coming-of-age about learning to make peace with the past in order to accept the beauty of the present” aka GAY WITCHES IN LOVE? I’m adding Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches to my “break in case of emergency” stash of Very Cute Things.
“Ultimately, this is a book about being able to integrate one’s trauma in a world where acceptance, while not universal, can be found.“
Autocorrect: Books content from the last couple weeks at Autostraddle!
- Himani reviewed Solo Dance!
- Darcy told us Which Baby Sitters Club Book We Are in this week’s quiz!
- Kayla’s stunning personal essay about her 30th birthday and the gayest things she did in her 20s was all over my TL, so I’ve decided this counts as gay literary news. Happy birthday, KKU!
- I wrote a lil essay about why it drives me bonkers when people try to be Gayer Than Thou, and my pun game has reached new heights. #Gaytekeeping
- From the Archives: I recently reread Katrina’s essay The Real-Life LGBT Outlaws of the American West and Writing Queerness Back to Historical Fiction and I have a crush on it. No further questions. (Except for when can I get my mitts on Katrina’s next novel, I suppose 😍)
- From the Archives: Autostraddle’s pulp novel section is the home of my heart, and these old essays from Carmen, Ryan, and more are well worth a reread!
That’s all she wrote, folks! If you’re a queer writer, particularly an early-career queer writer: I’d love to hear about the cool things you’re up to so that I can share links to your published essays, book reviews, short stories, poems, and longform features on LGBTQ+ topics! Please email me links for consideration at [email protected] with the subject line “Rainbow Reading Submission” — I’m an avid browser-tab-collector, and I especially want to hear from you if you’ve just landed your first publication or first major byline.
Currently not reading anything LGBT related as I’m going through Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution To Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles Marohn Jr. A book about how the US and Canada have been failing at city design for nearly a century and ideas on how to fix it.
I accept my status as a weirdo, and have done so for decades.
That book sounds like right up my alley, I love learning about urban design, policy, and economics!
One that’s in my queue to read (more policy/legal system centered) is ‘The Color of the Law’ by Richard Rothstein which shows how local and up laws and regulations shaped racial segregation in US housing/geographic makeup.
Unfortunately (fortunately??) it seems like a lot of sapphic romance writers I like are putting out things in June, so I have my work cut-out for me! First up will be ‘Howl’ by Lucy Bexley, then ‘Down to a Science’ by Haley Cass. There’s another 6 books in the ‘I Heart SapphFic Pride’ collection that I’ll likely spread out over the month, I want to read book 2 in SD Semper’s Fallen Gods series, I have a copy of ‘First Sister’ by Linden A Lewis that I’ve been meaning to read, and I’ll probably start but not finish ‘Patricia Wants to Cuddle’ by Samantha Allen.
If there’s space in that or if I’m in the mood I might try to fight ‘Rainbow Rainbow’ in there, or see if there are any new trans-centric fiction to check out (if anyone has a strong rec for something, let me know!)
Will I get through all of that? Probably not, though if I don’t re-read anything or get sucked into another 100k fanfic I might be able to.
Of course now that I have had a chance to LOOK at the links you put together I see ‘A Lady for a Duke’ fits my rec request perfectly. Will absolutely take any others but might have to put this one a little higher in my June queue.
Have you read For the Love of April French yet? I think it came out last summer. It’s not sapphic but it is queer. M/F kinky romance with a trans bi heroine, written by a trans author.
Missed it completely, but looks good! I’ll check that out, thank you.
I’d love to hear what you think of it. The structure is kind of unusual for a romance and there’s a big misunderstanding, which I’m not normally a fan of, but I thought it mostly worked.
Another trans romance that I read recently is The Craft of Love by EE Ottoman. Historical romance set in NY city between a cis bi woman and a trans man (I think he’s straight?). Very low conflict, low angst, slice of life style romance between two skilled artisans – a quilter / seamstress and a silversmith.
I can’t speak to the trans rep but I really enjoyed the novella.
currently reading Bi by Julia Shaw (which comes out later this month) and it’s a super interesting and approachable look at bi history!
Currently my book club is reading The Song of Achilles but I’ve already read it and it’s kind of boring me again. Maybe I’ll hop over to I Kissed Shara Wheeler or Yerba Buena.
Also, a trans perspective on A Lady for A Duke…
https://twitter.com/binaryAegis/status/1530917327453274113?s=20&t=JIp7DdoJQ0a-DtfMi_3MRA
Well that’s disappointing.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Stacey! It’s obviously disappointing when a book fails to live up to the promise of its premise, but this was a really thoughtful and insightful thread.
I have two library holds that are “in transit” – just in time for my vacation next week.
I’m less enthusiastic about A Lady for a Duke now but am still excited to read You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty.
I binged on queer YA in the last couple weeks and read She Gets the Girl and I Kissed Shara Wheeler and recommend both of them.
I’m currently reading Matrix by Lauren Groff. That whole book is so completely HOT!!! If that book were made into a TV series, I could see it looking a lot like gentleman Jack!
LOVE Matrix, and really everything by Lauren Groff. Really excited for her follow-up, ‘The Vaster Wilds’, whenever it might be ready!
I’m reading “10 Steps to Nannette” by Hannah Gadsby, and I just finished “Calling Dr. Laura” by Nicole Georges which is a really good graphic novel! Really really good!
Putsata Reang’s memoir MA AND ME is incredible, I just finished it!
Onto Our Wives Under the Sea now!
Usually keep a couple going at once:
Right now:
Corfu Trilogy – Gerald Durrell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
A guilty pleasure is John D. MacDonald’s – pulp fiction – Travis McGee Detective series – right now reading “Darker than Amber”
Always like to have one in the series I am reading at any given time. I like the wild ride of the adventures of Travis McGee.
Stone Butch Blues!
Olivia by Dorothy Strachey
Next book in the works! 😄💖 Also thank you for featuring Putsata Reang’s memoir, it is such a beautiful book!
I’m finishing Michelle Tea’s Valencia right now (one on my list for YEARS) and then I’m finally going to read Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I’ve been wanting to read it for awhile and finally found it at a local bookstore last weekend!
Currently reading “Under the Rainbow,” by Celia Laskey. It tells the tell of an “Acceptance Across America” LGBT++ task force who take on the most bigoted and homophobic town in America. It’s fiction, but most queer people can relate to the experiences of one of the first person accounts. Especially if you were born in small town America.