Reader's Place: June 1, 2022
BIOGRAPHIES OF LGBTQIA FOLK
Once again, we celebrate our LGBTQIA communities, neighbors, friends, families and selves. Politicians, a perfumer, an actor and an academic offer glimpses into their very diverse lives.
The Breaks: An essay, by Julietta Singh, 2021. (Library Catalog) BIOG Singh
With nuance and generosity, Singh reveals the connections among the crises humanity faces—climate catastrophe, extractive capitalism, and the violent legacies of racism, patriarchy, and colonialism—inviting us to move through the breaks toward a tenable future.
You can’t be serious, by Kal Penn, 2021. (Library Catalog) BIOG Penn
Kal Penn's unlikely career arc has taken him from nerdy American kid from an immigrant family in Montclair, New Jersey, to world-famous actor, to White House staffer under President Obama, and back to actor again. Now, in You Can't Be Serious, he reflects on the most ridiculous, offensive, and rewarding moments that have stood out during his journey.
Burn the page: A true story of torching doubts, blazing trails, and igniting change, by Danica Roehm, 2022. (Library Catalog) BIOG Roehm
Danica Roehm made national headlines when--as a transgender former frontwoman for a metal band and a political newcomer--she unseated Virginia's most notoriously anti-LGBTQ 26-year incumbent Bob Marshall as state delegate. But before Danica made history, she had to change her vision of what was possible in her own life.
Smahtguy: the life and times of Barney Frank, by Eric Orner, 2021. (Library Catalog) Graphic ORN
What are the odds that a disheveled, zaftig, closeted kid with the thickest of Jersey accents might wind up running Boston on behalf of a storied Irish Catholic political machine, drafting the nation’s first gay rights laws, reforming Wall Street after the Great Recession, and finding love, after a lifetime assuming that he couldn't and wouldn’t? In Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, one of America’s first out members of Congress and a gay and civil rights crusader for an era is confirmed as a hero of our age. But more than a biography of an indispensable LGBTQ pioneer, this funny, beautifully rendered, warts-and-all graphic account reveals the down-and-dirty inner workings of Boston and DC politics.
In Sensorium: Notes for my people, by Tanaïs, 2022 (Library Catalog) BIOG Tanais
At once memoir and reckoning, In Sensorium interlaces memories of childhood in the South, Midwest, and New York with a universe of memories and scent--a sensorium--while offering a critical, alternate history of South Asia from a Bangladeshi Muslim femme perspective. In Sensorium examines how fragrance has been used to demarcate who is civilized and who is barbaric, who is pure and who is polluted, who is free and who is damned.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau