Month: August 2013

Danika reviews Word Hot by Mary Meriam

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Wordhot

Word Hot is comprised of 22 short poems, each less than a page long. The book is divided into two sections: To Lillian and Muse of Two, though I couldn’t quite figure out the commonalities within each section that caused them to be grouped that way. There is an ongoing theme of unrequited or lost love throughout the collection, and a muse is mentioned in many poems. Often the poems have strict, simple rhyme schemes.

Full disclosure: I don’t read a lot of poetry, and my favourite poets (such as Shane Koyczan, despite not being a lesbian) tend to be slam poets, or spoken word poets. The poetry I enjoy most is usually at least somewhat straightforward, though beautifully worded. I often get frustrated with poetry that doesn’t seem to be saying anything in particular, just assembling a labyrinth of incomprehensible phrases. Luckily for me, the language in Word Hot is usually easy to read, but the imagery of the poems seemed abstract. I couldn’t quite parse out what was being described, and sometimes lost the subject of the sentence as it spread over many lines.

There were a few poems I enjoyed (“An Entering” and “Portrait of a Woman Revealing Her Breasts”), but nothing that really stuck with me. I think this is entirely a matter of personal taste, though, and it looks like most if not all of the poems have been previously published in literary magazines–so don’t take my opinion as a condemnation of the quality of the poetry!

Karelia Stetz-Waters reviews Ice by Lyn Gardner

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Ice

Remember high school English class? Your teacher said there were three kinds of conflicts in literature: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. self. Recently, though, I’ve noticed a dearth of man vs. nature.

Okay, there is the surprise hit Sharknado, but I’m talking about good literature, not pulp movies. With global warming, pollution, and overpopulation, nature has become that fat kid who gets beat up every time they step out onto the playground. It’s just no fun to pick on nature anymore.

Except that it is.

There is nothing like a good man vs. nature (or better yet lesbian vs. nature) plot to call up our primeval fight or flight response and keep us reading.

Ice by Lyn Gardner delivers that visceral excitement that can only come from noble heroines battling the elements and then having hot lesbian sex. Like the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial used to say: it’s two great tastes that taste great together.

Ice tells the story of Alex Blake and Maggie Campbell, two talented detectives who supposedly hate each other after butting heads on a child abduction case three years earlier. At the start of the novel, they have once again been assigned to a case together. It is only supposed to take two days, but when a plane crash lands them in the middle of a blizzard they end up spending a lot more time together than they expected.  Completely isolated in the wilderness, they risk death from injury, exposure, and illness and in the process come to terms with the feelings they have always had for each other.

I was hooked. Gardner is at her best when she is building tension— either fear-of-imminent-death tension or sexual tension—and Ice is full of both, often at the same time.  But the story isn’t all lust and bravado. Gardner uses Blake and Campbell’s physical predicament to reveal their characters and to show how selfless the two women are in their growing affection for each other. When they finally get together, the sex is fun to read because the emotions are palpable.

The only part of the novel that I did not absolutely love was the epilogue. The epilogue shows Blake and Campbell in a version of domestic bliss that didn’t, to my taste, fit with the characters’ personalities. It’s a little too domestic for these tough, stubborn officers of the law.  But that’s a minor point though. I read romance novels for the build-up, not the exact details of the happily-ever-after. Plus there are plenty of women out there who would think Blake and Campbell’s happy ending was, indeed, perfect.

I would definitely recommend this to romance fans. If your summer reading list is already too long, save it for a cold winter day when you can sit by the fire and feel glad you’re not stranded in the blizzard of lesbian vs. nature.

By Karelia Stetz-Waters
www.kareliastetzwaters.com/

Danika reviews Lies About My Family: A Memoir by Amy Hoffman

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liesaboutmyfamily

Perhaps it’s unfair to read a book that you know you’re not in the mood for. Lies About My Family got positive reviews by Alison Bechdel and Anita Diamant, and I can’t say that it’s badly written… It’s just not a book I personally enjoyed very much. Lies About My Family is, of course, a memoir about Amy Hoffman’s family. They are Jewish immigrants, and Hoffman tells the stories of three generations of her family, primarily focusing on their identification and yet struggle with Jewish culture and religion, as well as the migration narrative. It covers many different people’s stories: some connecting, some just fragments. It is a compilation of stories that doesn’t seem to have a narrative thread of its own, instead grouping stories into nebulous categories that skip from person to person and across time.

I think that my problem is that I have read too many similar memoirs at this point. I suspect that more lesbians write memoirs than most of the rest of the population, because I have received many autobiographical books to review. Some are fantastic and have their own story to tell. Some don’t have a truly unique story, but are written so beautifully that it carries the book. I’m reminded of The Body Geographic, except that that memoir used the metaphor of maps to connect stories together, just as Licking the Spoon used food. I definitely think parts of this memoir were interesting, but overall I felt like some overarching thread was missing. I also feel like I’ve read a lot of family migration memoirs (though not really any with people of colour, oddly). As you can tell, this is an entirely personal preference. If you’re interested in a well-written Jewish lesbian memoir that also focuses on her family’s migration from Russia to the US, you will probably enjoy this book! It is also a pretty quick read: only 150 pages. It just wasn’t what I was looking for right now. I am still intrigued to read Amy Hoffman’s other book, An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News.

Links updated!

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Just a note to say that I have cleared out all the dead links from the sidebar and have added some more! The links should now all work, and the blogs linked should be active (at least, they’ve updated in the last year). I’ve also added some websites that have started up recently, including a few tumblrs. Let me know if there’s a link that’s not working, or one you think I should add!

Marcia reviews Stumptown vol. 2, by Greg Rucka, illustrated by Matthew Southworth

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stumptown2

It is only in certain circles that one hears Greg Rucka’s name added to the discussion about not-necessarily-heterosexual women in fiction. He stands (in my mind) alongside Gail Simone and Ed Brubaker when listing the writers who have made a positive mark on comics (specifically the DC Universe) when it comes to women. I wrote about Stumptown vol. 1 in February of this year, recommending the book not only to comic book fans but to those who enjoy noir, carefully plotted character pieces, and solid gold heroines — heroines who just happen to be bisexual.

Volume Two picks up soon after volume one — Dex Parrios is still taking cases for hire, still struggling to make a living while caring for her brother Ansel and continuing to dodge the heavy hammer of Marenco’s crime underground. Dex is, as many have noted, a cross-section of many of Rucka’s female characters: plucky, determined, rough around the edges, and playing by her own rules. This is a lot of what makes Dex such a good P.I. on the page and on the job.

In Volume Two, “The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case” another of “Rucka’s women” previously seen in the novel A Fistful of Rain crosses paths with Dex — Miriam “Mim” Bracca, guitarist for Tailhook. Mim has a history with women, but her true love is Baby, the guitar that has been by her side through the ups and downs of Mim’s career. Confronted with a missing Baby, Mim brings the desperate case to Dex, but seems to be hiding something.

While romance is certainly not front and center here, I enjoyed the flirtatious back and forth between Mim and Dex. I enjoyed knowing that these are not characters defined by presence or lack of sex scenes. These are real women with real attractions, and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to get hot and heavy while being chased by thugs!

As a previous fan of Stumptown, I didn’t need much convincing to read on, but Rucka (and artist Southworth) still had some treats in store. Dex here reads a little more at ease with herself. If I only had one word to describe volume two it would be fun. A missing guitar doesn’t seem high on the ranks of thrilling adventures, but despite the set-up, Rucka delivers a story full of snark, one-liners, and one of the best car chases I have ever seen.

Published once again by Oni Press, Volume Two will be released in October, and comes with Rucka’s thoughtful prose discussion on the nature of the P.I. story.

Lena reviews Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi

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ascension

We learn in elementary school not to judge a book by its cover, but it might be worth it for Jacqueline Koyanagi’s debut novel.  The woman on the front looks a bit like Gina Torres if Firefly had merged with Star Wars and it’s completely amazing.  What’s inside is a completely entertaining science fiction adventure totally worth of the Gina Torres look-a-like on the front.

Koyanagi’s built an interesting world with all the staples one would expect in a good sci fi.  There are spaceships, interplanetary travel and aliens, but also a thoroughly interesting socio-political landscape in which the convergence of science and magic have created a mystical super-corporation capable of economic and social control through emotional and technological manipulation.

In the midst of all this is Alana Quick, a destitute spaceship engineer or sky surgeon trying to make ends meet in her aunt’s repair shop while dealing with a degenerative disease in a world without universal healthcare.  She’s a charming character with a unique voice made up of a nice blend of confidence and insecurity.  It’s also very refreshing to see a character with a chronic illness that is part of their life but not the defining characteristic of their existence.  Instead, Alana is governed by her love of spaceships, specifically a ship called Tangled Axon that lands in her shipyard looking for Alana’s sister Nova.  Desperate to get off the planet, Alana stows on board hoping they’ll need an engineer.  They allow her to stay in exchange for helping finding Nova and Alana is promptly embroiled in the mess of their lives.

It’s a fun book.  The action moves along at a nice pace and Koyanagi has a good sense for when to push the plot and when to let her moments sit.  The relationship that blossom between Alana and the crew of Tangled Axon are the glue that holds the story together.  It’s also clear that, like many other sci fi and fantasy pieces, Koyanagi’s building a world to tell stories about people who don’t often get to be the heroes.  Her dedication to that ideal comes through strongest and what makes this such a lovely little story.  We’re presented with a world without much patriarchal or gender-based hierarchy – all the leadership roles in the book are held by women.  It’s awesome and highlights what seems like a very intentional lack of masculine presence.  One could see a missed opportunity to make something of that difference in leadership, to capitalize on the differences between the story and reality, but it’s treated as completely natural.  For the story Koyanagi’s trying to tell, that’s the stronger choice.  She gives us world that has already come together to include and showcase the people who are still finding their voices in ours.

Danika reviews Queers Dig Time Lords edited by Sigrid Ellis and Michael Damian Thomas

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queersdigtimelords

I feel like, really, if this book is for you, it probably already had you by the title. This is a collection of essays by queer Doctor Who fans about how their fandom and queer lives intersect. When I heard that this was coming out, I was ridiculously excited about it, even more so when I got a review copy. I would categorize myself as a casual Doctor Who fan. I became a fan through New Who and have seen most episodes only once. I do look forward to new episodes (less so with Moffat’s direction) and I have been slowly working through Classic Who (I’m up to the Fourth Doctor, though I’ve only been watching complete episodes, not reconstructions). So that’s my background going into this book.

In some ways it reminds me of when I was at Leakycon (a Harry Potter convention) earlier this summer. There was an LGBT Meet-Up, and most the time was filled with people coming to the microphone and talking about how being a fan of Harry Potter has helped them or interacted with their experiences as a queer person. Queers Dig Time Lords is similar, but with Doctor Who replacing Harry Potter. It’s generally fairly casual and autobiographical. I was actually surprised that there was a fair amount of lesbian content, considering that many of the essays expressed that the Whovian fandom has usually been associated with gay men (which I actually didn’t know before reading this! I also didn’t know that RTD was apparently repeatedly accused of having a “gay agenda” on Who.) It was still more focused on gay men, but there was a fair amount of lesbian and bisexual women stories, and a few that touched on being a trans* fan–one in particular, equating transitioning with regenerating, was especially good. The collection also mostly tells stories about growing up as a queer kid (usually a gay boy) with Classic Who. Even though that’s not my experience with the show or the fandom, it was still really interesting to read.

I got through this book quite quickly and really enjoyed it. If you’re a queer Doctor Who fan, I definitely recommend picking it up (but you were probably already wanting to). Even though there is a recurring theme of gay boys growing up with Classic Who, there is still a lot of different subject matter and opinions covered. Essays present entirely different views about what periods of the show were most queer-friendly and why, about certain character’s orientations, about writers’ queer positive slant or homophobia, etc. One essay explores the BDSM subtext of the Doctor and the Master. Another praises Mickey as a queer icon. One details the lesbian subtext of a Classic Who episode. The Doctor is cast as asexual, heterosexual, bisexual, ambiguous, shifting, and more. A couple essays focus more on Torchwood. And there are some essays that express as much disappointment with Who as love for it. It was an enjoyable read for me that made me want to dive back into Classic Who (with “camp” goggles firmly in place) and but on some New Who repeats as well.

I’ll share with you the quotation from one essay that made me put down the book and rush to tumblr to share it right away.

Much of my experience of fan culture over the last five years has been one of conflict. There’s a lot to be fought and a lot to be fought for when you’re a queer woman of color with a hunger for stories: consuming film and television and books is often like being handed beautiful, elaborately sculpted meals with bits of cockroach poking antennae and carapace out of the sauces and soufflés. You try to eat around the bugs, try to surgically remove them, but you can’t quite get away from the fact that they’ve flavored the dish and will probably make you sick. But you have to eat, or go hungry.

That’s by Amal El-Mohtar, and is actually from the Master/Doctor essay!  Here’s another: “Fun as it would be, exhaustively combing through all the Doctor’s and Master’s interactions over the years in order to underscore their validity as a One True Pairing is beyond the scope of this essays. (And, frankly, unnecessary, because their OTP-ness is as obvious as the sun is hot. And hot as the sun is obvious.)”

I did have a minor quibble with Carole Barrowman is dismissive of asexuality in her introduction (and I rolled my eyes at one essayist insisting that he is homosexual, not gay, because gay is all about gay pride and gay bars and pride parades and he is not that sort thankyouverymuch), but that was about all the complaints I had. Instead I noted a couple of great passages, like this one detailing one point of a list of things gay men may enjoy about (Classic) Doctor Who (or “Doctoroo” as it always sounded to him as a kid):

  • Bad special effects. Straight men love special effects that look real. Queers love stuff that looks as if it’s been made out of washing up liquid bottles and sticky-backed plastic and egg boxes. It’s not that’s more tolerant and imaginative, though we are. It’s just that we love being bonded by our shared sense of the ridiculous. We love the idea of a universe held together by a bit of tinsel and glitter.

Doctoroo’s special effects always seemed to have a touch of drag queen aesthetic about them.

So if you’ve been tempted to pick this one up, or if you’ve just realized it’s existence now and are thinking about giving it a try, I would recommend not fighting it. And let me know what you think about this one!

Anna M. reviews Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule

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desertoftheheart

I became aware of the movie Desert Hearts (1985) when I (like the protagonist of the film It’s in the Water) was scouring my local video stores for movies with lesbian content. It was the mid- to late-90s, and there were still stores with actual videos in them. I have watched Desert Hearts–and Go Fish, and The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love–many times since then, having procured my own VHS copies in order to avoid having to make eye contact with any video clerks in Salt Lake City. But for some reason my search for lesbian content never lead me to Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart (1964) the book on which the movie was based. When I got the opportunity to read it via the Lesbrary, I also re-watched the movie (just as Mary did for her recent episode of Queer Books Please–I swear, I was working on reading the book before then!) for the purpose of comparison.

The general plot of both the book and the movie are the same–in the middle part of the 20th century, a college professor moves to Reno in order to procure a divorce. While staying at a boarding house set up for divorcing women, she meets a young and vibrant artist who also works in a casino. They fall in love, disrupting the professor’s vision of herself and her future, but at the end it seems like things just might work out for them.

Rule herself co-wrote the movie, which is a lot less . . . cerebral than the book, which concerns itself with questions of morality and other philosophical ideas. There is also a great deal more musing on casinos, especially Ann’s job and how it informs her artwork. Ann and Evelyn (Kay and Vivian in the movie) often came across to me as creatures of great, almost impenetrable complexity. Perhaps it was because I’m unaccustomed to reading works that require my absolute concentration, but I found the book a bit difficult to parse at times, although the prose was lovely. It made me miss the desert, which was a frequent background to my childhood in Utah. Rule’s way of describing it was utterly clear and evocative.

I’m glad I read the book, and would be interested to read more by Rule. If nothing else, it was a good exercise in comparing movies to the books from whence they came–in this case, I can see Rule’s hand in both, and I noticed certain things while experiencing each medium. For example, in the book Ann’s family is much kinder about her involvement with the outsider Evelyn, wanting primarily for her to be happy. The Frances of the movie is strangely in love with her adopted daughter, and that emotional entanglement is very painful to watch play out. My advice is to experience both–the movie for its great visuals and almost wry humor and the book for that rich internal life of both protagonists. The words “lesbian classic” definitely apply here.

Edited to add:

Apparently a Desert Hearts sequel is in the works!

Anna M. tweeted “Now that @booksnyarn has seen Desert Hearts, she wants to know what happens next. Any fic out there? pic.twitter.com/OoMvlT5geb”

and Donna Deitch (@DesertHearts), director of Desert Hearts, replied “@helgagrace @booksNyarn Not sure about any fan fiction, but if you can stand the wait, a sequel is in the works!”