05/07/2024
Our usual book review partner, News from Nowhere, cannot prepare us a summer reading list yet, so we've compiled one from the recommended reads at Queer Lit, the LGBTQIA+ bookstore in Manchester. We will rejoin News from Nowhere for a late summer reading list during August.
Queer Lit is now Europe's largest LGBTQIA+ bookstore and part of a network of radical, progressive and LGBT+ businesses across the UK. You can find them online at www.queerlit.co.uk.
These are just a selection of the titles that the shop recommends for your super sizzling summer reading.
10. A Trans Man Walks Into A Gay Bar
Harry Nicholas
After his relationship with his girlfriend of 5 years ended, Harry realised he was a single adult for the first time - not only that, but a single, transmasculine and newly out gay man.
Despite knowing it was the right decision, the reality of his new situation was terrifying. How could he be a gay man, when he was still learning what it was to be a man? Would the gay community embrace him or reject him? What would gay sex be like? And most importantly, would finding love again be possible?
In this raw, intimate and unflinchingly honest book, we follow Harry as he navigates the sometimes fraught and contradictory worlds of contemporary gay culture as a trans gay man, from Grindr, dating and gay bars, to saunas, sex and ultimately, falling in love. Harry's brave and uplifting journey will show you there is joy in finding who you are.
9. Pretended: Schools And Section 28
Catherine Lee
Pretended is a vivid historical, political and cultural account of schools and teaching under Section 28, a law that banned schools in the UK from promoting homosexuality as a 'pretended family relationship'. Catherine Lee was a teacher in schools for each of the 15 years that Section 28 was law (between 1988 and 2003). In Pretended, she considers the landscape for lesbian and gay teachers leading up to, during and after Section 28.
Drawing on her diary entries from the Section 28 era, Lee poignantly recalls the challenges and incidents affecting her and thousands of other teachers during this period of state-sanctioned homophobia. She reveals how these diaries led to her involvement in the 2022 feature film Blue Jean, and describes how this unexpected opportunity helped her to make peace with Section 28. Pretended will resonate with every lesbian and gay teacher who experienced Section 28 and will shock those who previously knew nothing about this law.
8. Transitional
Munroe Bergdorf
A wise, life-changing, ground-breaking book from writer and activist Munroe Bergdorf. Transitioning is an alignment of the invisible and the physical. It is truth rising to the surface. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of the human condition - a part of our experience as a conscious being, no matter who we are.
As time goes on, we all develop as people. None of us ever becomes someone else entirely - regardless of how we identify - but nor do we stay the same forever. We all transition.
It's what binds us, not what separates us. In Transitional, activist and writer Munroe Bergdorf draws on her own experience and theory from key experts, change-makers and activists to reveal just how deeply ingrained transitioning is in human experience. This is a book to help bring us closer to a shared consciousness: a powerful guide to how our differences can be harnessed as a tool to heal, build community, and construct a better society.
7. You Have The Power
Leah Williamson
Join Leah Williamson, captain of the England women's football team, as she shows you that you can be a leader at any age, and that huge things can happen when you believe in yourself!In the summer of 2022 Leah led the Lionesses to victory in the European Championships - now she wants to show you that you can achieve anything you put your mind to, both on and off the pitch, no matter what other people say.
This positive guide for life will inspire you to lead like a pro, and motivate you to do what you love. Written with journalist Suzanne Wrack, You Have the Power is filled with stories from Leah's own life and tons of brilliant advice, to show young girls how to find their strength and empower them to follow their dreams.
6.0 Jamie
L.D. Lapinski
A beautiful and uplifting story from L.D. Lapinski, author of The Strangeworlds Travel Agency, about how to make your own place when the world doesn't think you fit anywhere, for fans of Me, My Dad and The End of The Rainbow. Jamie Rambeau is a happy 11-year-old non-binary kid who likes nothing better than hanging out with their two best friends Daisy and Ash.
But when the trio find out that in Year Seven they will be separated into one school for boys and another for girls, their friendship suddenly seems at risk. And when Jamie realises no one has thought about where they are going to go, they decide to take matters into their own hands, and sort it all out once and for all. As the friends' efforts to raise awareness eventually become a rooftop protest against the binary rules for the local schools, Jamie realises that if they don't figure out a way forwards, they might be at risk of losing both their friends forever.
5. Arthur And Teddy Are Coming Out
Ryan Love
The feel-good read of 2023. Perfect for fans of Mike Gayle, Beth O'Leary and Alice Oseman's Heartstopper. When 79-year-old Arthur Edwards gathers his family together to share some important news, no one is prepared for the bombshell he drops: he's gay, and after a lifetime in the closet, he's finally ready to come out.
Arthur's 21-year-old grandson, Teddy, has a secret of his own: he's also gay, and developing serious feelings for his colleague Ben. But Teddy doesn't feel ready to come out yet - especially when Arthur's announcement causes shockwaves in the family. Arthur and Teddy have always been close, and now they must navigate first loves, heartbreak, and finding their place in their community.
But can they - and their family - learn to accept who they truly are? Readers are LOVING Arthur and Teddy! 'Too often, queer literature is enjoyed only by the LGBT+ community, but this is a novel ready to be loved by the masses.' 'I'd love to have read something like this when I was younger and finding myself.' 'Arthur and Teddy's relationship was the definite highlight of this story. The way in which they leaned on each for support just felt really new and fresh.'
4. Straight Expectations
Calum McSwiggan
The brilliant debut novel from author, presenter and LGBTQ+ advocate Calum McSwiggan! Seventeen-year-old Max has always been out, proud and just a little spoiled. Frustrated by the lack of romantic options in his small-town high school, during an argument with his lifelong best friend Dean, Max lashes out and says he wishes he had never been born gay. Max gets more than he bargained for when he wakes up to find his wish has come true - not only have his feelings for boys vanished, but so has Dean.
With his school life turned upside down and his relationship with his family in tatters, Max sets out on a journey of rediscovery to find a way back to the life he took for granted, and the romance he thought he'd never have. A deliciously romantic YA debut that's What If It's Us and One Last Stop!
3. We Can Be Heroes : A Survivor's Story
Paul Burston
One man's journey from prejudice to Pride. Paul Burston wasn't always the iconic voice of LGBTQ+ London that he is today. Paul came out in the mid-1980s, when 'gay' still felt like a dirty word, especially in the small Welsh town where he grew up.
He moved to London hoping for a happier life, only to watch in horror as his new-found community was decimated by AIDS. But even in the depths of his grief, Paul vowed never to stop fighting back on behalf of his young friends whose lives were cut tragically short. It's a promise he's kept to this day.
As an activist he stormed the House of Commons during the debate over the age of consent. As a journalist he spoke up for the rights of the community at a time of tabloid homophobia and legal inequality. As a novelist he founded the groundbreaking Polari Prize.
But his lifestyle hid a dark secret, and Paul's demons-shame, trauma, grief-stalked him on every corner. In an attempt to silence them, he began to self-medicate. From almost drowning at eighteen to a near-fatal overdose at thirty-eight, this is Paul's story of what happened in the twenty years between, and how he carved out a life that his teenage self could scarcely have imagined.
Emotional but often witty, We Can Be Heroes is an illuminating memoir of the eighties, nineties and noughties from a gay man who only just survived them.
2. Unsuitable : A History Of Lesbian Fashion
Eleanor Medhurst
The way we dress can show or hide who we are; make us fit in, make us stand out, or make our own community. Yet ‘lesbian fashion’ has been strangely overlooked. What secrets can it reveal about the lives and status of queer women through the ages? The lesbian past is slippery: often deliberately hidden, edited or left unrecorded. Unsuitable restores to history the dazzlingly varied clothes worn by women who love women, from top hats to violet tiaras.
This story spans centuries and countries, from ‘Gentleman Jack’ in nineteenth-century Yorkshire and Queen Christina of seventeenth-century Sweden, to Paris modernism, genderqueer Berlin, butch/femme bar culture and gay rights activists via drag kings, Vogue editors and the Harlem Renaissance. This book is a kaleidoscope of the margins and the mainstream, celebrating trans lesbian style, Black lesbian style, and gender nonconformity. You don’t have to be queer or fashionable to be enthralled by this hidden history. Unsuitable lights it up for the world to see, in all its finery.
And at Number 1 is
Sapphistries
Leila J. Rupp
A Global History of Love between Women.
From the ancient poet Sappho to tombois in contemporary Indonesia, women throughout history and around the globe have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. In beautiful prose, Sapphistries tells their stories, capturing the multitude of ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and place. Leila J.
Rupp reveals how, from the time of the very earliest societies, the possibility of love between women has been known, even when it is feared, ignored, or denied. We hear women in the sex-segregated spaces of convents and harems whispering words of love. We see women beginning to find each other on the streets of London and Amsterdam, in the aristocratic circles of Paris, in the factories of Shanghai.
We find women's desire and love for women meeting the light of day as Japanese schoolgirls fall in love, and lesbian bars and clubs spread from 1920s Berlin to 1950s Buffalo. And we encounter a world of difference in the twenty-first century, as transnational concepts and lesbian identities meet local understandings of how two women might love each other. Giving voice to words from the mouths and pens of women, and from men's prohibitions, reports, literature, art, imaginings, pornography, and court cases, Rupp also creatively employs fiction to imagine possibilities when there is no historical evidence.
Once more, thank you to Queer Lit in Manchester for those book reviews..... and remember, do support your local independent, queer, LGBTQIA+ and feminist bookstores for your reading pleasure. They are knowledgeable, friendly, and a place to be yourself.
