Written by:
Diane Anderson-Minshall, Laura K. Cucullu, Malinda Lo and Renee Westbrook
Ah, another holiday party to avoid. Want to feast on tofurkey and bury your nose in a book while ignoring the rest of the family? Here are a few of our favorite page turners to get you started.
Fiction
Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux): When you’re Elsewhere, the prologue starts at the end and the epilogue at the beginning. Chronicling a recently deceased 15-year-old’s journey back through her life — actually 15 years forward through her Elsewhere afterlife until she is reborn — Elsewhere’s ambitious and imaginative plotline succeeds in being both graceful and coherent. Sounds confusing, but it makes surprising sense as teenage Liz meets the grandmother she never knew, falls in love and grows young again. One of Zevin’s characters sums it up best: “There’s the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there’s the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches growing up to the sky, and Elsewhere is the roots, growing down in opposing but perfect symmetry.” http://www.fsgkidsbooks.com/elsewhere
An Emergence of Green, Katherine V. Forrest (Harrington Park Press): First published in 1986, this classic Forrest novel was among the first to nurture the new genre of post-coming-out novels. With its rerelease, it’s a good time to catch one of the best-selling lesbian novels of all time. http://www.haworthpress.com
The Iron Girl, Ellen Hart (St. Martin’s): Hart is back with yet another mystery novel featuring Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless. After mourning her partner Christine’s death years ago, Lawless is ready to move on — until, that is, she discovers a gun in Christine’s belongings and links it to three murders in the local Simoneau family home before her death. http://www.ellenhart.com
Midnight Rain, Peggy J. Herring (Bella): In a San Antonio College parking lot, Bridget McBee is saved from a mugging (or worse) by some real-life superwoman who then drops a business card with three words on it in her lap. McBee is determined to find the woman who saved her life, but three words just isn’t a lot to go on. http://www.bellabooks.com
The Missing Page, Patty G. Henderson (Bella): In this third book in the Brenda Strange mystery series, our heroine is thrust into a case involving a rare, handwritten manuscript that has allegedly been stolen. A breezy page turner chock full of autograph collectors, forgers, idol-chasing teens and historical document high rollers. http://www.bellabooks.com
Tales of the Closet, Ivan Velez, Jr.. (Planet Bronx): This groundbreaking comic series about coming out in high school in the Bronx, circa 1987, makes a great gift for a queer teen going through many of the same issues. http://www.planetbronx.com
Target in the Finder, Ayano Yamane (Be Beautiful): This beautifully illustrated tale of queer romance in the Japanese yaoi tradition (romance between men created by women for women) is up the first in the new Finder Series, and marks the graphic novel debut of Japan’s fast-rising manga superstar Ayano Yamane. A must for yaoi fans. http://www.bebeautifulmanga.com
Time to Cast Away, Pat Welch (Bella): After her stint in prison is up, former cop Helen Black returns home to Berkeley, Calif., to start over. But life isn’t that promising, and the one woman she meets, Alice, turns up dead days later. While her former peeps think Black is the culprit, the disgraced cop has to hunt down the truth. http://www.bellabooks.com
Nonfiction
Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux): First published in 1987, this beloved memoir follows the lifelong struggle between a woman and her mother, set amidst the working-class world of Bronx, New York. Though the author is straight, most dykes can relate to her story. http://fsgbooks.com
Fusion Fitness, Chan Ling Yap, Ph.D. (Hunter House): Yap, an international fitness expert who focuses on women’s health, offers up the first book to integrate the most successful fitness principles from the East and West into this system that combines yoga, pilates, callanetics, martial arts and Lotte Berk’s method. http://www.hunterhouse.com
Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages, ed. Jennifer Blowdryer (Manic D Press): “The last thing you want to do is get roped into a job that will prohibit you from staying at open mikes [sic] until four in the morning five nights a week. That’s why I recommend taking the crappiest job you can find.” Though the pointers in Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages might seem counterintuitive at times, keep in mind that being a hipster is all about irony, anyway. From hair to fake names to credit card debt to prison, the essays compiled by veteran scenester Jennifer Blowdryer earnestly and humorously address all the concerns of the young and the artless. http://www.manicdpress.com
Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock, David Ciminelli and Ken Knox (Alyson Books): A history of queercore told through most of the bands that have defined it, Homocore traces the music from its riot grrl roots to its modern-day incarnations. Be they gay-fronted “straight” bands, gay-oriented bands with straight and queer members, or all-queer all-out rockers forcing queer issues on gay and straight audiences alike, rowdy rock bands get an adoring nod here, and fans will enjoy some of the musicians’ more personal stories. (Yes, more than half the bands talk about the influence of Judas Priest’s leather frontman Rob Halford and his coming out.) Groundbreakers like Team Dresch, Extra Fancy and Pansy Division are covered, along with the Butchies, Gina Young + the Bent, Triple Creme, and newcomers Alicia Warrington (drummer for the Kelly Osbourne Band) and Sugarpuss. Only Tribe 8 was sadly missing, except for a few mentions in other chapters. Overall, it’s an interesting read for fans of ear-splitting queers. http://www.alyson.com
Sexual Intelligence, Kim Cattrall (Bullfinch): Frankly, any kind of coffee table book that has Kim Cattrall naked on the cover — regardless of how well it explores the physical chemistry and emotional complexity of sexual desire — is tops in my mind. http://www.bullfinch.com
Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists, Jean H. Baker (Hill and Wang): Historian Jean H. Baker reveals the fascinating details of the private lives of five American suffragists: Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Wiillard and Alice Paul. Baker’s detailing of these early feminists’ personal upbringing and adult activism is both inspiring and intimate. Learning about Stone’s harsh childhood and Anthony’s lifelong history of romantic friendships with women brings life and color to what has often been taught as a dull history. http://www.fsgbooks.com/hillandwang.htm
Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture, Janell Hobson (Routledge): J. Lo’s booty, the Hottentot Venus, Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl mammary mishap and Toni Morrison’s Beloved are some of the models Hobson uses to examine the deviant hypersexuality assigned to the black female body by white male-dominated societies. The author also attempts to re-present and affirm the black female body by analyzing the works of contemporary artists and scholars. Venus gets an A+ on the exam, but only a C+ on the re-presentation. Let’s face it, when it comes to discourse regarding race, gender and sexuality, it’s difficult to dismantle centuries-old “imperialist iconography” with analytical affirmations. Not an easy rainy day read for the layperson, but a great resource for the women’s studies major. http://www.routledge.com
War on the Family: Mothers in Prison and the Families They Leave Behind, Renny Golden (Routledge): A criminal justice professor at Northeastern Illinois University, Golden does an expert job of taking an ethnographic examination of incarcerated women — the vast majority during the so-called “war on drugs” — and the effects on their children and families. The author forces the reader to weigh the costs of mass imprisonment and the disenfranchisement of those who are incarcerated, and offers up possibilities for changing a system that, at its core, is devastatingly wrong. http://www.routledge.com |
