I listened to this collection of essays on audio, in which Samantha Irby herself reads, which is how I highly recommend you consume this book. Irby brings her biting wit and raw honesty to each essay, making them feel more like confessions. But they create a lifeline to so many who feel the way sheRead More
Danika reviews Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
This is a book that I will be processing for a long time. It is beyond almost anything I’ve read before. I’m not proud to say that I have very little knowledge around ableism and disability activism, which is part of why I picked up Care Work (The other being that Bodymap, Piepzna-Samarasinha’s book of poetry, isRead More
Danika reviews We Still Demand!: Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles edited by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, and L. Pauline Rankin
A weird thing about living in Canada is that you tend to know US history, laws, politics, etc more than you know your own. Reading We Still Demand! was a wake-up call that I actually know very little about Canadian queer history and activism, and that’s something I want to fix. Unfortunately, I had some issuesRead More
Greetings From Janeland: Women Write More About Leaving Men for Women edited by Candace Walsh and Barbara Straus Lodge
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 6 years since I wrote my review of Dear John: I Love Jane. The Lesbrary was still a baby! In that review, I talk about how fascinated I was with it, namely because of it addressing sexual fluidity. In fact, the author of Sexual Fluidity wrote the foreword, and that inspiredRead More
Rebecca reviews Crooked Letter i: Coming Out in the South edited by Connie Griffin
The 2015 non-fiction collection Crooked Letter i: Coming Out in the South edited by Connie Griffin is interesting and moving but sadly not very diverse. The book focuses on the coming out experiences of Southern lesbian, queer-identified, gay, and transgender people. The book’s unique title is inherently Southern. It comes from the chant that young Southerners useRead More
Danika reviews Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote
“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.” – Michael Cunningham, A Home at the Edge of the World, epigraph to Tomboy Survival Guide I am in love with this book, as I am in love with Ivan Coyote’s writing in general. First ofRead More
Danika reviews The Family Tooth by Ellis Avery
As soon as I finished The Last Nude by Ellis Avery, I immediately added her to my mental list of favourite authors, despite the fact that it was the only thing I’d ever read by her. Some stories are like that. The Family Tooth is a very different book, but it definitely has helped secure her placeRead More
Ashley reviews The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves edited by Sarah Moon
It is a truth universally acknowledged that LGBTQ teenagers must be in want of queer mentors. Thanks to Editor Sarah Moon, it’s now possible for them to glean the wisdom of a variety of LGBT role models in just one trip to the library. The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves is aRead More
Danika reviews I’ll Call It Like I See It: A Lesbian Speaks Out by Sheila Morris
I was expecting I’ll Call It Like I See It to be a memoir, but it’s actually a collection of essays (though most of them are autobiographical). The collection reads almost like a compilation of a local newspaper article, or a personal blog–which makes sense, because the author does have a blog by the sameRead More
Maryam reviewed Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa edited by Allyn Diesel
I just finished Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa, edited by Allyn Diesel. It is a wonderful anthology of personal essays, poetry, and photographs, each African woman telling the tale of what it is to be queer in South Africa. They range from the heartwarming – Yulinda Noortman’s description of shopping for wedding fabricRead More