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The way that Bone Boatwright cant seem to make sense of her heart?
Photos: Courtesy of publishers
All of that really resonated with me.
Every time I read this book I find something new to cherish in its pages.
It has informed every speck of my work.
Miss Nelson Is Missing!
Miss Nelson is a blonde, pink-dress-and-flats wearing elementary school teacher whose students wont listen.
The kids in Room 207 were misbehaving again, Marshall writes.
Spitballs stuck to the ceiling.
Paper planes whizzed through the air.
They were the worst-behaved class in the whole school.
Miss Nelson decides shes had it with her class.
Something will have to be done, she says.
Marshall writes of the naughty kids, They could see that she was a real witch.
I loved this weird, rough-around-the-edges picture book as a kid.
Stone Butch Blues
Lulu
My God, what a classic!
Feibergs fictional Buffalo community was sometimes toxic (arent they all?
), but most times life-saving.
How do we, as non-cis men, still perpetuate strict gender roles and toxic masculinity?
Why do we shame trans men and trans-masculine people for not reluctantly accepting womanhood?
Why do we hold the idea of passing though passing doesnt save us?
Does everyone have the capacity to change?
The reprints back cover identifies Cassandra as gay, but the book never explicitly does.
Cassandra exists as an antidote to much of what annoys me in contemporary queer fiction.
TheGuardiancalls Cassandra a supremely intelligent neurotic.
Shes definitely the queer elder to myPerfume & Painprotagonist, Astrid.
In acraft essay published on LitHub, Madden writes, “Writing, for me, is no catharsis.
Writing is my job.
If you havent read it already, you know what to do!
But I also loved the ferocity of Reginas desire.
Women like me tend to be expected to put almost everyone else first.
Its intensely satisfying to see Regina chase after what she wants.
Shes often wildly unreasonable.
In 2013, I was beginning to write toward more openness, andMy Educationhelped nudge me along.
I need to reread it again.
Sure, Id read about queer characters before, in both coded and explicit ways.
Id read about dykes and tomboys; Id read held gazes and trembling fingers and Id read romances.
House Rules undid me.
Lee is soulful and good and deeply sad.
Lee is powerful, despite all the bad, oppressive powers in her life.
But to me, Heather, like her characters, will always be a hero.
And when I finished that first read ofHouse RulesI posted on Facebook, has anyone read this???
A very hot cowboy butch responded.
10 years later, were married.
Nevada
I cant possibly be the only queer writer who first saw themselves in Imogen BinniesNevada.
I know Im not very special for building a connection with the novel.
The magic of Binnies novel is her ability to convey a realistic portrait of transition and queer life.
Transitioning doesnt automatically make everything better for Maria.
That is hard emotional work.
Work that Maria clearly avoids, work that James would rather not even begin to broach.
I read the novel a few years after I came out.
It was not a window into a life that I wish I were living.
