Here's part three of my picks from November's reads: all by queer authors. November's part one, audiobooks, can be found here. Part two, a lovely mixed bunch, can be found here.
Kimiko Does Cancer: A Graphic Memoir by Kimiko Tobimatsu and Keet Geniza
At 25, Kimiko Tobimatsu was diagnosed with mucinous breast cancer. This comic-format memoir documents her experience navigating the medical system in Canada as a queer woman of mixed ethnicity. Attitudes towards traditional markers of femininity, the emphasis on maintaining a positive outlook, flashy cancer fundraising campaigns, and work ethic while incapacitated by illness are just some of the issues thoughtfully explored. Appealing art by Keet Geniza is a perfect complement.It probably doesn‘t help that I tie my masculinity—and, really, my value—to being able to provide for others. Whether it‘s running errands, baking or offering emotional support, I tend to focus on my output as the key way I affirm my butchness, dykeness, whatever you want to call it. This isn‘t sustainable post-cancer.
There‘s not a lot of writing out there on cancer and disability. Maybe because for those of us who are now cancer-free, the ongoing symptoms are after-effects (of surgery, radiation, meds), not the result of disease still being present. Or maybe it‘s because the mainstream cancer narrative is about overcoming adversity, not about experiencing ongoing disability.
Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
A bracing romp through the 20th century in Edinburgh, starting with arrival of the devil‘s daughter in 1910 and tying up the loose ends of her fate in 1999. There‘s a fascinating cast of mostly queer characters who, over the years, happen to live in the same building, folded into the history of the city and the larger world. A touch of horror, more than a few ghosts, and a large dollop of redemption. They say we are helpless, they say we are weak, they say we are nothing … they are liars!
— I didn‘t know poets were so well informed, Mr Burroughs.
— Don‘t trust poets unless they are scientists.
…films of novels make me uneasy. They‘re trying to steal words and put them into boxes. It‘s not where the worlds of novels are meant to be. My words exist in here you see, in my mind. Then they exist in your mind. Nobody else gets to see how they pass between us — it is a form of alchemy! Of all the art forms writing is the most intimate and strange.
His niece‘s set-up at Blossom‘s My Little Pony stables is highly elaborate. First off, Cupcake and Rosedust will bitch about Princess Sparkle. They‘ll talk about how disappointing she is. That she can‘t just be cheerful like them. They will cut her pony tail off. Write all over her stable in coloured pencil. They will steal her favourite things. Then they will trot off, very smug and happy with themselves.
I can verify now, thinking is the deepest act of transgression.
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
Wow! Alternating between three timelines—Mayan civilization in 1012; Belize in 2012; and post environmental disaster 3012—this hefty, audacious novel tackles big ideas of how best to live on our planet. Monica Byrne‘s vision of a worldwide nomadic sex-positive society that evolves from climate refugees gives me hope. You may need patience for Kriol dialogue, Spanish, and invented future vocabulary that includes many terms for personal identity.“What does entropy have to do with desire?”
“Well, as the universe comes apart, everything we desire will get farther and farther away. So we‘ll have to work harder to get it.”
18 December 3012
The human race has outgrown this way of life. Just like we outgrew monarchy and capitalism.
Birds are not birds; they are messengers.
This world is a world of deceptions.
This world is merely a representation of representations.
The star we see is not the actual star.
Field Study: Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium by Helen Humphreys
A balm for my soul. Helen Humphreys draws connections between plants and people in astute, quiet, poetic ways—seeking out the stories of collectors who contributed to the Fowler Herbarium in Kingston, Ontario, where she spent a year looking through over 140,000 specimens. This fascinating and contemplative literary work is the result. The book itself is beautifully designed and heavily illustrated: it would make a lovely gift.This world is a world of disappearing species, but it is also still a world of wonder and beauty. And while we must all do more, and petition our governments to do more about the climate crisis, and not ignore the fact that humans are responsible for the destruction of species and habitat, we must also celebrate what is still here with a ferocious reverence.
A visit to the herbarium is an exquisite kind of time travel. And by learning more about the intersection of people and nature in the past, I hope to gain some understanding of where we can go from here.
The air was churning with coloured birds and the wheel of their songs.
Drawing is mostly looking, or an excuse to look long and hard at something. Francis Hallé, a botanist who also draws, says, “The extended time required for drawing amounts to a dialogue with the plant… Drawing represents the work of human thought.”
Just as I am drawn more to the character of some people, I also prefer the character of particular flowers, and in Queen Anne‘s lace, I prefer there to be space between the blooms and the umbrels, for the head of the flower to have an open appearance, the “lace” loose enough to see through to the field grasses below.
The observations that I have made of the natural world last in my mind because they were hard won. They were gained by hours and hours of watching or walking, hours and hours of looking but not entirely seeing, until the moment when some new piece of knowledge swam into consciousness. These moments of clarity are perhaps one of the greatest pleasures of being a sentient animal.
Raccoon by Daniel Heath Justice
Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice‘s wonderful cultural history of raccoons joins 99 others in the growing Reaktion series, all of which focus on a single species. It‘s well-researched and lavishly illustrated. Rest assured that in the extensive chapter on etymology, the author has avoided including violent and degrading imagery that exemplifies the racist “coon” stereotype. Fun fact: gaze, nursery and mask are collective nouns for raccoons. My big takeaway, among the many things I learned, is the reason that raccoons are thriving: neophilia. They love new things, and so their curiosity makes them highly adaptable to our changing environment.Even their physical characteristics seem designed to polarize: one observer sees adorable impishness in the black facial pelage, banded tail and hunched back, whereas a less generous viewer sees a masked cartoon criminal sneaking around in a striped prison uniform.
While Fes Parker‘s onscreen portrayals of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone both featured coonskin caps, there is little evidence that the historical personalities themselves wore the now-iconic headwear.
Given that the English word raccoon comes to us directly from the Powhatan arakun, the inclusion of Meeko the raccoon as a sidekick is one of the few legitimate nods to historical accuracy in Disney‘s Pocahontas. […](Pocahontas was a child when she briefly met Smith, she was later kidnapped by the English and subjected to sexual abuse, the English killed her Powhatan husband and her ‘marriage‘ to Rolfe was anything but consensual.)
We so often expect an animal to behave like a docile little human in a fur coat, and such expectations are rife with dangers for both species, although raccoons obviously get the worst of it.
The heaviest raccoon on record was a domesticated northern raccoon named Bandit, who weighed an astonishing 34 kg (75 lb) when he died in Pennsylvania in 2004.
it‘s really, really important to me that Rocket Raccoon … is not a cartoon character, it‘s not Bugs Bunny in the middle of The Avengers, it‘s a real, little, somewhat mangled beast that‘s alone. There‘s no one else in the universe quite like him, he‘s been created by these guys to be a mean-ass fighting machine.
—Director James Gunn
Injun by Jordan Abel
Listening to Jordan Abel read his work is an ideal way to grasp what he is doing with language in this award-winning poetry book. I had been impressed when I heard him perform his work previously, but on the printed page I was initially baffled. Abel's brilliance was gradually revealed to me as I read the included supplementary material, the sentences with the word injun pulled from 91 public domain novels, and then through rereading the poems several times. Words in these collage poems become increasingly fractured as the book progresses. It took me awhile to realize that Jordan Abel‘s deconstruction is a way to decolonize literature. You can view Abel reading from his work on YouTube.lets play injun
and clean ourselves
off the land
Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan
A thought-provoking memoir of a non-white trans woman with albinism who moved from the Philippines to the USA when she was in her teens. A member of my feminist book club chose this because she is half Filipino and had never read anything by someone from the Philippines. It sparked one of our best discussions ever, because of its nuanced portrayal of appearance, passing and identity. Also, it really shows the way queer culture has changed over a few short decades.I felt a pang then, my conscience, but the collective voices of my photo professors drowned it out, with stories of how Diane Arbus woke subjects up at sunrise to get them at their most vulnerable, how Nan Goldin took out the door to her bathroom so she could take pictures of people having sex or doing drugs, and how the French artist Sophie Calle even worked as a maid at a hotel just to take pictures of guests‘ private belongings.
Gender transition provided me with much greater freedom of expression, the ability to determine the forms of femininity I wanted to embody, instead of feeling like I had to negotiate every feminine accessory or mannerism with a strict gay church that constantly threatened to reject me. I would have probably been bakla had I stayed in the Philippines, remained in that more indeterminate space in a culture where that was possible.
Cosmoknights (Book 1) by Hannah Templer
Lesbian gladiators (and a lesbian mechanic) rescue princesses … in space. The first volume of this speculative fiction graphic novel is so much fun that I immediately went to queer cartoonist Hannah Templer‘s website to read Book 2 in webcomic format. Print release of Book 2 is scheduled for Fall 2022. Templer's site is here.--Rough day, huh?
--They put me in a dress.
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| Note Kate's 'Trans Teen Beauty Queen' tattoo. |
