Author Meryl Wilsner on Writing MILFs, Age Gaps, and Twisting Tropes
If there is one thing I love in this world, it is a romance novel. If there are two things I love in this world, they would be a romance novel and a MILF. So you can imagine how overjoyed I was when I learned about Meryl Wilsner’s sophomore romance novel, Mistakes Were Made. A queer romance about a college senior who hooks up with a hot older woman, only to discover the next morning that the hot older woman in question is her best friend’s mother?? Sign me the hell up!
I had already read Something To Talk About, Meryl’s charming debut, and I was frankly dying to get my hot little hands on Mistakes Were Made the second I heard about it. And now that I have, I am thrilled to report that it is an utter delight ā sweet and funny and, it must be said, very sexy! It’s filled with all the little things Meryl does so well in their books: characters who feel real and like friends you already know, funny, breezy dialogue that is never overwrought, and did I mention the sex? The sex is…very good!
Luckily enough for me (and thanks, in large part, to The Morning Show), Meryl and I have become friends over the last few years, and they are always my favorite person to talk about writing with. They have so much love for the craft and the people in their community that they are just kind of infectiously joyous about it? Plus, they are smart as hell, so what’s not to love? I was delighted to interview them about Mistakes Were Made, their writing process, lightly trolling the community, and of course, all things hot older women.
Christina: Meryl, you wrote the MILF book! Talk to us about it. Wait, actually let me be professional, let’s use its proper title! Though I do remember a period where you were trying to find a title where MILF was the acronym.
Meryl: I did try to get āMake It Last Forever.” And it’s a decent title, to be honest!
Christina: It does, perhaps, beget a different energy than the book maybe has? It’s not like the book is not charming and romantic ā it is a romance! It does the things it says on the tin. But āMake It Last Forever” is a little more wistful, Nicholas Sparks-esque?
Meryl: Itās also aware that the characters have feelings for each other in a way that this book does not? Wait ā we never actually said what this book is called! It is called Mistakes Were Made.Ā
Christina: There we go!
Meryl: They did include āMake It Last Forever” when they were sending it around, because we came up with three or five or something. But Mistakes Were Made was what was chosen, which I think is like, perfect.
Christina: It is perfect! Mistakes Were Made, itās gorgeous. What is it about?
Meryl Wilsner: Mistakes Were Made is about a college senior named Cassie, who has a one night stand with a hot older woman who she meets at a bar, and then the next day she goes to breakfast with her friend and her friendās mom Erinā¦who is the woman she slept with the night before.
Christina: A tale as old as time, truly. Now, something I know about you is that you have a real deep love for the idiots-to-lovers trope.
Meryl: Yes, idiots-to-lovers is my brand. I think I will always write idiots-to-lovers. Whether it takes people a really long time to figure out they have feelings, or they just insist that they don’t have feelings, or they insist that the other person couldn’t possibly have feelings for them. Just any form of being very stupid when it comes to emotions, thatās what I love.
Christina: Itās what you love in life as well as in art.
Meryl: So we have idiots-to-lovers, my favorite trope of all time. I don’t think “best friend’s mom” is technically a trope? Maybe this could kick it off.
Christina: I think we should kick off a whole slew of them, frankly.
Meryl: Well, you and I are still gonna write the MILF/Tiktoker book, don’t forget that.
Christina: No, I will not forget that. I mean, I know it’s like, eighth, on your list of possible book ideas at this moment. I’m not particularly stressed about it. You are gonna remind me when the time comes in, like, 2025.
Meryl: We do have a while. So the other trope inĀ Mistakes Were Made is technically friends with benefits to lovers? Which is sort of weird, if your friend with benefits is your best friend’s mom? But that is basically what happens!
Christina: As I love to say, friendship can look like anything.
Meryl: And you’re right that āMake It Last Forever” is just way too wistful, because this book is absurd. In a great way!
Christina: I think there are many places ā especially in queer romance ā to have a wistful moment! But these dumb dumbs, who I love with all of my heart, to be clear, are simply not it.
Meryl: They have their own little romantic moments that for the most part, they ā or at least Cassie ā doesn’t realize are romantic. But for the most part, they are just dumb dumbs.
Christina: What is it about the dumb dumbs that you love so much? Why is this like a trope that you keep coming back to?
Meryl: Because I am also stupid? [laughs]
Christina: [laughs] Well, I think that’s a gorgeous little bit of self awareness!
Meryl: Like, my wife and I met online. Neither of us were looking for someone to date, certainly not someone who lives very far away, but we just ran in the same circles where all the queers lived at the time: Tumblr. And she sent me a gift card for my birthday, and I was like āIs she just a really nice person?” She liked me, it turns out.
Christina: Huge Wait Is This A Date energy? You just decided to get married, and I decided to start a podcast.
Meryl: So yeah, I think there’s a bit of a habit among, especially among ā I never know what word to use ā sapphic, I guess? Even though I no longer identify as sapphic because I realized Iām not a woman. But being raised within the wlw community, if you will. We’re all stupid and don’t know what we want!
Christina: āBestselling Romance Author Calls All Queers Stupid!” Thereās the pull quote. I do feel like idiots-to-lovers is a very satisfying trope to read. It gives you that fun perspective of talking to a friend and being ālike, bro, what are you talking about? Of course they like you!ā
Meryl: And I like the dual point of view with idiots-to-lovers so like, you get mad at the characters? Like with Something To Talk About, you got mad at them because it took so long for them to get together.
Christina : Let’s talk about the differences in Something To Talk About and Mistakes Were Made. I remember when I was recommending Something To Talk About to anyone who would listen, I would say āit is the slowest of slow burns!ā
Meryl: Mistakes Were Made is much less of a slow burn!
Christina: Exactly! When I was telling people you had another book coming out, I said,āFret not! In chapter one… there is fucking!” I know Mistakes Were Made was born from a fanfic, but did you ever think about changing the beginning? Or were you always like, āit has to start with fucking?ā
Meryl: The fucking was always in chapter one. I tried to add a couple of things before, so that you knew a little bit more about who everybody was and who was involved. And my agent was like, āWhy are we changing this? Why aren’t we just starting the bar? The bar was great!” I was like, āOkay, we’ll start with the bar!ā
Christina: It’s also very fun to be like, yeah, my first one was absolutely the slowest of slowest burns. And now guess what? Plot twist!
Meryl: I am large. I contain multitudes! And I do love a slow burn! I donāt think when they hook up denotes goodness or quality or whatever.
Christina: Yeah, they’re just different types of books.
Meryl: And I love them both!
Christina: Both are valid. [laughs]
Meryl: [laughs] There is one thing that is the same in both of them. I can’t remember if it was a Tiktok or Instagram comment, but somebody commented something like, āThis author loves MILFS, I’m here for it!āĀ And I was like, wow you’re not wrong, but this stranger didn’t have to just put it so precisely!
Christina: Well, and itās a large part of our friendship, this love of MILFs! Do you find it challenging to write age gaps? Do you see yourself ever stepping away from the MILFs? Please say no!
Meryl: In my next book, there’s only like a four year age gap. It’s very strange for me! I love older women, that is always going to be part of what I write. But really, I love any trope that makes it like a forbidden romance ā but not in a āshe’s 16 way.ā
Christina: Always good to be clear!
Meryl: Just to clarify! Basically, I love both reading and writing characters who are both like āwe should not be doing this, but dear God, I have to do it anyway.” That’s my favorite. And so the age gap tends to lend itself really well to that. And, like obviously, with Mistakes Were Made, itās her best friend’s mom! So of course theyāre both like: āI should not be doing this.” But they do it a lot!
Christina: Like a beautiful amount!
Meryl: They make rules, and then they completely ignore them. And it’s lovely.
Christina: Rules are meant to be broken in so many spaces and in so many ways! Of course we need to be aware of all these varying dynamics when we interact with people, but sometimes ā especially online ā it can feel like actively erasing an adult’s agency? Like yes, someone in their mid twenties is young, but they are still an adult human who gets to make decisions for themselves! And something that I love about both of your books is that the younger character never feels infantilized or denied the ability to make a choice, even if it is messy.
Meryl: Everybody is a grown up, and their choices are fine! I think in Something To Talk About, age was more of an issue, even though it was a smaller age gap. In Mistakes Were Made, Cassie and Erin always meet each other as equals. Like, there’s not a āOh, you’re just a kid,” sort of thing. Even when Erin wants there to be! She and Cassie just work together. They don’t have a crisis like, āoh, god, she’s so young, and I’m gonna die!ā
Christina: Right! There are so many ways in which we have power differentials in relationships, and they’re always a thing you’re gonna have to work around. There’s always going to be an exchange of power in a relationship space.
Meryl: And I do love a dynamic where the one who has the power is like, a fucking mess for the other one. Thatās really my favorite.
Christina: Oh yeah, absolutely. So both of us are gay, is what I am hearing?
Meryl: [laughs] Yes.
Christina: Good to know! Now, let me be a journalist again. Tell me about the process of writing Mistakes Were Made! Please be aware that I will check our texts and fact check you if you make something up.
Meryl: Please do! I don’t remember anything that’s ever happened to me! I would love to know what I said as I was writing this. It was so long ago!
Christina: I think around the time we became friends, you were working on changing POVs. I have a lot of āI am changing POVs and I want to die” texts from you.
Meryl: I always say this in every interview because I think it sounds smart: We never learned to write books, we only learn how to write the book that we’re writing.
Christina: That does sound smart!
Meryl: Every time, I think āI don’t know if I can do this.” Actually, Mistakes Were Made was the first ever book-length manuscript that I finished. I did National Novel Writer’s Month, like starting in high school. But I would basically hit 50,000 words and then never look at that project ever again. So I had written long things, but I had never completed a long thing. This was the first one that I finished. But it was mostly written for myself and my friends at the time, who were like, who took my one-shot fanfic and were like āWhat if this happens? What if that happens?ā
Christina: That is what friendship is!
Meryl: That was really fun, to get to write it for myself. One thing that has stayed the same throughout my process is that I like to have the end somewhat figured out. I like to have something to write toward. I didn’t know that this was going to turn into a book-length project. Even as I was writing, I was like, āThis is gonna be like, chapter two of three.” And then it was like, three of five…
Christina: I love that as you’re talking about this, I can see the fanfic tags.
I always say this in every interview because I think it sounds smart: We never learned to write books, we only learn how to write the book that we’re writing.
Meryl: Coming back to it was so different! Now I have somewhat of an idea how to write a book? And how to plot stuff? When I first wrote what would become Mistakes Were Made, I had no idea what I was doing. I was just having fun. I think I am a much more efficient writer now ā but donāt call me out on that!
Christina: I am absolutely not going to call you out, due to friendship and love. You are absolutely the most efficient writer I’ve ever seen.
Meryl: Thank you, I love you. But Mistakes Were Made was not supposed to be the next book. I was working on revising another book, and it was not going well, and then I switched agents. My new agent was like āyou can take some space from this and work on something else.” My relationship with writing was so messed up at the time, and when I got back into Mistakes Were Made, it was like wow, this is very fun! I enjoy this! After that, every time I had a good writing day, I felt like I needed to tell everyone I knew ā just because it had been so long since I’d done that.
Christina: Which is great, because I am going to ask more process questions! I know you are not a plotter, which I think is brave. You are a person who sees big conflicts, sees a resolution, sees how they get resolved, sees the ending. But you are not a person who is outlining things like āthis is the scene where these things happen, and this is when this person is introduced” and so on.
Meryl: Oh, God never to that extent! But I am plotting more as I am becoming someone who writes, instead of just writing whatever the fuck I want.
Christina: To describe it as āsomeone who writes” instead of, as we say in the biz, āa writer” is very funny to me.
Meryl: Well I’m trying to become a quit-my-day-job-author.
Christina: And I? I love that for you. Youāve found that encourages more structure in your writing?
Meryl: Yeah, as I started writing on contract, I’ve leaned more into plotting. And I realized that I always thought that I wasn’t a plotter because I don’t have a written down outline. But I talk about every idea that I have. I do a lot of sort ofā¦ flailing at people as my plotting? I just never thought about it as a form of plotting before.
Christina: You are a community-based plotter, and I think that is really beautiful. Itās what being queer is about.
Meryl: I just love to yell at people! I love when something gives me a feeling and then I yell it at someone else, so it will give them a feeling. My friend Zabe is very good at saying āyes, and then this can happen.” If I like it, I’m like, āYes,” and I run with it. If I don’t like it, I’m like, āCool, but actually, this happens.” And we don’t take offense at the other person, weāre not like āthat’s a stupid idea. I’m not going to do that.” I think part of that is from becoming friends through fanfiction. When the characters weren’t ours, there was no reason to be offended.
Christina: I mean, obviously, I’m aware of this based on how our friendship began!
Meryl: You know, I immediately rewatched The Morning Show because you were obsessed with it, and I was like āI am obsessed with Christina and must become her friend, let me rewatch this.ā
Christina: You know, I can’t say that I’m proud to have created that kind of response to that particular program? But I am very much a person who gets hyperfixated on things, and you were lucky enough to come into my life during one of my most unwell eras!
Meryl: I feel like that’s what I do with my book ideas. I hyperfixate on an idea for a week, and I send it to everyone who I know will care about it. Do I do anything after that? No, absolutely not.
Christina: Well, I have learned ā largely due to your influence ā that it actually can be helpful to talk to people about things that you’re working on and the problems that you’re having. Like, when writers talk about their process, it usually feels so solitary? And what I love about your process is that you are like āyeah, this was hard and then I talked with 18 different friends, and then everyone gave me different answers and different plot points, and I pulled it all together!” I think that’s very delightful.
Meryl: I don’t know that I would be able to write books without people! I will often just text somebody and be like, āOkay, do you like, do you have time at some point today or this week to talk about my book? I need to tell you the problem I’m having.” And I do it with [my wife] Brooke, but Brooke usually just responds with āyou’ll figure it out.” And I’m like, āNo, I need you to give me the answer!ā
Christina: Wow, what a top response!
Meryl: But the thing about this kind of problem solving is that a lot of what I actually get from talking to other people is when someone suggests something that I know is wrong. That can be incredibly helpful.
Christina: So you can be like: āoh no that would never happen” because something someone says makes you realize you know a lot more about your characters than you thought?
Meryl: Exactly, that is really, really helpful to me. Like, for Something To Talk About, I did Pitch Wars. And my mentor wrote a lovely edit letter. They spent a fair amount of time saying āhere’s the issue. And here’s a potential way that you could solve that issue.” But I was like, āabsolutely not, we’re not going to do that.” But because she did that, that was the only reason that I figured out what I was going to do instead. And sometimes I just need people to scream and be excited! Sometimes I need a cheerleader.
Christina: The compliments part, I totally get.
Meryl: It literally doesn’t even have to be a compliment. It can just be like a keysmash.
Christina: A keysmash is a compliment in the language of bottoms.
Meryl: I hadnāt thought about the fact that my process is not as solitary as it could be. Like, just hearing you say it that way is helping me realize that I get stuck when I am solitary. Bringing other people in is what helps me.
Christina: Well, in fairness, I hadnāt really thought about your writing that way until I said it. And now I’m like, okay go off journalist! But I do find it inspiring ā maybe it will make me stop being such a solitary hermit when I am writing.
Meryl: I was gonna say okay, now you tell me all about your book, where are we?
Christina: On the record?!?! Talk about accountability practices!!
Meryl: That is actually a good idea! I was gonna say it doesn’t have to be on the record, but I’m like, mmm, maybe it should be.
Christina: Well, I am trying to figure out, like, what kind of writer I am? It is very challenging. I love that you know that you need to talk things out with people, but I was genuinely shocked to discover that talking with a bunch of writers was really helpful? It truly did not occur to me that that could be, like, helpful in any way? Which, like, hello?
Meryl: Idiots-to-loversā¦.[laughs]
Christina: Maybe it’s a trope that I don’t reach for because it hits too close to home? But like you, even when I am just writing fanfiction, the only way I’ve been able to finish is when I know exactly how itās gonna end and I can write to the ending. That’s fine. Books are ā what’s the word? Longer.
Meryl: Much longer. So many chapters!
Christina: The other thing I’ve realized over the last couple of weeks is that I kind of have to constantly be reading romance, if I want to write it.
Meryl: That’s so funny because I am literally the opposite.
Christina: I know so many people who are like āI cannot at all read romance when I’m writing romance!” But I was listening to the audiobook of the Fifth Season, and I was writing like a lunatic! I think part of it is that I am very good at mimicking tone, like, I read the thing, I can write a version of that thing. If I dip outside of thatā¦all bets are off.
Meryl: I think that would be amazing though to be like, okay, only read thrillers but now write a contemporary romance! I love that idea. It could be something to play with! Once you have finished a book.
Christina: When and if! Wordsā¦are hard!
Meryl: I used to write so many words per day. Everyone tells you āoh once you start writing for a job, it is a job like everything else,” and I was always like āthat will never happen to me, I love writing so much!āĀ And it’s like, oh, no, it will and has. But I am always trying to be more gentle with myself. Every time I cut myself a break, things go better for me. And every single break is still very hard to cut myself. There was a time where I was shooting just for like, I think 250 words was my goal per day. Because that way, if it was 10 o’clock, and I hadnāt done it yet, I was like, “okay, I can write one conversation.” And then often once you start, you end up like, āOh, I actually wrote 500 words today.ā
Christina: Something Iāve started doing when I donāt know where a scene is gonna take place or whatever, but I do know the dialogue is just write the dialogue and then layer these other parts in later.
Meryl: A first draft can be shitty! The second draft can be shitty! Like, as soon as Something To Talk About came out, it was a published book, and I could not change it. And there are so many things that I would change! I wrote about a TV show, and I never once mentioned a writers room, like, come on. So I’ve moved on from the like, āoh, the first draft can be shitty” to recognizing that even the final draft is not going to be perfect. Nothing is going to be perfect! I don’t strive for perfection on any draft.
Christina: ā¦I’m just gonna write a note to myself for my next therapy appointment.
Meryl: And now that I’ve written more books, I realized things about my writing style. Like, I tend to know the dialogue fairly well.Then I will add in the details about the room they’re standing in, because I will not write it in the first draft. Just learning those things, like you were saying, like getting to know, what type of writer you are, makes it easier, even though I ended up having to sort of put my hands in the document more times because I’m like, āNow I will go through and add, you know, description.” That’s still easier and takes less time than if I sat there and tried to make this seem perfect before I move on and write something else.
Christina: I have a running note in my phone with things I remind myself as I am reading or going about my day. I had one the other day that says āStop worrying about the tiny details and the timing! Literally no one will care!!ā
Meryl: The people who are reading this book will not know how they do things! And the ones who do probably won’t even care that much! People always say, like with Something to Talk About āOh, it’s so nice to get a behind the scenes look at Hollywood!” Again, I wrote about a TV show without mentioning a writers room! I did a fair amount of research, I talked to PAs ā some of it is accurate! Some of itā¦is not!
Christina: Itās a romance! It is supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be transporting, it is not going to be a Barbara Walters special of whatever industry! But wait ā can we talk about your next book for a moment? I recall when Cleat Cute was announced, there was a flurry of activity in the Slack here at Autostraddle HQ. So tell us about Cleat Cute!
Meryl: Cleat Cute is about a rookie and a veteran soccer player, both trying to make the World Cup roster, realizing that cooperation may be better than competition, both on the field and off. Basically, what I wanted to do was play with the miscommunication ā which so many people hate.
Christina: Okay, letās talk about your love of miscommunication.
Meryl: People miscommunicate all the fucking time! I like to take tropes and twist them a little bit. With Something To Talk About, I took fake dating, and I twisted it a little bit ā itās mistaken for dating. And in Cleat Cute, I am taking the miscommunication trope, where so many people are like, āif you would just have one conversation, this would be fixed.” And the characters have the conversations ā but guess what! They miscommunicate! But itās also friends with benefits and is somewhat idiots-to-lovers. Theyāre just idiots in different ways.
Christina: Miscommunication can mean so many things! Like not communicating with oneself about what one really wants, or having the self awareness to know that what you’re saying is perhaps deviating from how you actually feel. There are a lot of ways you can miscommunicate yourself.
Meryl: Or you think you’re talking about one thing, and you’re not! And the thing is, I like to write tropes that I know some people don’t like?
Christina: Just lightly trolling the community. I think that’s beautiful!
Meryl: I just want people to know what they’re in for!
Christina: Totally fair! I think itās safe to say the people are going to be thrilled to pick up Mistakes Were Made and know they are in for: idiots, hot moms, and a lot of sex! Please do me the honor of telling our fine readers where they can get themselves a copy!
Meryl: You can get this baby anywhere books are sold, but the best place, in my humble opinion, is my local indie Schuler Books. Independent bookstores are the backbone of this nation, and also if you get it through Schulers, Iāll sign and even personalize it for you! The MILF book is also going on tour: Please come out and say hi! Iāll be at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn on October 13th, East City Bookshop in DC on October 15, and Women & Children First in Chicago on October 17th. You can find all this info and all the links you need on my Twitter @merylwilsner or my website merylwilsner.com. Thanks so much for talking to me; this was a lovely, if slightly unhinged, conversation, but I expect nothing less with you!
The Unspeakable Shadows of Nightwood
Horror Is So Gay // Header by Viv Le
āNightwood,” writes Jeanette Winterson, āis a place where much can be said ā and left unsaid.ā
I read Nightwood for the first time in the full heat of this summer, which felt like a blazing judgment wherever I looked. A writer I very much admire had told me she thought it would be helpful to my own writing, that it might set forth a path and imagination for me. She was right, of course, but it did give me pause after finishing. What did it say about me that I was so clearly suited for a book of the periphery, of the shadows? Could everyone tell?
The answer ā
Written by Djuna Barnes, the novel was published in 1936 and can be considered, in some ways, a classic expatriate affair. It is set in Paris, where Barnes lived for nearly a decade, and highlights many of the modernist themes more well known pieces of literature are exalted for. Dylan Thomas described Nightwood as āone of the three great prose books ever written by a woman.” Barnes died in 1982, though when I picture her it is only in the confines of a Victorian daguerreotype.
T.S. Eliot, whom I will not sully this essay by critiquing, loved Nightwood. It was one of his favorite books. He said that only someone with a sensibility tuned towards poetry and lyricism could fully appreciate it. He said it had āa quality of horror and doom, very nearly related to that of the Elizabethan tragedy.ā
I am inclined to agree. Nightwood overtakes you, submerges you in a world of darkness, a world you know to be one you could find yourself in, suddenly, if you let those simmering desires inside your gut see the light of day.
But this is not a book for the day. It is one for the shadows, empty hours filled with fear and anxiety, the kind that can only come from a confronting of the truth, of the things you keep hidden, sometimes for reasons revolving around safety and acceptance, life and death. Not that easy to reconcile after all.
It is also a story of masks. Of a heterosexual marriage and child, of a Baron who is not a baron, a man-doctor who is not a doctor, nor, we come to realize, a man at all.
The thinnest mask we dally with is the one of sanity. It cracks easily. Sometimes we expect it to.
As the doctor says: āI would carry that boyās mind like a bowl picked up in that dark; you do not know whatās in it. . . people always fear what requires watching.ā
Still, I think I knew something I wouldnāt allow myself to consciously recognize. That in order to live the life I one day imagine myself living, to be truly free, I would have to fudge the rules. I would have to step over the line, even if it left me feeling squeezed, hot, and flush with trespass.
It started with my aunt, my motherās only sister. They were two people that could not have been more opposite. I would lay in my auntās big bed with her while she smoked cigarette after cigarette, sipped Dr. Pepper, and cursed. We would watch movies purported to have been based on true stories, ones with demons and serial killers and topless women. I would avert my eyes when I thought I should, but I was always drawn back. When my mother would call to check on me, my aunt would tell her that we were drinking margaritas and taking edibles, watching forbidden movies, and playing poker.
My mother would laugh, but I never told her exactly what we watched. It felt like a secret, but one I could keep.
It continued with my high school friends. We would crowd three to a queen bed and watch whatever MovieTown had new. Or something we found in their dusty archives, next to the buckets of popcorn and out-of-date candy. We used my auntās account. She had added me as a co-owner on one of our overnights, and though I was only 15, 16, designated no limits to what I could rent.
The room smelled like Pink body mist, the kind that came in the square bottles and had bubble letters spelling out the scent. At the time, this kind of thing felt outrageously expensive to me, and I would make sure to take advantage of being in its proximity every time I was there. My friend had North Face jackets and Birkenstocks, Vera Bradley wallets, and other brands of clothes I had never even heard of.
But there, in the darkened room, squeezed into the corner by the sloping ceiling, we were united by the jump scares and loads of corn-syrup dyed red. I felt no difference between us. I measured that time by how many Bible verses I would have to repeat to myself in order to fall asleep at night and how warm the bodies next to me were. And the ticking seconds of when weād pause to let her mother tell us goodnight. She, sheād told us, could never watch a horror movie. There was an experience with a ghost when she was younger sheād never recovered from. She described it in detail, the light from the kitchen giving her an unearthly halo.
Well, she said, finally, goodnight girls.
That night, we screamed.
Sheās getting married soon. At the wedding, Iām going to hug her and say I love her despite the torture she put me through.
(But didnāt she teach me something college couldnāt, or wouldnāt? To hold with my fear, to not flee from it? Perhaps ā)
I am with one of those friends whoās more like a cousin, and weāre in my Paw Pawās field. I am flexing the muscle of my tongue that I will soon realize has more power than I can sit comfortably with, and I am telling a scary story.
I say that something bad has happened here, that there is something in this very field that many have seen but few have lived to tell about. We might be able to find this thing if we look closely and follow the clues. Some say it lives in the far back corner, but I say it might haunt the trailer that burned down, the white one. The one I live in with my mother is the lightest peach, and my grandparentsā is blue.
We find a torn photograph, a strangely placed rock, and the ruins where a swing set once stood. I fill my friendās ears with verbs, and nouns, and a language I have never heard myself speak. I terrify myself and enjoy it. We run from the field several times, only to come back again and again to investigate, to cajole each other into walking closer.
One weekend, when my friendās back is turned and her blonde hair is waving in the wind, I will see something. It will look like the thing that I invented. The thing I told stories, just stories, about. It will wave to me, and I will grab my friendās hand and say run run run. RUN. She will tell my mother that I am scaring her but will not specify. I will laugh and say that I was just kidding. No one has to worry.
But that night, I refuse to sleep in the tent I like to pitch in the yard. And when my friend falls asleep to the blue light of the television, I will go get in bed with my mother, let her throw her arm over my stomach, and try to ignore the wind as it curls around metal, saying something I cannot bear to recall.
It is so, so easy to read Nightwood in a negative way, to let the society it is set in and the prevailing ideas of the time shock your millennial mind into putting it down. I am not calling you a snowflake, dear reader, nor do I consider myself one. I am simply saying that this is not a work that lulls, and often the shocks it includes have something to teach us.
The picture of love between women that we get is not pretty, not rosy-hued and wanting. It is violent āĀ I am thinking of a particular moment where Jenny, one of Robinās lovers and a widow four times over, disses the doctor and then gets told to shut her mouth, something that sends her into a flying, spitting rage. She strikes Robin even as Robin falls to her knees. Soon after, they sail to America together.
Robin leaves behind Nora, whom she constantly leaves for other pleasures, other people. They build a home together, but it is never enough for Robin. Nora is an agonized, despairing lover. She weeps and weeps. She cannot forget Robin, she cannot move on.
As the doctor says: āāNora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both.āā
Must we speak of the Baron? I donāt mean thematically, or novelistically, but simply on the basis of love. We know Robin does not love the Baron. We know that Robin did not want a child with the Baron. We know that Robin leaves the Baron. We know this, and yet we are not confused by it. There are things we do for security, not love. We know this, and yet it is still terrifying. It pulses through us. What will I do for safety what wonāt I do do I have a choice?Ā
No, thatās not the terrifying bit, is it? The part that creeps into crevices and settles there. A sticky, warm flood ā blood, or something like it.
As the doctor says: āNone of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last. Donāt I know that the only way to know evil is through truth?. . . the face of the one tells the face of the other the half of the story that both forgot.āĀ
The scariest part is where our choices lead us. If we can ever be sure we are making the right one. How we never can be. How, often, we want to make the worst one, the one that bleeds.
Again ā you fear Nightwood because of what it reveals about you. You worry that by opening this book you will have to face yourself, veneer stripped back. You will encounter yourself in the dark, again and again. What will your shadow do? Does it have teeth? What is that on the back of your neck, where you cannot see, is it breath?
Oh, you feel it now.
Horror Is So Gay is a series on queer and trans horror edited by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya running throughout October.
10 Queer Haunted House Books
Horror Is So Gay // Header by Viv Le
What’s better in spooky season than a great haunted house story? Queer haunted house stories, of course. This list of 10 queer haunted house books includes YA titles, brand spankin’ new queer and trans horror novels, a few underappreciated tales from the 90s and 2000s, plus the haunted house book known as the best ever written. Let’s get gay and scared!
The Upstairs House by Julia Fine
The Upstairs House tackles the horrors of new motherhood a la “The Yellow Wallpaper,” focusing on the protagonist Megan’s postpartum descent into madness. Not only is she physically, mentally, and emotionally ravaged from childbirth and looking after her baby alone while her husband travels for work, her unfinished PhD thesis on mid-century children’s literature haunts her. Which makes the sudden appearance of Margaret Wise Brown ā author of the classic Goodnight, Moon and one of many queer children’s authors who flourished in the 40s, 50s, and 60s ā a truly fitting ghost. Soon Margaret’s lover, actress and socialite Michael Strange, also appears in the room upstairs which doesn’t exist. Megan finds herself in the middle of a horrifying paranormal power struggle, not sure of what is real or not.
Gnarled Hollow by Charlotte Greene
In this blend of horror and romance, Emily is an unemployed English professor and scholar who is offered a dream proposal: to live, work, and study in Gnarled Hollow, an estate that used to belong to one of the authors she studies. Her favorite writer’s home, of course, is rumored to be haunted. Emily doesn’t believe in that nonsense, until she moves into the house and finds herself losing large chunks of time, rooms going missing, and doors slamming on their own. When researchers from other disciplines join Emily ā including a gorgeous art historian named Juniper ā they too are frightened by a mysterious, malevolent presence in the house. Scared but undeterred, Emily and Juniper attempt to discover if there truly is a ghost haunting Gnarled Hollow and why.
The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey
This historical novel set in 1930s England sits at the crossroads of gothic and horror. I have to credit twitter user @gothicsreview for selling me on this book by saying it has “a lot of homoerotically drinking crĆØme de menthe.” What else do you need to know?? Okay, here’s more: in 1939, 30-year-old Hetty is tasked with the moving and caretaking of the mammals normally held in a natural history museum for the duration of the war. After transporting them to Lockwood Manor, Hetty has to contend with grumpy Lord Lockwood who has only reluctantly offered his estate. His alluring but strange daughter, Lucy, however, is a welcome distraction. But when the animals start to go missing and Hetty suspects something lurking around the house in the dark, Hetty wonders if the local rumours about Lockwood being cursed and haunted are true.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
This classic 1959 novel is often cited as the best haunted house story of all time, but it is also hella gay, in case you didn’t know. Jackson’s lean but muscular writing employs perfect restraint; the text itself never falls one way or the other on the side of the horrors of Hill House being “real” or merely in the minds of its inhabitants. The premise ā four strangers gather at a house known to be haunted in order to search for paranormal activity ā is self-consciously contrived. Theodora, one of the investigators, has agreed to stay at a house in middle of nowhere with strangers because of a terrible fight with her roommate *cough lover *cough. She immediately forms an intense emotional bond with Eleanor, the other woman in the house. Don’t even get me started about the spinster who previously owned Hill House is every woman who’s ever lived in this place gay?
The Red Tree by CaitlĆn R. Kiernan
In narrative layer upon layer, Kiernan crafts a deeply haunting and mysterious tale about Sarah, a caustic 40-year-old writer who has left Atlanta in the wake of her girlfriend’s death by suicide. She moves to an old house in rural Rhode Island, where an ancient decrepit oak tree grows in a desolate corner of the property. Inside the house’s spooky basement, Sarah finds an unfinished manuscript written by the previous tenant detailing the history of the tree and its connections to local myth, numerous accidents, and even murder. As the tree starts to take over Sarah’s imagination, she begins writing a new history of it. But she is not prepared for what her research unearths.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
A queer retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Kingfisher’s novel will be a big hit with fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, with its gothic horror vibes and terrifying fungi. The tale begins in 1890 when a soldier named Alex is called to their old childhood friend Madeline when she is dying. Madeline resides at her family’s ancestral house in rural Ruritania. What Alex finds there is not only their ill, sleepwalking friend, but her disturbed brother, nightmarish fungal growths galore, seemingly possessed wildlife, and a dark lake that seems alive. Alex is used to fighting in the army, but this is a whole other type of battlefield. Can Alex, along with the help of a doctor and a mycologist, discover what the secrets of the House of Usher are before it consumes all of its inhabitants?
These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall
In this YA horror story (with a side of queer romance), Helen has been left with a burdensome inheritance: her family’s large ancestral home, extensive grounds, and substantial fortune. The only catch? She has to live at Harrowstone Hall for a full year, never leaving, in order to inherit. If she is to fulfill her deceased uncle’s request and survive the year at Harrow, she must dig back into her childhood and unravel her family’s secrets. Helen has no idea why she and her mother moved away from Harrow when she was a child and why they don’t speak to any of their extended family. But she does remember Harrow; it has been haunting since she left. Now that she has arrived, her life has become a waking nightmare. The house is built as if to deliberately make you get lost, some strange creature is digging holes in the ground’s forest floor, and she has been inexplicably sick for weeks.
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
In Oyeyemi’s melancholy and deeply uneasy novel, the house in question is haunted in the same ways its inhabitants are, and is just as alive. A character unto itself, the Silver family house sits off the cliffs of Dover and likes to keep the women of the family for itself; it’s that kind of monster. Twins named Miranda and Eliot live in the house with their father. All three mourn the death of Lily, the matriarch of the family and the twins’ mother. Miranda ā the novel’s queer character ā is especially attuned to the Silver women from beyond the grave who are a part of the house now. Soon her connection with the otherworldly starts to override her place in the mundane world, where her brother and father watch helpless as she slips away. Oyeyemi’s writing is fairy-tale-like in its timelessness and the novel’s shifting point of views ā including one that belongs to the house itself ā are a roaring success.
Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
This horrifying haunted house story with plenty of blood and guts takes to task British fascism and TERFs, as well as exploring contemporary trans lives in the UK. The story begins three years after friends and/or exes Alice, Hannah, and Ila spent a terrifying night in an abandoned house. Alice has been sleepwalking through life ever since, haunted by memories. But when Ila asks her to return to the house, she knows what she must do. As Alice and Ila prepare to face what they’ve already experienced there and fresh horrors upon returning, Hannah ā whom neither of them has seen since the fateful night ā has been taken prisoner by the house. Faced with the burdens of both supernatural and real life horrors such as trauma, violence, and social injustice, Alice and Ila struggle to rescue Hannah and to keep themselves intact, physically and psychologically.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
A group of old friends who used to go ghost hunting together in their youth in Malaysia gather as adults for a wedding celebration in a Heian-era haunted mansion in Japan. They’re not thrown for a loop when they discover the place is haunted; in fact, it was the selling point for the bride-to-be. The story of the ancient house goes like this: centuries ago, a woman whose fiancĆ© died on his way to their wedding had herself buried alive in the house to await the arrival of his ghost. Every year since then, another young woman has been buried in the house’s walls to keep her company. How nightmarish can this wedding get when the attendants are there looking for ghosts? Like a living hell, it turns out. Featuring bisexual representation!
Which queer haunted house book are you excited to read this spooky season? Do you have any others to recommend?
Horror Is So Gay is a series on queer and trans horror edited by Autostraddle Managing Editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya running throughout October.
āThe Family Outingā Is a Vivid Memoir of Neglect, Secrets, and the Power of Family
āWhat happened to me?ā
Family is a funny thing. They’re supposed to be a cohesive whole, the family unit. And it’s true that the intimacies of growing up together ā sharing a table or a bedroom, having the same nose or freckles or glasses prescription, pulling clothes from the same pile of clean laundry ā all of this can convince us that we know each other completely. But humans are complex, and even growing up in the same household, every one of us emerges from our childhood with a unique story. Piecing together those stories can be challenging work, especially when your familyās whole foundation was built on shifting sands.
Jessi Hempel was raised in a family of secret-keepers. Her childhood home was full of sharp emotional corners, things the family just didnāt talk about. āWithout ever being told,” she writes, āI learned what I could share about myself and what I had to hide. I didnāt have a name for this, only a fear that I was in danger.” In her new memoir, The Family Outing, Hempel attempts to piece together her familyās puzzle. At the start of the pandemic, in a series of Zoom calls, she asks her family the same question sheād asked so many times before in therapy: What happened to us?
The short answer, the hook, is quippy and complete: We all came out. Over the course of five years, Hempel came out as a lesbian; her dad then came out as gay, her sister as bisexual, and her brother as trans. Finally, her mother, the token straight member of the family, worked through the trauma of a crime that happened in her adolescence. The whole family was out! No more closets!
But this memoir isnāt about coming out, not really. Itās about trying to make sense of an uneasy childhood in a home where so many things went unsaid. Itās about navigating adolescence with one parent entirely absent and another who sees you as a lightning rod for their all-consuming anger. Itās about moving beyond a time when your needs werenāt met, and realizing, once you can meet your own needs, that you might still want to show up for your family. Itās about growing up.
Hempelās style is fluid, and she writes viscerally of her childhood. Here is toddler Jessi with nightmares she canāt explain; hereās teen Jessi, whose clothes have been locked in the attic by her mother. As her parents struggle with their marriage and their traumas, Jessi and her siblings are largely on their own through their teens and twenties, and each sibling has a unique way of dealing. But Hempelās journalistic dedication to nailing down the facts, to telling each personās story as completely as she can, is where the book lost focus for me. Near the end, she writes of the limitations of her own perspective; at points in the book, I found myself wishing she had stayed closer to her own experience.
The Family Outing sets out to tell one familyās story. But, as Hempel notes in her conclusion, thereās never just one story. When she digs deeply into her childhood ā her betrayals and fears, her moments of joy, the ways she kept managing to forge ahead ā thatās where this book truly shines.
And her family? āWe began to find another once we found ourselves,” she writes towards the end. But knowing the ending doesn’t spoil this story. The story is how they got that way, a fight for authenticity two generations in the making, one closet at a time.
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya on Writing a Lesbian Horror Protagonist Who Has Been to Therapy
When Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya announced her horror novelette, a lesbian ghost story, would be published by Burrow Press, I immediately pre-ordered the special edition hardcover version. Kayla is many things. She’s our Managing Editor, but she’s also our leading Yellowjackets expert, our personal essay champion, a writer of fiction across various literary magazines ā in addition to all of her writing at Autostraddle ā a known cannibalism-obsessed queer, all around spooky enthusiast and currently, editor of our Horror Is So Gay series. If Kayla had written a horror story that I could hold in my gay hands, I had to have it in all its pink-covered, illustrated glory.
When Kayla asked me to interview her about her book, I was over the moon. I read the book, which is a quick but meaty read ā a long short story or a novelette ā twice through and found that the second reading sunk in deeper than the first, like hacking into a piece of wood with an axe, each swing through cuts deeper. This is a book that holds up to multiple sessions as you follow the lesbian protagonist as she engages in a ritual that holds a special kind of terror for us as queer people ā journeying to meet her girlfriend’s parents.
There were so many times in this interview where I just waved my arms around and begged Kayla to justĀ tell me more about that,Ā to spill her thinking behind her various choices like I was an eager kid hanging on every word, waiting for her to finish telling a ghost story at a sleepover party. If you’re an A+ member, Kayla’s going to be our featured A+ Read a Fucking Book Club author in December, so you’ll get to ask her all about this work, then, but for now, and until you can get your gay hands on this book, I hope this interview will satisfy.
This interview is edited for clarity and length.
Nico: I wanted to start kind of broad and in the book, the narrator, the protagonist describes this childhood connection to really gruesome ghost stories and to horror from a young age, and I was wondering ā what are your first connections to horror or specifically to ghost stories?
Kayla: I was scared of everything when I was a kid! I was a total scaredy-cat and truly, I was the one at a sleepover where, when people would start telling scary stories or playing Bloody Mary, I was like, no. I would leave the room. It was too much for me. It was way too scary. The only way I actually enjoyed it is if I was the one telling the story. I needed that semblance of control. I needed to know how the story ended and be the one to be telling it, otherwise I would freak out.
The only times I feel like I was actually engaging with scary stories as a kid was when I was with my sister and my cousin, and I would tell the two of them scary stories. I would read to them from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and other compilations like that. We just had those. I think they belonged to my brother. I have a much older brother, and I remember those books just being there. I don’t remember anyone actually buying them or giving them to me. They were just already in our house.
Nico: I feel like for everyone in the 90s, there was just somehow a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in your home.
Kayla: What is up with that? I love this idea of them just magically appearing in homes in the 90s, because they were just there. I would read them aloud to my cousin and my sister. I don’t think I would’ve been able to just read those myself then. It would’ve scared me too much. I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger, but when things got scary, I kind of peaced out, but telling stories out loud, if I was the one telling them, that is what I liked.
Nico: Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense. That’s really interesting. Now, as an adult, how do you feel horror and your relationship to horror interacts with your relationship to queerness?
Kayla: It’s actually very linked in my mind. The turning point for me when it came to horror was also a turning point in my queerness. I really was so scared of everything when I was younger. I really avoided scary movies. A lot of movies that I have been told are not scary, like the movie E.T., scared me.
Nico:Ā E.T. is your nemesis, right?
Kayla: Yeah! I had a nightmare about E.T. shortly after seeing it, and I have created a false memory that the movie ends with mass murder.
Nico: Oh my God.
Kayla: Which I know is not the case, but it’s how I remember the movie ending in my mind. I was so scared of things that even things that weren’t horror scared me, and I really did try to avoid a lot of scary movies ā but also kind of secretly liked the thrill of it. And I was the same way about roller coasters, too. I would totally protest my friends. No, I’m not going on. You got to drag me. But I kind of liked that whole production of them dragging me on, and then I ultimately had fun. And I would just repeat that same thing all over again.
There was something about it that felt very alluring even as it was scary and dangerous. There’re obviously connections there to be made with queerness, too, and truthfully, I can draw a very clear line between when I didn’t watch horror movies and when I did watch horror movies, and it was after I came out. When I came out and was ā my coming out process, as with anybody, was kind of long, drawn out, not-super-straightforward ā but when I was truly moving through the world as a queer person, all of a sudden I was like: I love scary shit. I love horror. I probably did all along.
There is something that was weirdly suppressed there, too. I know this is not the case for all horror fans, but I genuinely get very scared. I like the sensation and the feeling, but I get scared about everything from monster movies to more psychological stuff. I actually have a pretty intense reaction to fear. I will scream in a movie theater or whatever or sometimes have to do the thing of not really making direct eye contact with the screen. I know a lot of horror fans where that’s not the case. They like horror and it’s like, they don’t get scared, but for me that is part of the appeal, the fear itself.
Nico: That’s really interesting. Yeah, because I think that sometimes there’s this culture, and it’s a very macho approach to consuming horror, where you’re not supposed to be scared or you’re supposed to be able to watch the most gruesome things, and I really like the idea of queering that, of turning it on its head and being like, “no, I want to be scared. I want to be freaked out by this.”
Kayla: Yeah, totally.
Nico: We’re getting closer and closer to talking about the actual book, but I have one more sort of meta question, which is, I noticed that a lot of the supernatural elements in this book were sort of ambiguous in that they could be real in somebody’s mind, and it made me think of the article you wrote about that happening in Yellowjackets, and I was like, is this an interest of yours or a particular flavor of the supernatural that you enjoy or what’s the history there?
Kayla: Yes. I am really drawn to art in all forms that kind of fucks with you a little bit as to what’s actually happening. I love work ā and movies especially ā where two people can have a completely different interpretations of what’s actually happening. I feel like I saw that a lot with Yellowjackets. There are people that are very insistent upon the fact that nothing supernatural is happening, some who are very insistent that something is, and then someone like me who exists somewhere in the middle, which is almost that supernatural things that are not normal do exist in the real world. It’s things that we can’t really explain, as simple as coincidences.
To bring it to Helen House ā and I won’t go too much into the details of this because of spoilers ā but there’s an aspect of shared nightmares in the book, right? That was something where I was like, people could definitely be like, oh yeah, this is a real thing that’s occurring. These people are having the same dreams. And some people might be just like, no, they’re having thematically similar dreams and they’ve been through similar trauma, so they think that they’re sharing these dreams. I think it can go either way, and I kind of based that a little indirectly on the fact that my sister and I, when we were growing up, did have the “same dreams,” but I put that in air-quotes, because it’s like, did we actually? We would compare our dreams, and there were definitely a lot of similarities, and we adopted this sister mythology of, we have the same dreams.
We both were very active dreamers and continue to be.Ā And we sometimes mixed up each other’s dreams. There’s some wild dream, a nightmare that my sister had, similar to my E.T. nightmare. She had a nightmare about Franklin, the turtle, the cartoon turtle. I don’t know. It was a Nick Junior show, I want to say, in probably the late 90s, early 2000s, based on my sister’s age, probably somewhere around there.
It’s a very innocent cartoon turtle, and she had this nightterror about him, but I was so convinced for a few years that, that was my dream, and I finally conceded the fact that she was telling the truth. It was actually her dream.
Within families, people do that with memories all the time. My sister and I argue over who did what all the time, and we always have to call up my dad and be like, “Was that me or Alex?” Never my mom, because she is the number one culprit of mixing all of our memories together, but that’s just one of those things that happens, in a family especially, where it’s just, was this real or did we all just say this and it became real? Or whose memory was this?
I can draw a very clear line between when I didn’t watch horror movies and when I did watch horror movies, and it was after I came out.
Nico: Everybody remembers things differently. I’ll often run my essays by my sister to fact check because in case I’m remembering something weird, and sometimes she will be like, that’s not what I said or something like that. And it’s very true that you can build that mythology based on filling in the gaps for each other and then that becomes your truth. Okay. I have to ask. Why a lesbian ghost story? [which is kind of silly because of course HECK YES a Lesbian! Ghost! Story!]
Kayla: I think I started writing this also not really realizing it was a ghost story. I really was trying to write a story about a relationship using a very common premise of meeting the parents for the first time.
Nico: Terrifying.
Kayla: It’s something we see all the time. Yes. It’s scary. I think it makes sense that there is a lot of horror that comes from that. Get Out being the peak. It’s a real life scary thing, and there’s so much potential there for a story, and there’s so many different ways it can go, and it’s this very specific intimacy line to cross, meeting a person’s family. I knew I wanted to write something that was based on that.
I’m not sure I went into it thinking it was going to be horror or have some sort of dark turn, but when I wrote this, it was while I was away on my anniversary trip where we go to a cabin in the woods in North Carolina in February every year. That’s where I was, and I was reading a lot, and the two books I read right before I wrote this were, Luster by Raven Leilani and Bag of Bones by Steven King. It’s one very sexy book about desire and the mess of relationships and this character, this protagonist who has a really complicated and often contradictory relationship to sex ā and then a literal ghost story. Those were the things percolating in my mind as I sat down to write this, so I think it really makes sense that those things ended up married together a little bit. Everything I write is just going to have dykes truly.
Nico: Yeah, of course.Ā It’s kind of a silly question because of course, you’re writing from your own experience and about the community you care about.
Kayla: As I was writing, it got a little more twisted as it went, and then I had the idea of a haunted doll house. Again, it’s just one of those things where it’s a trope for a reason. It’s something you can do a lot with, this idea of this contained microcosm, a domestic space, something that’s associated with children, but also, all doll houses are haunted. There’s just no way that they’re not.
Also, as far as talking about influences, one of the pieces of art that has probably had the biggest impact on my own work, the biggest lasting impact on my own work in recent years is the show Sharp Objects, and there’s a dollhouse element to that. I don’t think I was explicitly thinking about Sharp Objects when writing this, but it’s one of those things for me, particularly the show, not necessarily the book, but I also do love the book, but it’s for some reason always on my mind. It just is. There was something about that show that just, I don’t know. It haunts me, I guess.
Nico: You mentioned the main character’s complicated relationship to sex, and the next question is very much about that. The main character, she’s presenting us with this unlikeable perception of herself, and it’s very much where she’s like, oh, I use women for sex or I’m not a good girlfriend. And it’s like, okay, we can’t take that completely at face value, but also, that’s how everything is colored, through that. What was it like to write a main character that views herself in that morally gray way? How did that lend itself to the horror of the story for you?
Kayla: A very weird thing that I thought as I was writing this was that I really wanted to write a protagonist who definitely had been through trauma ā but who had also been through a lot of therapy. I feel like a lot of times protagonists, especially in horror, I’m always like, “they haven’t been to therapy, clearly,” so I wanted to write this character who has been to a ton of therapy, so in a certain way, she has a lot of self-awareness about the way to talk about–
Nico: That’s what I was going to say! Self-aware!
Kayla: Yeah! She is self aware. She knows how to analyze herself from this removed way. I was thinking that this is a character who’s maybe been through many therapists. And I don’t necessarily think that just because you’re in therapy, you’re nailing all things and you’ve got things figured out. It’s like, yes, she’s self aware, but she’s also sometimes wrong about herself and also, obviously, needing to be so in control of the way she’s perceived. The way she’s addressing the reader a little bit, it’s manipulative. But I also think that’s believable for someone who’s been through a lot of therapy. You do know the ways to talk to people, to get people to listen to you. I feel like sometimes she even uses some language that she clearly picked up in therapy to talk about herself.
Nico: That’s so gay. I love that. With her character, too, I wrote down her specific dissertation topic that she says, but she’s writing a dissertation for her PhD in “coded queerness in Victorian Gothic literature and modern gay art house pornography that engages with the fantastic.” It’s not surprising also that she’s sort of peeling everything apart and analyzing everything and everybody around her, and there’s this tension between her horny self and her analytical self, and they come apart, but the dissertation stood out to me and I just had to ask you, where did that come from?
Kayla: It was not in the first draft. I knew she was an academic and in grad school. I wanted her to be interested intellectually in some of the things that are literally happening to her. That was something that I held in my mind and in the early draft, but it was just hinted at. I had a very good editor for this book, and if I remember correctly, it was him who was like, can you name exactly what her dissertation is? Especially because that dinner scene also, which is obviously a very pivotal moment in the book, it used to be a lot shorter and a lot more written in summary. I kept cutting away from the scene, because I was kind of getting trapped in my head of, oh no, another fraught dinner scene in literature. Who’s ever thought of that?Ā But again, it’s a trope for a reason, and just because it’s done a lot, the thing I should be thinking about is not, oh, this is done a lot.
It’s like, how do I make it mine? And how do I make it specific to this story? And that was something I worked with my editor a lot on. This dinner scene is important. We can’t keep cutting away from it. This is the longest time that everyone in the book is together at once. I added a lot more detail during the revision process, and that dissertation topic just came to me because it’s something I think about a lot, the idea of queer monsters and inverting monster narratives.
It’s something I’m really drawn to in literature. I’m obviously the biggest hype man for the bookĀ Our Wives Under the Sea. I think that book does it so well. This idea of, for so long monster narratives were forced onto queer people, and I’m so interested in the ways that people have taken that and made it our own. I don’t know, that dissertation just came to me. I was just like, Gothic, monsters, porn ā it’s almost a parody version of what I am trying to do in the book.
Nico: It is.
Kayla: It’s an extreme version. It’s sex and monsters.
Nico: Truly, there’s so much to love about that scene, too. There’s really interesting class tensions. That scene is just really meaty.
Kayla: Thank you, because it’s probably the one I worked the hardest on during the long revision process.
Nico: I noticed time and time again, you have the protagonist want to run or want to flee, and there’s this tension between that and trying to be a good girlfriend and trying also to be polite. There’s a whole lot in there where, when we’re traumatized, sometimes our instincts get all scrambled, and we do realize that wanting to maybe run from every relationship isn’t the most healthy thing, for example. Also, there is that sort of narrative of politeness can keep you trapped in unsafe situations, and I was just like, do you want to talk about that and how you navigated that as you wrote this and what you were drawing from? I just didn’t really have a concrete question for this, but I was very interested in this. [Gestures around, broadly.] Kayla, will you tell me about it?
Gothic, monsters, porn ā it’s almost a parody version of what I am trying to do in the book.
Kayla: One of the tricky things about writing horror is that the reader or the viewer is always going to be like, why didn’t this person just get out of there? Why are they not leaving? And I think some work does not do a great job of answering that. It’s not needed all of the time, especially if you’re watching something that’s maybe a little more horror-camp, horror-comedy. I don’t necessarily need all those questions answered. Why are they staying in the haunted house with the creepy basement? Sometimes I’m willing to just go along with it for the sake of the genre, but sometimes it can be distracting. It can be like, why are they putting themselves in danger? Why are they showing so much emotional intelligence in some ways, but then falling for this obvious liar, this obvious monster. And that’s something that happens in real life, but there’s usually a cause or causes. It was something I was thinking about. I was like, why is she staying here? For one, she can’t really leave. I put them in a place where it’s not like they can call an Uber, necessarily.
Nico: Right, they are physically isolated.
Kayla: Yes, physically isolated. I think that’s another reason why you see settings like that in a lot of horror, like the cabin in the middle of the woods or whatever. It’s physically not easy to leave.
But also, I wanted it to be somewhat believable that she would just continue to put herself in this situation, and I do think it comes from this place of her impulses being scrambled. It’s this almost one-track mind that mirrors her one-track mind when it comes to the way she seeks sex. This one-track mind of, I need to be a good girlfriend. And the way she’s going about it is so counterproductive. She’s constantly self-sabotaging, but I think that’s so realistic, too. She has convinced herself: This is the thing that I need and it’s maybe going to solve a lot of my problems, if I can just be the good girlfriend for this weekend. She’s trying to prove it to herself, so I think it’s believable that she just continues to, as things get increasingly weird, make excuses for it.
I think the narrator obviously has a ton of issues, a ton of flaws. I also think she’s deeply empathetic in a lot of ways and because she has this somewhat shared trauma with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s family. She makes a lot of excuses for them, even when they’re acting very bizarre, and she’s kind of like, but I get it. It’s like, how are people even supposed to act with this? She lends a lot of empathy to the parents I feel, and it takes her a while to catch on to the fact that maybe the parents ways of coping with things and stuff have deeply impacted her girlfriend Amber in a negative way.
Nico: Yes. Thank you. Also, I was like, there’s also this specific horror to conforming to a family’s expectations that I felt as I was reading this or conforming to somebody’s expectations for you and trying to fit into a mold. I felt like that was very specifically gay.
Kayla: Yeah, totally. I also love that there’s that initial fear that the narrator has where she’s like, oh shit, Amber’s not out to her parents. When Amber’s like, “I have something to tell you about my parents,” that’s her [the narrator’s] first thought, and she has that fear, and then that obviously ends up not being a thing at all. But at the same time, what you’re talking about, there’s still certain expectations, too. So maybe Amber’s out to her parents, but the narrator’s still feeling like, but I have to present this certain way, especially when she finds out that Amber has been through a terrible thing in her life. She’s like, I want to show her parents that I can take care of her, and she sees the way that Amber is with her parents and how there’s maybe some weird codependency there, but she’s like, I want them to know that I can take care of her and I can fulfill this role. And it does feel very queer, these ways that even if someone is out or whatever, we still need to super prove ourselves.
Nico: Right, right. That was something that definitely stood out. Well, let’s talk about the trauma of the family. It’s interesting because the book has both sibling dynamics in it through memory and through flashback, and then it also has this very specific dynamic of a family who’s lost a child. It’s interesting because I have been very close with a family like that, and I felt like you captured the way that loss is a part of daily life and it never really departs, and I wanted to ask what went into that because it was really well done.
Kayla: I was just thinking a lot about how both of these characters, the narrator and her girlfriend Amber, they’ve both lost sisters, but their losses are so different. Which doesn’t mean that one is worse than the other or anything like that. It’s just different. It’s different losing a young child versus an adult child dying. Amber’s family is so literally haunted by this loss, and it makes sense. For Amber, she was so young when her sister died that, that’s been almost her entire life, versus the narrator who is a little closer to the death, but then feels it in these different ways. The impact is different. The results are different.
Also, the ways that both of them, Amber and the narrator, deal with their sister’s deaths is very informed by their relationship to their parents. It makes sense that Amber has this pretty complicated, maybe codependent relationship with her parents where she feels pressure from them to be a certain way and stuff, because she has the survivor’s guilt. She was so young. The ways her parents were not equipped to deal with things ended up putting a lot on her. I don’t think her parents are evil or anything. I think there’s no way to deal with that, so they kind of fucked Amber up in the process.
The narrator has a much different relationship with her parents and kind of lived her life a little more linearly than Amber would have because Amber’s life was so interrupted by this death. The narrator, she and her sister, they grew up, they went about their lives. All of a sudden, she’s having to navigate specific parental dynamics again because her sister dies.
Nico: Speaking of grief, the more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued by the overwhelming amount of grief in this story, because so often ghost stories actually don’t have that. They eschew grief. People move into a house that’s haunted and the ghost maybe has some grief, but those people don’t share that grief with the ghost. They’re just being tormented by whatever is there, and here, the grief is just throughout from page one to the end. What were you influenced by or what were you thinking about when you were, I guess maybe this comes back to this being a story that was originally not a ghost story, but that was originally a relationship story, but how did the presence of grief evolve in the story as you were writing it?
Kayla: Right off the bat, I knew that both these characters had dead sisters. I wanted to explore relationships and I wanted to explore the idea of sisters and sisterhood. I knew I was going to start with this idea of withholding that grief, too. This is a very extreme version of how we don’t always present ourselves super truthfully when we’re just getting into a relationship with someone, whether that’s as small as pretending to be into a certain type of music that we’re not actually into or whatever. Just because you’re flirting, you’re trying to impress someone, and those things always get chipped away at. This is a very extreme version of that. Amber’s withholding the fact that she has lost her sister.
The hard thing about writing this and writing anything that’s so closely narrated is that we don’t get to hear a lot from Amber. We don’t get to hear a lot of her motivation for certain things, and that’s one of those big question marks in the story, I think, is why did she withhold this information? I think, and I hope, that it doesn’t just feel just withholding for the sake of dramatic tension to start the story with. I think we slowly do get to peel back the layers on Amber a little bit and realize that she has not been set up for success in life to deal with the death of her sister, and a lot of that is the ways that her parents have preserved her sister and kept her as a ghost presence.
Nico: My next few are just more like craft questions, but I read this a couple of times, and as I was going through it the second time I just started filling up pages of this legal pad with these pieces of foreshadowing and dramatic irony that you had dropped throughout the text. I wanted to know what was your process for planting foreshadowing? I guess this is a two parter, but was it in the first couple of drafts or were you going back and heavily editing in order to achieve this?
Second part, I wanted to ask you about, it’s an unusual length. It’s a long story or a novelette and you also said, you mentioned a couple of times that you’ve had a great editor, so I was just curious about the process of finding a home for this work and what the process of working with the editor was for you and working with the illustrator and how it all came together.
Kayla: As far as foreshadowing goes, it was definitely a mix. There was a lot of it in the first draft, and this is not typical for me, because I think sometimes people say this and it just sounds so over idealized and romantic, but I sat down and wrote this draft in one go. That’s not common for me, even with my shorter short stories. It’s usually a few writing sessions for that first draft, but this was something where I wrote out the full first draft in one go. Part of that was also, I was in a very focused environment of that anniversary trip that I do with my girlfriend Kristen, and I knew it was a rare instance where I definitely for sure knew how I wanted the story to end. That’s always going to make it easier to foreshadow things if you know where things are going.
I always start writing short stories because I usually get a sentence a little stuck in my head, and that’s always the opening. It’s never the end, until this. This was kind of a reverse of that, where I did have the ending in mind and then certain components already, and some of those components were more abstract things like grief and sibling death, and then some were concrete images. I knew I wanted there to be a doll house. I knew I wanted there to be dolls, and I knew I wanted there to be this A-frame in the woods, so there were all those little things that I had percolating a little bit, and then I had the ending in mind, so I was able to build toward it. But at the same time, I did a lot of work and revision on foreshadowing, but also just pacing. I think pacing can be so hard in horror. And because this is an unusual length, too, it’s not necessarily… I didn’t have a clear map for things.
Pacing got finessed a lot in revision and yes, my editor Ryan Rivas at Burrow Press, had reached out to me to ask if I had anything that could be considered for publication. And Burrow Press’ publishing program specifically puts forth work that wouldn’t really be published by a traditional means. Work that’s maybe considered too long to really be a short story, but way too short to even necessarily be considered novella or whatever.
I was like, as a matter of fact, I do have something. Because when I wrote this, I wrote it in one sitting, which is so rare for me, and I just wasn’t thinking about length at all, and so when I ended and saw that first draft, it was way too long for a short story. I was thinking, okay, I’m going to shelve this and think about it more. Can I significantly shorten it or can I significantly, significantly lengthen it? I ruled out the latter very quickly. I was like, this does not feel like a novel concept to me. It really doesn’t, because I want it to be so contained, by time and space. And plenty of novels can do that, but I was like, this is not the story for that.
It was perfect Burrow Press publishes work that’s exactly like this, that’s just not really a shape or size that is going to find a home other places. Also, Ryan right away was like, we can do internal illustrations with this, too, and that was immediately appealing to me because I do feel, as with a lot of people, my first kind of exposure to scary stories was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the images, those will be in my brain for all of my life. Every time I look at them, I’m like, this is seared in my brain.
So effective, too, because they are just pencil drawings ,and it’s so simple and so scary and disturbing, so I was like, I would love to have internal illustrations, and then the artist who did them, Kira, she is a local artist here in Orlando. I already knew her because Kristen actually owns a piece that she has made. It’s a gorgeous piece of art, of a bunch of peacocks fighting. Really cool. So when Ryan mentioned her, he was like, “There’s this artist here who I think could be a good fit,” and he said that it was Kira. I was like, “Well, her art’s literally hanging in my home right now, so yeah, let’s go with that.”
One of the tricky things about writing horror is that the reader or the viewer is always going to be like, why didn’t this person just get out of there? Why are they not leaving?
Nico: You’re going to be a featured author for the A+ Read a Fucking Book ClubĀ in December with this book, which I’m really excited about.
Kayla: Me too.
Nico: Readers! You should definitely come to that. More info TBD. Are there any other events or talks that you’re doing around this that readers should know about?
Kayla: Yeah. For any readers in the central Florida area, my actual launch party is happening here in Orlando on October 23rd. It’s going to be a haunted dance party at Will’s Pub. Again, my editor is a rockstar. It’s a joint launch party also for his book that’s coming out, Next Door in Colonialtown. He asked me: What is your dream launch party? And this is an example of why it’s so great to work with a micro press, too. There’s a lot of creativity there and also a lot of author input. I was so involved at every single step of this, because it’s not some department working on things. It’s me, it’s Ryan, it’s a couple other people. It felt very close, and I had a lot of control and a lot of input.
So he asked me, What’s your dream launch party look like? And I said a haunted dance party, not even really knowing what that means, but I was like, it sounds fun and cool and different, and he was like, all right, let’s do it. There will be a short reading beforehand. There’ll be me and Ryan, and then Kristen is also reading, and then it’s just going to be a dance party after that. I’m also doing a Gainesville event [on the 14th]. It’s all very soon actually, I’m just now realizing.
Nico: And we can follow you on social media and then, keep up with what you’re up to.
Kayla: It’s true. I’m Kayla Kumari on everything, all centralized.
Nico: Beautiful. Thank you, Kayla. I feel we’ve talked so much and you were so generous and you let me just be like, tell me about that, so much, so thank you.
Kayla: No, those are always the best questions I feel like, in these interviews, are just talk about this.
The limited edition hardcover of Helen House is still available for preorder ā get one before they’re gone š». Paperback copies are also available to preorder from Bookshop. The novelette publishes on October 18.
Rainbow Reading: We Fell in Love (With Some Rad New Books) in October
Hi howdy, pals!
It’s been an, ahem, eventful couple weeks, discourse-wise. The Queen and Coolio both bit it, Adam Levine should read Vanessa’s Autostraddle Guide to Sexting, Lizzo played a sparkly flute that once belonged to a president no one liked (then or now tbh!) but racists are mad anyway, transphobes are losing their shit because a cute cartoon alien doesn’t do human gender, you might or might not be hot enough to write about Marilyn Monroe, some FuzzBeed Attempt Man “lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship”, the list goes on. I’m tired. The internet has worn me out, at least for now, and so pure content fatigue has cured my book hangover and chased me into some delightful new reading territory. My drought is broken! My screen time is down! Praise BE!
Firstly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout Kayla’s novelette Helen House to the high heavens: it’s not too late to preorder a signed special edition hardcover from Miami bookstore Books and Books, and we’ll be celebrating its pub day on 10/18! Are you in Gainesville, Florida by any chance? If so, you won’t want to miss this event with Kayla, Ryan Rivas, and Kristen Arnett, hosted by the fine folks of Third House Books!
Across the board, October is an exciting reading month; so many good books are coming out now in anticipation of the holidays’ sales rush, we’re close enough to smell the tantalizing new releases of 2023, the awards cycle is whirring along, and there are some truly magnificent pieces published each week by amazing queer writers. When (known homosexual) Anne Shirley said “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers”, when Girl in Red sang “We Fell In Love In October”, when this tweeter declared “october is an inherently gay month” ā they were right.
Righty-o, let’s make like a trampoline and bounce! This week on Rainbow Reading, we’ve got:
Shelf Care: Reviews, Essays, and other Things of Note
- National Book Award Finalists were named this week! Among them are:
- Fiction: A+ Bookclub and Autostraddle beloved Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different!
- Fiction: Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon
- Young People’s Literature: Sonora Reyes, author of The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School
- As ever, queer scholars, writers, and historians continue to lead the coverage and analysis of the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.
- A Scatter of Light, Malinda Lo’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to the award-winning Last Night at the Telegraph Club, is out now! Y’all know how much I love Malinda and her work, so I’m sure you can imagine how little chill I have about this one…
- It’s anthology season, folks!
- It Came From The Closet, an anthology of QUEER REFLECTIONS ON HORROR from the legends at the Feminist Press, is out now!
- We got to publish a sneak peek for y’all ā check out this piece from Carmen Maria Machado about Jennifer’s Body!
- Unfettered Hexes, a QUEER WITCHES ANTHOLOGY (!!!) is a nominee for this year’s Shirley Jackson Awards! Neon Hemlock Press with the bangers, as always.
- (Side note, speaking to my tarot nerds now, can you believe they made a beautiful oracle deck to go with the book? now THAT’S what I call good promo merch!!)
- Queer Little Nightmares, an anthology of MONSTROUS FICTION AND POETRY, is available for preorder now and will be out this December!
- Moonflower and Nightshade, an anthology of original sapphic horror, is available now on Amazon.
- It Came From The Closet, an anthology of QUEER REFLECTIONS ON HORROR from the legends at the Feminist Press, is out now!
- Applications are now open for the 2023 Latinx in Publishing Writers Mentorship Program ā if you’re a Latine/Latinx writer, this is a great opportunity!
- What’s next for Torrey Peterson after the runaway success of Detransition, Baby? Isle McElroy interviews her at Electric Literature!
- “I’m So Glad I Live In A World Where There Are Octobers” ā This queer Anne of Green Gables retelling from Mariko Tamaki (author of beloved queer YA classics like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me and This One Summer) sounds amazing!!
- The Restless Dark, Erica Waters’ latest YA horror-thriller, is out now ā this one features a true crime podcast, a contest to unearth the bones of a lost killer, and three girls tangled in fury and fear both past and present. Fans of The Wilder Girls, this one’s for y’all!
- From the Archives: I recently read this 2020 essay from Sabra Boyd about work, death, death at work, work with death, the death of work, life after death, and life after work. It fucked me up in eleventy zillion ways and I loved it. That’s all.
- QUEER LOVE IN SLEEPY HOLLOW? Count me tf in. This new graphic novel from the creator of Lumberjanes sounds like an absolute treat.
- Very, very into this fascinating thread from queer historian Hugh Ryan about the fundamental shift happening in our cultural understanding of queerness.
āPiepzna-Samarasinha beautifully describes how disabled people ā especially BIPOC and queer disabled people ā have been caring for each other, keeping each other alive, and fighting for justice, as well as how these skills and models can create the future. The book delves into the importance of disabled joy and pleasure, unapologetically claiming these things without feeling the need to justify them to an ableist world.ā
ā Katie Reilly in her review of The Future is Disabled, which is out now!
Autocorrect: Books content from the last couple weeks at Autostraddle!
Yooooo, it’s been an especially good few weeks here for Autostraddle books coverage ā lotta treats in this list!
- Carmen Maria Machado wrote about queer horror classic Jennifer’s Body!
- Chinelo wrote about Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet and Bitter for the latest installment of Queer Naija Lit!
- Casey assembled a swoonworthy list of 8 Queer Books Set in Los Angeles About the Movie Industry. (Casey, you are the light of my heart, you know this list is the list of my dreams!)
- Autumn Fourkiller wrote about Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and its sequel, the new Either/Or!
- Stef reviewed Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam!
- Katie reviewed The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha!
- shea reviewed A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo! (and Malinda was delighted)
- Abeni reviewed It Came From the Closet!
- Stef reviewed Faltas by Cecilia Gentili!
Also, if you haven’t joined A+ yet, now’s the perfect time ā you don’t want to miss out on book club events like this one with Sarah Thankam Mathews, or on our subscribers-only series like Things I’ve Never Asked, where my best and dearest childhood friend dropped some gorgeous insights on queer horror, genre-as-inheritance, and what a weird-ass kid I was. Get on in there!
That’s all she wrote, folks! If youāre a queer writer, particularly an early-career queer writer: Iād love to hear about the cool things youāre up to so that I can share links to your published essays, book reviews, short stories, poems, and longform features on LGBTQ+ topics! Please email me links for consideration at yashwina@autostraddle.com with the subject line āRainbow Reading Submission” ā Iām an avid browser-tab-collector, and I especially want to hear from you if youāve just landed your first publication or first major byline.
Cecilia Gentiliās “Faltas” Is One of the Best Memoirs Iāve Ever Read
At this point, it feels very tired to talk about how our queerness and transness often pushes us to make chosen families of our own. But it is an important and distinct part of being queer and/or trans. We create these families in order to survive, of course, but we also create them to reclaim something that was denied to us in our upbringing: the unconditional love and acceptance of the people who are bound to us through random selection. As a result, we often end up raising ourselves and each other. We parent each other, we sibling each other, and, sometimes, we even grandparent each other. I think thatās part of what drives the desires of the queer and trans people who so desperately want to see only positive and uncomplicated narratives about us out in the public eye. They think that if people could see how weāve ādone so well” regardless of the trauma thrust on us by the society around us, then maybe, just maybe, the people starving us will throw us some scraps. Navigating the world as a queer and/or trans person is endlessly complex every single day, as are the ways we figure out how to survive, the choices we make, and the roles we fill in each otherās lives. These demands regarding how queer and trans people should portray themselves or the characters they create in our various narratives are not only extremely aggravating, but theyāre also simply untrue.
While people are certainly challenging these demands all the time, it still feels so special and revelatory when stories of the messy and, oftentimes, ethically ambiguous ways we survive this hostile world make it out into the open. Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isnāt My Rapist is an exciting and, at times, breathtaking addition to the canon of works about āmessy trans lives.” Written by legendary trans activist Cecilia Gentili, known for both her work in sex workersā rights organizing in New York City and her role as Ms. Orlando on the hit FX show Pose, Faltas is an epistolary memoir, a series of unsent letters to some people in the small Argentinian town she grew up in who impacted her life in some significant way. The scope of the memoir covers most of Gentiliās life prior to emigrating to the U.S. and describes her experiences with being outcasted by her peers (and one antagonistic older woman in the town), childhood sexual abuse, parental absence, sex work, class mobility, domestic instability, friendship, leaving a previous life behind in the search for a new and better one, and the possibility of forgiveness.
Titled Faltas, which means āfaults” in Spanish, Gentili uses some of the letters in the memoir to explore the flaws ā or the ways people mistreated or exploited her or allowed her to be mistreated and exploited in some way ā of the people sheās writing to. Often, this mistreatment came in the form of power imbalances, not just with the grown man who took advantage of young Gentiliās need to be seen as feminine and female but also with her fatherās mistress who used Gentiliās budding transsexuality as a way to further sabotage the relationship between her father and her mother. Throughout Faltas, Gentili navigates how her positionality as a āfaggot” made her vulnerable to the exploitative and abusive behaviors of the adults, specifically the adult men, around her: āWhat a fucking fight it is to be. Just be.” But she never positions herself as a victim who was completely without agency. Gentili learns early on that the qualities that make her different and the things sheās interested in doing and being render her powerless to the inimical forces around her, but at the same time, she finds some relief in these relationships with people who seem to see her for who she knows she is:
For many years I thought that I liked it. I have now come to understand that I didnāt like it.Ā
I needed it. I needed someone to see me. I needed someone to look at me as the girl I was, to have the experience of being someone who was normal. I needed it and he knew that. He gave me the only thing I could not get from anybody else. Not even the people who were supposed to love me the most. They didnāt really see me. He did.
However, this emotionally complex understanding of the ways that Gentili experienced her abuse does not absolve the adults who hurt her, of course: āWhat I needed was not just to be seen as a girl, but to be treated like one, and that he didnāt do. He treated me like you treat a woman.” In a few places throughout the memoir, she asks repeatedly how and why the adults around her let the abuses she experienced happen, and she doesnāt exonerate them of their responsibilities to her.
In a recent interview in Xtra, Gentili said about Faltas: āI wanted to talk about how happy I was as a child at times, and how I was able to navigate terrible situations gracefully. I wanted to say that many things were horrible, but many things were not, and those two things can live together.” And while the recollections of the more traumatic moments of her life definitely take up more physical space in the text, she does strike a balance through some of the other letters in the series that examine the areas of Gentiliās young life that provided joy and actual safety to her.
In other areas of the text and in a letter of its own, she describes how her grandmother was supportive of her gender exploration as a child and tried to make her feel as if she was loved no matter who she was or who she came to be. āYour kindness also offered me an immense space to be happy. […] I wanted to be happy! And you wanted me to be happy, too. […] When I think of you, I think of a woman who in her greatest pain was full of joy, and who understood that that joy was not to be kept.ā
Throughout the course of a compellingly intimate and emotionally complicated letter to her childhood friend Juan Pablo, Gentili describes the refuge she found in their eventual friendship and how much it meant to her to have Juan Pablo on her side. She interrogates, āWhat would our lives have been like in that nest of vipers we called our neighborhood if we had not ended up on the same block? Every single one of them was so incredibly weird in such various and specific ways, and yet they all looked on us as the weird ones. Together we were able to look back at them in the same way.ā
By the end of the memoir, youāre not left with a lot to reconcile. Youāre left with a lot to hold all at once. And thatās part of what makes Faltas one of the best memoirs Iāve ever read. Itās a somewhat unique opportunity we donāt always get in nonfiction where an author isnāt necessarily in a moralizing position but is, instead, helping us do exactly what Gentili set out to do: carry multiple and sometimes contradictory emotional truths together at the same time. In this way, Gentiliās memoir not only presents trans life as intricately as it should be presented, but it also just straightforwardly depicts both the ways we fail young trans people every day and how young trans people still find the time and space to experience joy, pleasure, and ā occasionally ā freedom.
Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isnāt My RapistĀ by Cecilia Gentili is out now from LittlePuss Press, a feminist press run by two trans women, Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett.
āIt Came From the Closetā Gave Me New Appreciation for the Horror Genre
Iāve never been a massive fan of the horror film genre, which you might think makes me a weird person to review this book. But maybe it makes me the perfect person to review it.
Horror attracts fans and detractors of seeming equal enthusiasm, but Iāve mostly viewed it with ambivalence. Iāve seen a few classic scary movies over the years, and enjoyed them, but I wouldnāt go out of my way to see one. Horror as a genre, in my admittedly somewhat ignorant view, seems to carry a lot of misogynistic, sex-negative baggage, and Iāve always been more interested in a villain whose motivations I can understand rather than an unstoppable, inscrutable killing machine. Before reading this book, I couldnāt remember the last horror film I saw. So, what does the genre have to offer someone like me?
After reading It Came From The Closet ā a new collection edited by Joe Vallese and featuring a variety of essays that focus on a film or pair of films but are really about the authorās personal connection to those films and the horror genre itself ā I realized: quite a lot.
Jen Corrigan, in their essay āThree Men on a Boat,” explains that the classic film Jaws āis only queer if youāre looking for it.” In my opinion, this could apply to nearly every film reflected on in the book. Queer readings of mainstream media frequently require a healthy disregard for the intentions of the creators of that media. After reading āLoving Annie Hayworth,” Laura Mawās essay on The Birds, one of the few films discussed that Iād actually seen, I re-watched the film with my girlfriend. āThereās lesbians in The Birds?” she asked. And, well, not really.
There are two women, and they give each other meaningful glances and talk in an old-timey way at each other, and thatās it. But isnāt projecting queerness onto these women kind of ā¦ fun? To imagine subtext that wasnāt originally intended? Isnāt that so much of what we, as LGBTQ+ people, have to do in a queerphobic and transphobic world? Insert ourselves where we donāt ābelong?” Your interest in doing this is pretty proportional to the enjoyment you will get out of reading this collection of essays.
I, for one, had a blast, and have added all of these films to my watch list. But while I imagined that inventing queer subtext was the primary activity these writers would be doing, it actually went far deeper. I can see five primary shapes that queer readings of horror films take in this collection (and of course there will be plenty of overlap between them):
- Rooting for the villain
- Misunderstood monster
- Being seen
- Queer subtext
- Critique of society
Itās obviously tricky to root for the villain when the villain is a violent killer. But what if we understand the killer, or the monster, as simply reacting to mistreatment in the way so many of us wish we could: with anger, rage, violence? What if we imagine the villain as the protagonist? What if we try to piece together their motivations, even though the films so rarely do so?
In āSight Unseen,” Spencer Williams sees the Blair Witch as someone who primarily just wanted to be left alone. Sheās living her best life, sequestered alone in the woods, and here come a bunch of young people trying to blow up her spot. She does her best to warn them, over and over, to get them to leave ā¦ and they refuse. They forced her hand! And 80s slasher Sleepaway Camp ends by revealing the killer was shy, often-bullied Angela ā who was actually a trans girl. But doesnāt the fact that she was forced into that gender role in the first place by her aunt in the aftermath of the traumatizing death of her sibling, and bullied by the other teens the entire film, argues Viet Dinh in āNotes on Sleepaway Camp,” seem to explain, if not justify, her actions?
Killers, monsters, and demons are frequently metaphors for what we donāt understand about our own humanity; theyāre an attempt to externalize the āmonstrousness” so many of us suppress within ourselves ā or that others project onto unchangeable aspects of who we are. In āThe Wolfmanās Daughter,” Tosha R. Taylor explains that the protagonist of 1941ās The Wolf Man, Larry Talbot, āseemed predestined to do wrong ā¦ I pitied him as his life spiraled out of control and he became the monster of the townās nightmares ā¦ Larry embodies the Other.” So many LGBTQ+ people have the experience of discovering something within ourselves ā something considered monstrous by society ā that we would give anything to rid ourselves of. That we attempt to resist, but canāt, so weāre ostracized, villainized, and misunderstood.
Because weāre so frequently othered, many LGBTQ+ people find ourselves in horror film monsters. In their essay āIndescribable,” Carrow Narby describes feeling a kinship with the titular creature in The Blob; our society is so gendered that someone without a gender identity is nearly impossible to describe or even perceive. In āTwin/Skin,” Addie Tsai explores how their difficult relationship with their twin sibling is reflected in Dead Ringers. And the metaphor of having to hide oneself behind a mask, not lost on most queer people, is explored by Richard Scott Larsonās reflection on Halloween in āLong Night In The Dark.ā
We can project a queer subtext onto many films, as in previously mentioned examples The Birds and Jaws. āIs there really anything gayer than three men on a boat?” asks Corrigan. But in addition to inventing subtext, we can also create new meaning by taking a filmās logic and turning it on its head: What if instead of focusing on the villain, we turn a critical eye to the society that created it? Some films are clearer in their perspectives; Sachico Ragosta and Jude Ellison S. Doyle explore how Eyes Without A Face and In My Skin could easily be critiques of misogynist standards of beauty and not the people who react to them with violence. And what about A Nightmare on Elm Streetās adults, asks Tucker Lieberman in āThe Trail of His Flames?” Beyond inept, they may actually be facilitating the storyās murders through their inaction and, like the powers that be in Jaws, seem more concerned about appearances than about protecting young peopleās lives.
What fascinated me about these essays were the ideas ā explored above ā but what really brought them together is the fact that they are far more personal than analytical. Queer readings of text that werenāt intended to make queer points are always tenuous reaches, and if the book focused on the readings it might have felt like a reach too far. But every essay weaves into its analysis a personal reflection on what the film meant to the individual writer, which makes it extremely readable. These are personal essays, not queer theory papers.
If youāre a big fan of horror, youāre probably already planning to get this book. But if youāre a casual fan, or have always wondered what LGBTQ+ people see in horror films, then It Came From The Closet is an excellent introduction. I finished it with a new appreciation for the genre, and I highly recommend it.
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror is out now. Carmen Maria Machado’s essay “Both Ways” ā on Jennifer’s Body, queerbaiting, and bisexuality ā was previously featured on Autostraddle as an exclusive excerpt.
Malinda Loās New Coming-of-Age Queer Novel āA Scatter of Lightā Shines Brilliantly
Author’s note: This review of A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo contains some spoilers, and the quotes included are excerpted from an advance copy of the book and might differ from the final version.
In Malinda Loās new young adult novel, A Scatter of Light, we are history. By we, I mean me ā a thirty-something Tumblr-era millennial queer who grew up during the fight for same-sex marriage, was born eons before the Tik even Toked, and is (mostly) too tired for the club these days. Leave it up to Malinda Lo to write a stunning narrative with the potential to make queer millennials feel equal parts affirmed and ancient as hell.
Kids (and publishers) will call this book historical fiction, and I guess they are right. It is mostly set in 2013 amidst the backdrop of the Supreme Courtās 2013 rulings on same-sex marriage. Despite my ardent denial, the 90s are two decades behind us, and Iāve moved into a category of adulting where one tells stories about the āgood olā days” at bars, bookstores, and events that have been long retired. With references to anti-Prop 8 organizing, late aughts pop music, and staples of lesbian culture (hello San Fran Dyke March, melodramatic open-mic nights, and L Word critiques), A Scatter of Light has all of the makings of an idyllic ode to the queer āevery day” of yesteryear.
In 2022, an ode to yesteryear might be the salve that all of us (old heads and baby queers alike) need to keep going. Letās be honest: It is easy to get enveloped by the darkness of our ātoday.” Weāre almost three years into a pandemic that continues to affect thousands of people every day. Across the United States, lawmakers continue to pass legislation targeting transgender folksā access to care and safety. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and some say theyāre coming for gay marriage next. Natural disasters continue to obliterate homes and end lives without much action from our government. Internationally, organizers are risking it all to fight back against authoritarian regimes. The heaviness of today makes A Scatter of Light shine even more brilliantly.
At the core of Malinda Loās seventh novel is a coming-of-age/coming-out love story set in Marin County, California. The novelās protagonist, Aria Tate West, is a half-Chinese, half-white teenager from Massachusetts who has been sent to spend her summer with her famed-artist grandmother following a senior-year scandal. In some ways, Lo follows a pretty cookie-cutter guide to a bestselling ācoming out” story: Girl is āstraight.” Girl meets butch and thinks āI wish you were a boy.” Girl later discovers she is not straight. But of course, Malinda Lo is no basic b*tch, and neither is this narrative; instead, it is complex (sometimes unnecessarily so) and invites a grappling with the grayness of doing the āright thing.ā
With the structure of Ariaās journey, Lo bridges the past, present, and future. A Scatter of Light is separated into three sections. The book begins in 2008 with a snapshot of Aria and her grandmother Joanās relationship. It ends with a glimpse into Ariaās future set in 2023. Through artifacts and dialogue, Lo includes more references to historical queer (and Chinese) culture and people of the past ā an intentional move that is revolutionary in itself. Among a flurry of censorship of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC narratives, histories, and ideas from K-12 schools and libraries (including Loās books), this book is a defiant reiteration of our quotidian (yet radical) existence across time.
Spoiler alert: Aria falls for the most butch of butches to break her spell of āstraightness.” Her love interest Steph is a butch gardener from the Bay Area who writes acoustic ballads based on Adrienne Rich’s poems. I found myself returning to Richās The Dream of a Common Language while reading Loās newest novel. Richās collection, a centerpiece for Ariaās exploration, is known for its celebration and discussion of women (and their relationship with other women).
In āXVII,” Adrienne Rich writes:
āNo oneās fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, weāre not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.ā
Following suit, A Scatter of Light is a book of crashes (and crushes) with effects that reverberate across time. It is queer in the best of ways ā messy, raw, heartbreaking, freeing, and imperfect. Marketed as a companion novel to National Book award-winningĀ Last Night at the Telegraph Club, the connection to Loās previous bestseller feels forced and unnecessary given the depth and complexity of Ariaās story. The narrative might have been served better if some plot points, such as the rad mention of Bernice Bingās work, were either explored further or omitted altogether. While the book is stacked with racially diverse secondary and tertiary characters, it would have been nice to have a non-white primary love interest in narrative with such potential. Despite all of this, however, Loās newest offering is beautifully composed, often feeling like a peek into your best friendās hot (queer) girl summer.
Make no mistake, though, this book is a bit heavy at points. Like many of us, Ariaās queer awakening is accompanied by some stress, heartbreak, and grief. The heaviness doesnāt diminish the light found in Loās novel, though. If anything, it might make readers feel even more connected to Ariaās experiences of love, joy, and pleasure during her summer adventures. In her narration of Aria using a telescope, Lo writes, āI had to let my eyes adapt to the darknessā¦to wait for the turbulence in the air to settle, and finally when everything in motion was in motion together, I might see something amazing.” A truly amazing gift, A Scatter of Light is a historical fiction book that serves as a love letter to all we once were, the mistakes we made, and the selves we will become.
Despite the darkness of this moment, Malinda Loās newest book (out today) reminds us of the light in our truth.
Queers make mistakes.
Some queers are not yet queer.
Queers are messy.
Queers are alive and free.
Queers find love.
Queers find themselves.
Queers break hearts.
Queers grow old.
We have always been.
We will always be.
It is these truths that make it a book worth reading (and also one likely to be banned). Get it, read it, teach it, hold it (and those you love) tightly.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s āThe Future Is Disabledā Should Be Required Reading
I have grown increasingly nihilistic for several years when I think about the world’s future. As a queer disabled person, I have often felt like I was watching a horror film, screaming “don’t go in that room” at the screen and knowing someone was definitely about to go in. First, Trump was making unbridled white supremacy, ableism, and transphobia socially acceptable (Trump and his beliefs were not new to the US, but his presidency emboldened those filled with hate to share that hate more openly). There was an endless string of police violence and murders of mostly disabled Black people. Interminable attacks and violence on trans people. Hospitals rationing care and deciding whose life was worth saving, with disabled people on the bottom of the list. Anti-vaxxers and the anti-maskers āĀ and these people weren’t just on the fringes. They were people I know, flagrantly disregarding the science that was keeping high-risk people like me safe.
Lately, it feels like my community is screaming into the void, begging people to keep wearing masks because it is saving our lives. It feels a lot like people want us to die. I started thinking that if people can’t be bothered to wear some paper on their faces to save lives, then there is no way we will ever manage to address climate change. Saving the Earth requires much more complex and difficult transitions.
I started to feel like the part in The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” where they repeat “no future” until the song ends. Then I was sent a copy of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s new book The Future is Disabled.
Piepzna-Samarasinha is “a nonbinary femme autistic disabled writer, space creator and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent.” My partner introduced me to Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work as I grappled with my chronic illness diagnosis. It served as a framework for reimagining myself and my body through this new lens. So generally, I am excited to read anything by Piepzna-Samarasinha. Still, this book was already boldly challenging my beliefs on the front cover, making it hard to get started. When I did, it was like the wave of anxiety, fear, and anger building in me found a space to be released.
Autostraddle readers likely know there’s often particular shared language, culture, and understanding when marginalized community members communicate with each other. It comes with its slang and shorthand. When I talk to another disabled person, especially a queer disabled person, it often feels like there is a shared understanding that comes with shared lived experiences. Piepzna-Samarasinha’s new book is like getting a behind-the-scenes look at that experience and language. It starts by laying out all the ways BIPOC queer disabled people have been harmed, erased, or killed over the last several years and the trauma that comes with those experiences.
I read most of the book with the help of the assistive reading device on my phone. A robotic Siri voice brought Piepzna-Samarasinha’s words to life (an experience the author calls out in the book and reimagines ā what if this accessibility feature was nice to listen to?). Despite the robo-voice, I found myself frequently yelling at my phone in agreement: “YES, EXACTLY!” Piepzna-Samarasinha was putting into words the feelings and pain so many folks in the disability community have been struggling with. But this book is much more than an airing of grievances.
Piepzna-Samarasinha beautifully describes how disabled people ā especially BIPOC and queer disabled people ā have been caring for each other, keeping each other alive, and fighting for justice, as well as how these skills and models can create the future. The book delves into the importance of disabled joy and pleasure, unapologetically claiming these things without feeling the need to justify them to an ableist world. One of my favorite lessons of the book is the concept of a diversity of tactics, which Piepzna-Samarasinha applies not just to organizing (though that’s equally important to disabled people who may not be able to march in the streets) but to ways of providing care. Piepzna-Samarasinha shares their grief for disability justice leader Stacey Park Milbern, who passed away in 2020. Piepzna-Samarasinha dreams that they are talking to Milbern and asking how their disability justice work will continue now. In the dream, Milbern tells Piepzna-Samarasinha to make soup with chicken thighs in their freezer, because making soup that can provide food, warmth, and comfort to the movement counts.
Piepzna-Samarasinha effortlessly weaves stories of pain and loss with examples of how queer, disabled, and BIPOC people are already working as a community to support each other. They share the immense grief that comes with a pandemic that mainly kills BIPOC disabled people but also the importance of helping people through grief and the fact that more people are becoming death doulas to provide care and peace to people at the end of their life. They share an example of an access rider they use to book readings and other events and how setting out accessibility needs upfront makes it a clear priority. I think this is a lesson every in-person event could benefit from understanding.
Together, each chapter adds more detail to a vision for the future that is ultimately hopeful. This hope doesn’t necessarily come from solutions to end injustice. It acknowledges that the pandemic, systemic violence, and climate change will only create more injustice and cause more people to become disabled. The hope comes from the knowledge that even in the face of injustice, the community will still care for each other ā even if it’s imperfect.
After reading The Future is Disabled, I feel more hopeful, and I think you will, too. I want to shout through a megaphone that everyone needs to read this book, because this text is one of the tools we can use to make it through the next several decades. If you are disabled, reading it will feel like therapy because unearthing the traumas our community has dealt with in recent years is painful. Still, it’s also a relief to feel less alone and like someone understands what you’re going through as you remain isolated in your COVID-safe bubble. If you aren’t disabled, I urge you to read this book. I think it should be required reading for anyone who works in organizing, education, human resources, or anyone who wants to be an ally to disabled people. The future depends on it.
The Future Is Disabled by Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha comes out tomorrow, October 4.
Gender Nonconformity Has Always Existed
Being a young trans person is a weird experience. Itās wrought with pain and sadness too, sure. But itās also just incredibly bizarre. In the late 90s and early 00s, we obviously didnāt have Twitter or Instagram or TikTok to find resources to help us explain to ourselves and other people who we were. Trans activist and historian Kit Heyam notes in their new book Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender that the terms ātrans,” ātransexual,” and ātransgender” have been in use since the early and mid-twentieth century, but when I was 12, all I had were the āladies” of Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, and that scene where Roberta binds her chest in Now & Then. These werenāt and arenāt representations of trans people, but they were the first people I saw do something different with gender than I had ever seen before. If you were curious enough or maybe lucky enough, you might be able to find some information on queer peopleās lives beyond some of the authors you might encounter in your high school English classes, but it was much, much more difficult to find information on people whose assigned sex and their gender identity didnāt match.
While it has certainly gotten easier to find information on trans lives throughout history now, as Heyam points out in their book, gender nonconforming people are often still left out of the story: āThe narrow trans narrative we see emphasized in contemporary mediaā¦makes life harder for people who experience their transness in a way thatās not binary, stereotyped or stable. And this narrative also makes it difficult to tell histories that fully reflect the messy reality of trans life today.ā
In an attempt to help begin solving this problem, Heyamās book does, in fact, present us with a new history of gender nonconformity and show us the ways in which gender disruption is often written out of history both purposely and through the academyās myopic understanding of the ways people interact with gender and sexuality. In addition to that, Heyam also presents a new way of thinking about trans history in general, where even people whose gender disruption was not simply an act of how they felt inside but an act that was necessary for their social positions are included.
Within six chapters, Heyamās work spans the last millennia and much of the globe, showing areas of historical study where the roles of trans or gender nonconforming people have been completely obscured or erased from the record or misrepresented as not having much to do with gender identity at all. They take us from the Kingdom of Ndongo in what is now Nigeria and early modern England and Renaissance-era Venice, to colonial America and British-run internment camps in World War I Germany, to pre-colonial America and East and Southeast Asia. Through one particularly illuminating chapter, they even explain the ways that intersex people have been written out of our historical knowledge of biological sex and how the histories of intersex people are often more intertwined with trans and gender nonconforming people than we might think.
In one chapter, Heyam discusses the ways in which gender roles operated in West Africa and ancient Egypt through the stories of the Ekwe people, Njinga Mbande, Ahebi Ugbabe, and Pharaoh Hatshepsut. Weāre transported to Elizabeth Iās court, where āwomenās fashion” became āmenās fashion” and where conservative Protestants worried that everyone was āchanging [their] sex” as a result. Sound familiar? It certainly should.
Meanwhile, in Renaissance-era Venice, sex workers ā or courtesans ā āwore a mixture of male-coded and female-coded clothing” in order to entice and excite their potential customers and perhaps, as Heyam points out, this gender play was a more permanent state of being for some of the regionās documented courtesans.
Heyam then moves us to the early twentieth century as World War I was raging on and European prisoners of war were imprisoned in camps where, out of boredom, men put on plays for one another. These are often classified by historians as all-male prisons but Heyam points out āthat isnāt a fully accurate description of how internees experienced their lives” because some of the men took on the roles of the female characters of the plays and then chose to continue living as women.
Next, weāre in Edo period Japan and eleventh century Persia learning about how people there saw gender performance as unavoidably linked to sexuality. Then, in colonial America, we see the ways people were confounded by the fact that intersex people exist and are taught the many ways in which historians are still obscuring the existence of intersex people in the historical record today. And finally, we meet the Two-Spirit people of the indigenous nations of the Pacific Northwest and the hijras of India to learn how, in some non-Western cultures, gender nonconformity is not only entirely ānormal,” it is also inextricably linked to their spiritualities and spiritual practices.
Similar to the work of Leslie Feinberg, Heyam proves that both binary and nonbinary trans people and/or gender disruptors have existed in nearly every corner of world history. Heyam also directly argues for a more inclusive understanding of who, historically, is considered trans and gender nonconforming. Although this is certainly not a comprehensive examination of gender nonconformity throughout history ā and Heyam is not claiming that it is; they claim the opposite actually ā Heyam thoroughly explores these various stories with care for the individuals involved and with plenty of attention to nuance. Throughout the entire text, Heyam offers reflections on both their attempts to subvert the white gaze and their reality as a white historian and doesnāt shy away from admitting that this book alone cannot make up for the great absence of trans and gender nonconforming histories ā especially nonwhite ones ā in our cultural consciousness. As a trans and gender nonconforming person who is also a teacher and struggles with some of the big questions of duty that Heyam explores in their reflections, I found the sections of the texts where Heyam discusses their role in telling these stories especially poignant. And Iām hoping it opens up some imperative conversations about how we interrogate the past among academics who are doing or thinking about doing this kind of work.
Toward the end of the book, Heyam writes that itās important we treat all of these stories theyāve included in the book as ātrans history” because āThey are histories of gender not being binary, fixed, or tied to the body. They show there have always been people who disrupt these norms, and there have always been societies in which they arenāt norms at all. These people might not be like me, and I might not be able to speak of them, even equivocally, as trans people, but they are people I can relate to nonetheless.ā
Ultimately, even though the stories and conversations Heyam brings up are exceptionally complicated because they depend on limited archival information, they provide an avenue for all of us outside of the binary to better understand ourselves and are something we can hold onto when society tries to convince others that our existence is new or unusual. It might not be as comprehensive as Heyam or others may want it to be, but Before We Were Trans is a welcome and significant ā and joyful, even ā contribution to our cultural conversations on the malleability of gender and on gender nonconformity.
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam is out now.
Life Is Not a Novel
Love wasnāt a slumber party with your best friend. Love was dangerous, violent, with an element of something repulsive; attraction had a permeable border with repulsionā¦ To try and escape those things was immature and anti-novelistic.Ā
ā Either/Or, Elif BatumanĀ
My friend Dana recently texted: āAutumn Iām sorry to inform you but I think you might read too much.” I laugh-reacted and LOLād, but it got me thinking. And when I think, it rarely passes me by in an instant; it is consuming, stretching over hours and days.
So, I did what I always do, despite the warning ā I started to read.
I first encountered Elif Batumanās The Idiot in my first year of graduate school, where I languished through my first bout with Alabama humidity in an apartment without real A/C. I tended to nap for a few hours after classes ended for the day on a hand-me-down loveseat and then read until I felt ready to sleep again, the antique coffee table in front of me littered with open Canada Dry cans and stacks of yellow legal pads, workshop notes, and other detritus.
I chose The Idiot because I had seen in some literary magazine or another that it was a finalist for a Pulitzer, and because it was a tome, and because it was considered, by some, snobbish and pretentious and overly referential.
As someone who has been accused of just those things, I was taken in an instant. Fresh and open, like first love, or something like it.
What I felt and still feel for Selin KaradaÄ, the narrator of The Idiot and its sequel Either/Or, was something deeper than kinship. We were the same, in so many ways. Bookish, close to our mothers, doomed to be writers, virginal (at least for longer than our peers), wry and somewhat distant until comfortable, convinced that reading the right book, or books, would teach us the secrets of life, would teach us how to live.
Of course, Selin and I have a great many differences. I did not go to Harvard, I am not Turkish, my parents are not doctors (but were instead high school teachers), and I have never stepped foot on the East Coast (unless you count North Carolina) and did not grow up there. I did not come from money, whatever that even means.
Still, never before had I felt canonized before reading Batumanās novels, not even in the stacks of Native American literature I have taken to, desperate for a sign I was doing something right, or, rather, that this life I was living would one day make sense, would feel worth it in the end.
To call a book queer is to assert something, is to take a stance that cannot easily be recalled. It is to set modes of internal criteria, to make sense of something created, perhaps, for a purpose not like this. It is to call something your own, to cling to it. To cling to it.
In The Idiot, Selin takes up with Ivan, a senior headed toward the other side of the country in a mere matter of months. They send semi-flirtatious emails back and forth. They talk, and talk, and talk. Selin can never find solid ground with Ivan; she can never know what heās thinking. We, the audience, know that Ivan is simply a man infatuated with a younger, more innocent woman. He wants less talk, so to speak, and more action.
We will never know, though, what he might have done if he had gotten what he wanted. The novel ends, without even a kiss between them.
I didnāt know what to do with the relief that had built up in my gut upon finishing. Not in the slightest.
I finished Either/Or in a reckless two days filled with inadvisable caffeine and a light sheen of sweat. I felt sick and settled, invigorated and heavy-headed. It took me too long to fall asleep afterward. All I could see was my own romantic history, sparse yet rife with something not right in any iteration, playing before me over and over again, like the worldās worst documentary film.
Iāve always been a good talker. Or, well, Iāve always had the potential to be a good talker. I donāt think I said any words aloud until I was nearly a woman grown, then I couldnāt stop. I committed them to paper and text messages and a brief interlude of Snapchat. I send emails and write postcards to friends. I call and FaceTime and send voice memos. I wonder, now, what kind of narrative Iām trying to create. If this inborn charm is, in itself, a form of manipulation.
I suppose there are worse things.
The essayist must balance the personal with the existential, the thought-provoking, that which the reader actually wants to read. Joan had her cigarettes and her migraines. I have my migraines. What else?
Selin cannot even attempt to put a tampon in without excruciating pain. Selin likens Ivan to the Seducer in Kierkegaardās Diary of a Seducer. Selin starts taking Zoloft. Selin reads and reads and reads. Selin wants exciting experiences only so that she can one day write about them. Selin wants Ivan physically only when he is not around. Selin wishes she could pet her best friend Svetlanaās golden hair, compliment her, and watch her become more beautiful because of it. Svetlana gets a boyfriend, and nothing will ever be the same.
This is easier, isnāt it? Isnāt it?
I go on Tinder. I go on Feeld. Bumble, 3Fun, Hinge. I talk and talk and talk. I match with husbands and uninterested wives. I match with semi-interested wives and overly excited husbands. I match with several very nice couples that make me feel guilty about every decision that led me to this moment. I flirt a little bit and flirt some more. It doesnāt even feel like me, so I donāt feel sick afterward, nor do I regret the attention, which feels like something even if itās nothing. Itās nice. It is nice it is nice it is nice. I like it I like it I like it. I like it. I like it. I like it. This is good. It will be good. I will make it good. Yes, it is good.
Another way she and I differ: She thinks it is ridiculous how much everyone cares what their parents think. Everyone is always talking about it. Obsessing over it. I think itās ridiculous, too. And one of them is dead. Still, arenāt you on firmer, safer ground, Selin?
For Selin, the rest of one of her semesters passes in a haze of snotty tissues and beautifully falling leaves. Her eyes have bags underneath them and her hair is unwashed, knotted. I have never been this lonely. I used to not care about how lonely I was. Why now? Why?
I decide to reread Anna Karenina for the thousandth time. Even if it isnāt a great idea, it will certainly be a comfort.
Summer has never been my season. I was born to the darkened hours, the falling leaves, the secrets. What happens when the sun finally touches my face?
Perhaps the truth is that it is time to step outside of the words, of the documents and notebooks and stacked novels. Perhaps it is time to open the door, to feel that light. I am not that brave yet, but maybe one day I will be. I am moving through something, whether we call it life or experience, evolution, or something else more nebulous and harder to name.
For so long I have denied myself the experiences I want, that I crave, that I only feel comfortable experiencing through the lens of someone elseās experience that it has begun to feel impossible to live the kind of life I want, if only in secret, for myself.
I am not a creature built for love. But here, now, I want to be. I want to allow myself to be. Why does it feel anathema to my being to say I want connection? I donāt know. I donāt. But I do. I hope for it. I long for it. I want to hold it in my hands, not in pages bound together, but in a tangible, physical sense. I wonder if it is possible, especially in this place that is so haunted, is so confused about who, and what, I am.
But stranger things have happened, and life is not a novelistic plot device. I am not written in stone, nor are my actions. There is growth to be had. I can feel it. I can.
Even so, Iāll take Selin along. I think she has more to teach me. Maybe Iāll know it when I see it, this time.
Eight Queer Books Set in Los Angeles About the Movie Industry
Happy fall and welcome back to Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian! This time I’m answering a good old-fashioned email question, which reminded me I’ve neglected to share my email address with you all lately. If you have a question for your lesbrarian in residence, hit me up at casey [at] autostraddle.com! You can also comment on this post.
Now onto today’s topic:
Heya Casey,
I bookmarked your email for future book requests I hope that’s okay!! This summer I read The Work Wife [by Alison B. Hart] and really liked the LA setting. I’ve never actually visited LA and I don’t think I could live there actually based on reading books about it lol but I find it very interesting to read about, the glamor, the heat, I’m not sure what it is exactly. Do you have any other LA queer books you would recommend?
Cheers!
There are a LOT of queer books set in L.A., so instead of flailing about trying to decide which ones to include, I’ve narrowed the theme a bit. The Work Wife is a sharp behind the scenes look at the movie industry in LA, including #MeToo. So the following queer books are set in L.A. and focus on Hollywood / L.A.’s movie and TV industry. A solid half of these are romance, which is entirely unintentional ā but you’re welcome if queer celesbian romance is your jam. This little corner of queer lit seems particularly white, so if anyone has more recommendations by authors of color, please share in the comments!
We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
This searing novel is a two for one: it’s about both a certain kind of white woman auteur director / filmmaker in L.A. as well as the feminist theater scene in New York City. Told in two timelines, the novel begins with the bisexual protagonist Cass’s arrival in L.A., fleeing an as yet unnamed career scandal back in NYC. Cass was just about to make it big as a playwright when something went very wrong. Luckily, she quickly stumbles into a working friendship with her new next door neighbor, Caroline, a feminist filmmaker who is beginning a new docufiction film about a group of teenage girls who have their own after school version of fight club. Caroline is charismatic, ambitious, and determined, all qualities Cass admires. But the deeper she gets into the project, the more she starts questioning the ethics of Caroline’s behavior. At the same time, she has to reassess her own fuck-ups that led her to L.A. in the first place. This is a book full of women’s rage, creativity, desire, success, and violence.
Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner
For a feminist discussion of #MeToo in Hollywood as well as a very thoughtful use of the boss / employee romance pairing and the subsequent power dynamic, there’s no better book than Something to Talk about! Emma, a bi Jewish woman in her late twenties, is the assistant to bigtime showrunner Jo, a Chinese American woman in her early forties. When the two are caught having an intimate laugh on the red carpet, rumors begin to fly that they’re an item. As they continue to put their heads down and work ā Emma is gearing for a promotion and Jo is beginning a new film project ā they realize how good they really are together, maybe not just as colleagues who are spending a lot of time together. But both women are keenly aware of the awkwardness of their situation: Did the paparazzi know they were meant for each other before they did? And how will they navigate Jo being Emma’s boss? This love story is a slow, slow burn, with lots of time to luxuriate in the building sexual tension as well as to learn about the ins and outs of TV and movie production from the perspective of queer women.
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
Siren Queen may be an historical fantasy, but it uses this genre mashup to its advantage to discuss pre-code 1930s Hollywood and the experiences of women of color actresses like its Chinese American protagonist, Luli. After falling in love with black and white movies as a kid in a nickel theater, Luli stumbles onto a movie set and ends up with a tiny role. Fueled by her thirst for stardom, Luli wades into the world of movie studios which literally run on magic of all sorts: demons, monsters, deals with the devil, and dark rituals. The metaphors and symbolism of the novel’s fantastical elements work effortlessly to address inequalities in Hollywood, including the racism, sexism, and homophobia Lulu encounters. But there’s joy and camaraderie too, like when Luli falls in love with a fellow actress and builds solidarity with other queer and/or actors of color. And Luli finds purpose in making her own choices, no matter how limited they are, like deciding to take a role as a monster instead of a maid.
I Kissed a Girl by Jennet Alexander
Calling all horror movie fans: this queer romance features a love story between a horror actress and a makeup and visual effects artist. Lilah, the actress, dreams of moving up in the Hollywood hierarchy from B-movie creature features to A-list. Noa, the makeup artist, is working her tail off to make it into the union but it’s proving much more difficult than she imagined. They get off on the wrong foot when they first meet, but of course soon after are pining for each other. Both leads in this story are Jewish, and Lilah is dealing with coming out as bi in light of being closeted because of her career. Although Lilah is moderately famous (and Noa is starstruck upon first meeting her), Lilah is equally admiring of Noa, who is casually out at work. If you’re looking for gross insider details about making silly and/or gory horror movies, this book is for you: fake blood, green goo, cheesy mechanical dinosaurs, slimy water tanks, and more. (The film Noa and Lilah are working on is called Scareodactyl, dinosaur horror anyone??).
A Killing in Costumes by Zac Bissonnette
Okay, technically this cozy mystery is mostly set in Palm Springs, but it is all about Hollywood: both past and present. Jay and Cindy are former soap opera stars who rode the waves of popularity in the 90s with their combined acting and musical talents. They were also a real life married couple. But when the truth came to light ā Jay and Cindy are both gay ā their TV careers as well as their marriage died. Remaining good friends and wanting to keep a foot in show business, Jay and Cindy now own an old Hollywood memorabilia shop called Hooray for Hollywood. They’re hoping a 90-year-old former Hollywood diva who wants to sell her large collection of valuable props and costumes is the turnaround they need to help their dwindling business finances. But when their major competitor ā a VP from a big well-off auction house after the same collection ā is found suspiciously dead, Jay and Cindy are major suspects. Can they clear their names as well as revive Hooray for Hollywood?
Breaking Character by Lee Winter
This celesbian romance stars two very different women, working on the same TV show, a medical drama called Choosing Hope. Elizabeth (Bess to her friends) is a talented British actress in a career slump, playing the villain on a top rated TV series that she hates. Summer is a former child star who, while apprehensive about Choosing Hope’s popularity yet lack of quality, is thrilled to get to work with one of her favorite actresses in her first adult role. As soon as Summer starts, though, a clumsy mistake with the press leads everyone to believe Bess and Summer are an item. Bess, who’s stayed closeted in order to protect her career, is furious. The French filmmaker she’s dying to work with though, is keen to meet her new so-called girlfriend. Bess figures the least Summer can do to make up for her mistake is to pretend to be her partner so that she can secure a role in a film that is actually artistically interesting to her. I bet you can guess where this fake relationship leads!
Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
A lot of fiction about Hollywood focuses on actors or directors, but this unique YA contemporary story stars Emi, an 18-year-old set designer in L.A. who is already on her way to a memorable career. Emi is a film buff and hopeless romantic, but her love life is anything but rom com worthy. She can’t seem to stop getting back together with her ex-girlfriend, even though she knows they aren’t right for each other. One day, her life is upended when she receives a mysterious letter claiming to be from an old Hollywood legend. Trying to track down the origins of the letter leads Emi to meet Ava. Ava’s life is unconventional and chaotic in a way that is completely foreign to Emi. As Emi falls for Ava, she finds her whole world changing. This book is a love letter to the craft of filmmaking and to movie magic romance.
And Playing the Role of Herself by K.E. Lane
This beloved lesbian romance classic is important enough that it made Reese’slist of queer books across America list in the competitive California section! It’s also the winner of the Golden Crown’s Ann Bannon Award. Taking place on the set of a star-studded police drama filmed on location in L.A., the story follows actress Caidence as she’s hired on the show. Caid is immediately drawn to her accomplished and sexy A-lister costar Robyn, but she settles for friendship, knowing that Robyn is in a relationship with some tennis dude. Caid herself isn’t out anyway. These ladies have chemistry off the charts though, which the producers pick up on, writing a relationship between them into the show. Will their on-screen romance translate to real life?? If it isn’t already abundantly clear, this book will be a hit for Law & Order fans.
A couples bonus recommendations not set in L.A. but definitely in the same vein as the books above: The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North (a profile told in multiple POVs about the life and career of a brilliant, enigmatic, and bisexual arthouse film director) and Flip the Script by Lyla Lee (a contemporary bisexual YA set in the world of Seoul’s K-Drama industry).
Queer Naija Lit: Akwaeke Emeziās āPetā and āBitterā Explore the Costs of a Different World
What does a different world feel like? How do we get there?
In the speculative young adult novel Pet and its prequel Bitter, Akwaeke Emezi explores the possibilities and responsibilities of revolution and world-making.
The protagonist of Pet is 15-year-old Jam, living in post-revolution Lucille.
A little tidbit I learned: Jam’s name is a portmanteau of the Igbo words ja mu, meaning āpraise me.” Jam spends her time like most kids her age: at school, hanging out with her best friend Redemption, going to the library, and accidentally summoning an angelic (in the biblically accurate sense) monster hunter, known as Pet.
So, what is a monster? And how do you find one? Jam knows what she’s been told: A monster is someone that hurts others, feeds off hurt, or willfully contributes to it. Problem is, according to the adults in Lucille ā especially Jam’s parents Bitter and Aloe ā there are no (free) monsters.
Another difficulty is that a monster doesn’t look like anything specific and can be anyone. To see the monster, you have to see the hurt. To see the hurt, you have to be open to seeing what fear and conditioning say to look away from. How do you look at what you’ve been told doesn’t exist? How do you “see” what isn’t real (to you and your society)?
Let me take a step back. If these questions sound familiar, it’s because, despite Pet being placed a few generations past 2022, they’re grappling with a lot of the same problems of this time. Like Jam discovers, it can be a struggle to see the hurt we’re conditioned to think isn’t there.
As children, we’re taught to see the world in this way: With a few rare exceptions, society rewards good. Similarly, Jam is raised to believe that the monsters of her world are gone ā rounded up and sent to rehabilitation programs in the revolution that thrust Lucille into a new world. In both cases, what’s being taught isn’t as simple when you look closer.
In our world, societal concepts of what is good, bad, or monstrous are complex. Generally, wealth is a signifier of virtue, yet a majority of the world’s resources and systems are obtained and managed through extractive, oppressive policies and ideologies. The state of global resources makes wealth a poor reflection of virtue since its acquisition is layered in harm.
Next, ideas of beauty and ability are warped to such an extent that people outside of a certain (prejudiced, supremacist) standard are villainized, especially in comparison to people within the standard. What you look like, sound like, or how your brain works are signifiers of monstrosity as much as whether or not you hurt anyone.
Further, the groups of people that are isolated or ostracized from communal and public spaces en masse are disenfranchised and targeted groups ā like unhoused people, migrants, and prisoners. These are people who might be hurt or poor or a threat to capitalism, but not necessarily a threat to other humans.
We’re taught to believe we live in a world that rewards good and condemns bad, but much of societal authority is in the hands of hate-mongering, callous people and institutions. The people being punished by society are often the most vulnerable. I find myself asking the same questions as Jam. What is a monster, and how do I see one?
In Jam’s world, it’s difficult for her to find a monster when she has been raised to believe they’re nearly extinct. In our time, it can be difficult to see what is monstrous when monstrous is used as a code for different or targeted, while the people that kill masses of people and cause resource shortages are called leaders and heroes.
Even though the questions are similar between this world and the world of Lucille, the state of the worlds themselves are different.
Jam lives in post-revolution Lucille, a world that human angels, revolutionaries, helped birth through decades of work. “The revolution had been slow and ponderous, but it had weight, and that weight built up a momentum, and when that momentum finally broke forth, it was with a great and accumulated force,” Emezi writes.Ā Jam lives in a world where a whole community made it safe for people to label their hurt and made a commitment to healing and accountability.
Because of their work, toddler Jam is safe enough to announce her gender to her parents and grows up receiving informed and respectful care. The scene where Jam describes her first (and only, she clarifies) tantrum as a toddler ā her screaming “girl” at strangers that misgendered her and Aloe (Jam’s dad) comforting her in Igbo ā probably did about ten months worth of therapy for my inner child.
I’m grateful to Emezi for the line “people started by believing the victims” to describe the onset of the revolution. That is one way I learned to see. A lot of the work of seeing is internal. For me, it’s difficult to engage with the massive amounts of hurt in this world. It’s painful on my mind, body, and spirit, but with time and patience I’ve learned to broaden and develop my tolerance window.
I think Pet put it best: “the truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen ā¦ a thing that is happening happens whether you look at it or not ā¦ maybe it is easier not to look. Maybe it is easier to say because you do not see it, it is not happening.” But it is happening, and I found that I couldn’t tell myself otherwise without either going numb to what I’m feeling or engaging in some sort of cognitive dissonance.
I know and understand the “science” that justifies the state of the world and capitalism, but it doesn’t make any sense that billionaires exist while people go without food. It doesnāt make any sense that so much of my community works eleventeen jobs only to barely afford rent (if that).
It’s incomprehensible that the United States, Canada, and countries within the EU account for over 25 percent of global CO2 emissions (in comparison, the entirety of Africa and South America contribute about seven percent), yet the governments and some citizens of these regions show ambivalence and a lack of responsibility to the people displaced and dispossessed by climate change.
Within the United States, the people struggling with the impacts of climate change, natural disasters, and government negligence are, once again, targeted classes. It’s overwhelming that so many of us (globally) are struggling, systemically, individually, on all levels. So I also have to work to remember that despair is not a resting place for the heart.
I can’t allow numbness ā a useful coping skill when I’m overwhelmed ā to become my primary state of being either.
Why? A lot rides on our collective numbness.
Being numb can mean being numb to hope, a vital ingredient to charge a revolution. A new world isn’t possible without people believing it is. It’s part of why artists are so important. Art can channel faith; it can make something real from a possibility.
It matters to move beyond numbness and feel, because belief can be action, but belief is also a feeling. “Believe victims” includes feeling and tending to the hurt that is easier to block out. This includes other peopleās hurt and your own.
A part of learning to see hurt is feeling it. Another part is information. As Redemption would say, “all knowledge is good knowledge!”
On their quest to find a monster, Jam and Redemption discover that information can, with the right application, give you the tools to see the truth ā ot just disseminated knowledge from institutions, but the stories of our communities. We can listen, validate, and amplify each other’s voices ā including our own.
For instance, it was healing (and therefore empowering) for me to learn the ways that depression, anxiety, and chronic pain can feel like failure.
A lot changed in my relationship with myself when I started asking: Are you failing or are you hurting? My misplaced blame was preventing me from tending to myself. Blame felt easier to manage than hurt, but no amount of blame can heal a wound. Blaming myself for feeling hurt led to me blaming myself for other people hurting me, which disconnected me from my ability to direct my healing.
Things like accountability and healing aren’t actions; they’re skills to be built. It takes energy to blame myself the way I was. Energy that could be better spent learning to recognize feelings of hurt in myself and differentiate my triggers. I say ābetter spent” because when I’m in a blame cycle, I’m distressed, but healing brings peace. Even more, healing is a thing that spreads.
A world where we believe victims and hold people accountable for the harm they inflict is also a world where we allow ourselves to feel our hurt and respond to hurt with care. There is no end to this commitment. Healing isn’t finite.
Even in Jamās world ā with the revolution and its angels fresh on the minds of the adults ā people still choose to look away from what they see. The commitment to communal healing and accountability isn’t one and done, but ongoing.
The possibilities Emezi presents in post-revolution Lucille include a world where people fight to do the difficult work necessary to maintain systems of care. Accountability is a significant part of care. If we ever do say “there are no more monsters,” let it not be because we won’t look.
The world of Bitter, which takes place a few decades before Pet, sees Lucille still led by monsters but thrumming with a revolution ready to change that. In the midst of this are the students of Eucalyptus, an academy that shelters talented youth, and among them 16-year-old Bitter, who has no intention of ever leaving Eucalyptus, the school that offered her shelter and the space and resources to paint.
Most of her life, Bitter only had the comfort of her painted creatures, which she’s able to temporarily bring to life. Eucalyptus offers her something new and more constant than she’s ever had: family. People who love and challenge her ā and don’t disappear after a few hours.
Bitter wants to be safe behind the walls of Eucalyptus, but she wrestles with this decision as the fires in the streets of Lucille rage and the bodies pile up.
In our world, as the fires of revolution rage globally, a lot of us are relatively (if not completely) sheltered from the risks of the frontline. Bitterās engagement with her responsibility during the revolution resonates with me, especially as an artist living within a violent empire.
Is there a role for art in the revolution? Bitter ā the book and its titular character ā explores this question. Bitter finds that no revolution worth fighting demands everyone to sacrifice their lives at the frontlines. The kids from Assata, the revolutionary group behind a lot of Lucille’s direct action, teach Bitter that rather than wanting her and everyone to fight on the frontlines, they’re fighting for more people to get to choose to do art or whatever feeds their soul. And there are more ways to help than being on the frontlines.
I enjoyed reading about the people that became known as angels, especially seeing Bitter, Aloe, and other residents of Lucille that show up in Pet. A lot of the bonds being formed in Bitter ā bonds of love ā are what gives them strength. They fight for and with each other.
The Gwendolyn Brooks quote that resonates through Pet and Bitter ā “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond” ā perfectly captures the heart of Assata. Their fight isn’t one that sacrifices the well being of their community in the pressure to birth a different world. They become the new world by choosing to show up with each other differently.
A conversation in Bitter and Pet that was striking to me was the one around fear. The angels say not to be afraid, and both Bitter and Jam see their fear as something to be ashamed of, but I think fear has a bad rep.
At many points, Bitter blames her fear for her struggles, but when the whole story is looked at in context, it’s not Bitter’s fear that’s her problem. It’s the difficulty of accepting her fear that creates a blockage. Bitter numbed herself to a lot of feelings and isolated herself because she was ashamed of her fear. When her community holds that fear without judgment, and gives her the care she doesn’t know how to give herself, she’s able to move through her fear.
It’s not that Bitter stops being afraid; it’s that she builds up her tolerance and does the work to move through the defensive walls of her judgment toward the Assata kids, subsequently feeling things beyond her fear. Plus, her community helps her carry what she cannot. Bitter practices the discipline of hope, and she comes out stronger for it.
She learns to fight anything that says a new world isn’t possible or feeds apathy. To listen and find the hurting thing, even if that thing was herself.
It makes sense how the kids of Lucille brought forth the revolution since they work to do the internal healing the new world needed.
Still, their fear is enough to allow them to once again turn away from the presence of monsters. It’s Jam that follows the trail in Pet even though the adults have more experience. This shows, to me, that it’s necessary to heal the common narrative that fear is something to be conquered.
Jam is also scared and, like Bitter, she resents herself for it. But her fear isn’t stronger than her love for Redemption, and focusing on that allows her to move through her fear. Jam doesn’t ever stop being scared. She just doesn’t stop at fear, and neither does Bitter.
Fear can be a stopping force, which makes it easy to reject the emotion, but I think fear is a part of love. Rather than rejecting or feeling less, we can feel more. We can learn to transmute fear into hope, to increase our tolerance, and to feel things that allow us not to stop at fear. I think all of these things are necessary for the kind of world Emezi makes possible in Pet.
In both Pet and Bitter, Emezi doesn’t shy away from the costs of a new world, but the possibilities presented by those costs are tantalizing. Emezi shows that no matter what world we find ourselves in, we often have the choice to show up for each other and ourselves.
Together, maybe we can create a world where kids have to learn about monsters secondhand.
Pet and Bitter are dedicated to Toyin Salau, who deserved a better world.
Queer Naija LitĀ is a monthly series that analyzes, contextualizes, and celebrates queer Nigerian literature.
In Queer Horror Anthology “It Came From the Closet,” Carmen Maria Machado Considers Jennifer’s Body
The following essay is excerpted from Feminist Press’ queer horror anthology It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, on sale next week and available for preorder.
Both Ways
Queer Reader, let us take a moment for Jenniferās body. Not just the 2009 film ā a once-panned, now-beloved feminist cult classic ā but Jenniferās body. Megan Fox in knitted leg warmers and short-shorts, a puffy coat and red fishnets, a color guard uniform, an Evil Dead raglan tee and star-spangled underwear, a cropped hoodie and low-rise jeans, an Edwardian prom dress with long white opera gloves. A wet strand of hair drawn through her mouth. Swimming naked in a lake glassy with twilight. Blackening the tip of her tongue with a lighter. In hunger, wan and beautiful as a consumptive heroine. Levitating. Snarling. Doe eyes, full and glossed lips. Dropping onto a car like a wild cat. Projectile vomiting an unctuous, inky liquid onto her best friend. Teeth like a nurse shark. A distended, disarticulated jaw like a python. Jenniferās body on a sacrificial altar, sobbing. Jenniferās body moving eerily from a great distance; then too close, and from the wrong angle. Jennifer pulling a rod out of her shish-kebabbed torso, saying, through a mouth of blood, āDo you have a tampon?” Jenniferās body underlining the politics of Jenniferās Body; a sex symbol through a funhouse mirror. (The filmās execs thought sheād be a draw for teenage boys, but teenage boys hated it. They didnāt know they were coming to be eaten. Not like that.)
Itās happened to me several times now: someone who doesnāt know me very well asks me about my favorite horror movies. I am excited; I list this one among them. Sometimes they also love it; sometimes theyāve never heard of it, but once ā well, more than once ā theyāve scrunched up their nose. āJenniferās Body?” With Megan Fox? Isnāt it . . . ?” Then they express a riff on a concept. Queerbaiting, gay for titillation, performatively lesbian; whatever they call it, itās always delivered in the tone of an unforgivable crime. In a way, I can hardly blame them; the film was marketed in precisely this fashion, high- lighting Megan Foxās tongue dipping into Amanda Seyfriedās mouth and, of course, this iconic exchange:
āI thought you only murdered boys.ā
āI go both ways.ā
But no, I explain, itās a great movie. A fucking classic. When indie-rock band Low Shoulder comes to perform in the tiny town of Devilās Kettle, Minnesota, two lifelong friends ā Needy (Seyfried) and Jennifer (Fox), a ādork and a babe,” respectively ā end up at the local watering hole, watching them perform. Midshow the venue goes up in flames; the band disappears Jennifer in their van. She shows up later in Needyās kitchen, ravenous and beaten to hell and vomiting a mysterious black goo. As the community reels from the catastrophe of the fire and its fatalities, Jennifer is unfazed, and possibly even more beautiful than before.
But boys keep going missing and showing up in isolated areas, their bodies ravaged and cannibalized. (The phrase ālasagna with teeth” is used twice.) Needy eventually learns that Low Shoulder ā attempting to curry favor with Satan by sacrificing a virgin for fame and fortune ā sacrificed Jennifer, a nonvirgin, and she ended up with a demon inside of her. Only Needy knows whatās really happening, and only Needy can end her reign of terror.
There are several showdowns in the filmās climax and denouement: Needy interrupts Jennifer killing her boyfriend; later, she suits up and goes to Jenniferās bedroom, where the two of them wrestle, levitating in the air before Needy plunges a box cutter into her heart. Needy is sent to an institution; she escapes. As the credits roll, Needy hunts down the band, killing them gruesomely in their hotel room.
Though youād never know it by reading the contemporaneous reviews, Jenniferās Body is terrifically smart and gut-bustlingly funny, gross and tender and nimble all at once, a punchy tribute to small-town survival and a sendup of the saccharine stupidity of post-tragedy rhetoric. (When Jennifer orders two ā9/11 tribute shooters,” she get them and pouts, āUgh, Tower One isnāt full enough.ā)
When the film celebrated its tenth anniversary, a new generation of critics and viewers got to experience its insight and prescience, especially in the shadow of #MeToo. The sexist coverage of the film (which in large part was due to the misogyny directed at Megan Fox) now seems unspeakably dated. But I cannot help but wonder about the charge of queerbaiting, which seems on some level to have survived, even intensified.
But one of the most interesting things about this film, one of the things that brings me back to it over and over again, is that it is not a film about lesbians, per se; it is not a generically queer perspective on wlw relationships. Instead, its energy is exceptionally specific: what it means to experience parallel sexualities with your best friend as you punch through the last vestiges of childhood; and, significantly, the central body of water that is bisexuality.
The moment in which Jennifer is lured into the bandās van ā and Needy watches the door close on Jenniferās vulnerable face ā is one of rupture; from then on, they are staring at, and moving toward, different horizons. Queer Reader, set your gaze far away ā imagine where they are going. Envision them as adults. Needy is a girl just learning she likes girls, sometimes, and loves Jennifer; Jennifer is a girl who, were her life uninterrupted by Satan, would have swung much harder into lesbianism.2 (For all her talk about dicks and how āsalty” boys are, Jennifer is remarkably obsessed with her best friend. Girl, same!) Just before the infamous making out scene, Needy has sex with her boyfriend while Jennifer devours an emo kid she lured to an empty house. Needyās bisexuality comes in fits and starts, serves her and fails her and confounds her; Jennifer dives teeth-first into hers.
āBut which things?!” I asked. My friend could not say. We spent the rest of the afternoon speculating on the precise nature of the two things, the way it suggested some massive paradigm shift while also being hilariously specific.
That evening, as we walked along the beach in the dark and while stepping around the clear bodies of hundreds of beached jellyfish, I asked her to be my girlfriend. Iād been waiting so long to ask her, and being surrounded by a landscape of stilled danger felt correct. She was silent for a long beat. āI think Iām straight,” she said. āItās not you.” Now it was my turn to be silent. āAre you upset with me?” she said. Eventually, I said no, but I was lying. I was heartbroken.
Did I mention weād had sex? Iād hooked up with her and her boyfriend, back when sheād had one. That was our first encounter: I was a virgin, a unicorn who could only ride herself. Then, I was neither. After they broke up, we stayed in touch. She had a real job and would take me out to dinner; she always let me order extra food and dessert to take home. She started coming over to my house to watch TV and every time there was a commercial sheād kiss me, stopping when the show resumed. I donāt even remember what we watched; whatever it was, I couldnāt hear it over the sound of my thudding pulse. One time, she asked me if she could draw on me, and I took off my shirt and bra and she straddled me on my bed with a Sharpie in her hand and drew and drew. It felt beautiful, like how I imagined it felt to be tattooed, even though when I eventually saw the marks in the bathroom mirror, they were surprisingly imprecise and childish and I was embarrassed for both of us.
For a short and terrible time, I was so in love with her it hurt. But then she stood on that beach and said that she was straight, and I had nothing to say. I was already somewhere else.
I suspect that itās partially an issue of visibility. Bisexuality is slippery; it can appear to be other things, it can disguise itself in ways monosexuality canāt, reveal itself against all knowledge and expectations. Bisexuals are coded as fickle, untrustworthy dilettantes. And like homosexuality, but unlike heterosexuality, bisexuality is temporally unmoored, unfixed from the sexual activity or desire of the current moment; a true teleological orientation.
In any case, I suppose you could call my skepticism of āqueerbaiting” as a concept pure pragmatism: unless youāre lucky enough to grow up in a world in which all forms of sexuality are totally understood, accepted, expressed, and contextualized from an early age as a default potential, many queer people are, at some point, conflicted bisexuals, or something akin to it.3 Sometimes bisexuality suits you, and you stay; sometimes it doesnāt and you keep moving; sometimes you return to it, surprised by your own capacity for mystery; but, at some point, youāve crossed those waters. You think you know one thing until you know another. Arenāt we all dilettantes, until we arenāt anymore?
I went to college in 2004. I saw so many allegedly straight girls kissing each other at frat parties it wouldāve made you want to burn down an Abercrombie & Fitch. Sometimes it was stiff and strange and sometimes it was organic, and yet far be it from me to say who really wanted what, or if the kiss itself wasnāt a gateway, or if one of them (or both!) wouldnāt be wrist- deep in a date in twelve yearsā time. People always talked cynically about this gesture as if men were the reason, but it felt like no one ever considered that men were the excuse.
āWe can understand queerness itself as being filled with the intention to be lost,” MuƱoz wrote in Cruising Utopia. āTo accept loss is to accept the way in which oneās queerness will always render one lost to a world of heterosexual imperatives, codes, and laws . . . [to] veer away from heterosexualityās path.” A girl kissing her best friend ā because she wants to see how it feels, because sheās curious, because a boy is nearby, because sheās in love, because she once bent her mouth to her best friendās bleeding hand in supplication and this just feels like the next logical step ā is the acceptance of loss, the veering from the path. No matter where she goes afterward.
But as the years have gone by, sympathy softened my resolve. How little we know of ourselves at any moment; how distinctly human that is. There is such little grace given to the perfect messiness of desire. Even queers feel pressure to homogenize the experience into catchy slogans. The āborn this way” narrative, while politically expedient, has done untold damage to narratives of the queer experience, implying any number of horrible ideas: that you cannot move toward desire without some genetic component urging you to do so, that experimentation is inherently problematic, that you have to know your truest and deepest self to act on something. There were times in my adolescence where people asked me if I was gay and I said no, not out a sense of self-preservation but because I truly believed it to be so. You can be a stranger to yourself; you almost certainly will be, at some point or another. It is inevitable, as inevitable as the moment of rupture that sends you hurtling toward the self you were always going to be.
And so, Queer Reader, we return to Jenniferās Body, how the accusation of queerbaiting flattens, impotent, against its walls. Not just because the film is uniquely bisexual but because bisexuality itself is inherently resistant to heteronormative frameworks; because gatekeeping is shortsighted and unbecoming; because desire and understanding do not always go hand in hand. The project of identifying āfalse” or āperformative” queerness is dead in the water. Do not trouble yourself to rescue it. Do not grieve at its graveside. Kiss someone, fuck someone, think about fucking someone while kissing someone else. Let sex be unknowable, warm, thrilling, funny, erotic, terrifying; let sexuality be all strange currents and eddies and unknown vistas and treasures and teeth. Because, Queer Reader, when Jenniferās body came for you ā publicly, privately, neither, both ā it was more than more than enough.
1 Which I think of as a mix of (understandably) hungry for queer media, (understandably) cynical about queer representation, and extremely sensitive to even a whiff of phoniness.
2 This impression is probably aided by the fact that Megan Fox is, herself, bisexual ā she once told Marie Claire that Olivia Wilde was so sexy it made her want to āstrangle a mountain ox with [her] bare hands” ā and was famously extremely into the kissing scene.
3 It is, understandably, considered gauche to describe bisexuality as transitory, almost as gauche as the word ābisexual” itself. Perhaps it would be better to think of bisexuality as queerly universal ā stem cells potent with potential. As long as compulsive heteronormativity exists, queer people will pass through bisexuality at some point, however briefly. Some tear through it on a speedboat, heading for a more monosexual harbor, others circle, content, drinking aperitifs in the sun.
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on HorrorĀ comes out on October 4, 2022.
Rainbow Reading: Book Hangovers Are Real and I Have One
Feature image photo by CSA Images via Getty Images
Hey hello, everyone!
I’ve emerged triumphant and victorious from my marathon Gideon the Ninth and Locked Tomb series reread, but my god, what a run. I wasn’t reading anything else, so it was pure unfiltered Bones Chaos straight to the brain. That’s so many bones, y’all! So many bones! It was definitely a fun and immersive way to encounter this dense, referential, and often-bewildering series, but now, there’s a post-marathon comedown. What in the world do I read next? š„µ
The problem isn’t that I lack for recommendations ā y’all know my lack of self-control well enough to imagine my TBR ā but rather that woozy book hangover feeling. It’s hard to switch gears with such a tired brain, but also I crave a palate cleanser. Do I retreat from these speculative novels into some meaty nonfiction? Do I leave the necromantic magic behind for the charmed realism of a Laurie Colwin reread? There’s a lot of good options but I’m too tired to choose, so I’m dipping into and out of things that don’t demand my uninterrupted or undivided attention. Snack-reads, if you will.
Let’s see if there’s anything new coming around to tempt me ā let’s make like a runway and take off! This week on Rainbow Reading, we’ve got:
Shelf Care: Reviews, Essays, and other Things of Note
- Nona the Ninth, the latest installment in Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series of gay necromancers in space, dropped last Tuesday!
- I reviewed it for Autostraddle!
- I also really enjoyed Constance Grady’s take on it in Vox!
- Also, hats off to this anonymous Kirkus reviewer for the most concise summation of plot I’ve seen for this series ā no mean feat, lol
- Less is Lost, the sequel to Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Less, is out now!
- SO MUCH QUEER DARK ACADEMIA, OFTEN WITH A SIDE OF WITCHCRAFT
- Fraternity: 1990s boarding school, gay secret societies, and eldritch horrors!
- How to Succeed in Witchcraft: This one’s out next week (September 27th)
- Powerful YA thrillers: Courtney Summers’ I’m The Girl and Sierra Elmore’s new novel Death by Society came out last week!
- Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam got a rave review in the NYT!
- Book Banning Bullshit continues apace:
- Kacen Callender has two books out: Moonflower and Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution
- She/They Fantasy-Sci-Fi Space Pilot Woohoo: The Genesis of Misery was likened by Rebecca Roanhorse to “Joan of Arc meets Gideon the Ninth with a touch of Pacific Rim thrown in as a treat” which defo wins this week’s Trashwina Banter Award for Best Blurb!
- Queer YA Hamlet retelling: The first volume of Tragic, a fun new graphic novel series, is out now!
- Ngl I’m counting down the minutes until the restock of Larissa Lai’s new novel The Last Century
- Back on my historical fiction bullshit: The Killing Code features a bunch of formidable female codebreakers during WWII who team up to solve the murders of other government girls!
- Doughnuts and Doom came out this week, and I was so charmed by this line from its jacket copy: “Flying brooms and electric guitars set hearts aflame in this fantastically fizzy graphic novel.”
- Best note to end on: A. Andrews (the illustrator behind this column’s banner!) has such a lovely piece in Washington Post about dismantling bootstrap bullshit and the value of rest š
āThis is the world that enabled Jeffrey Epstein,” she says. āIām coming for its throat.ā
ā Courtney Summers on her new book I’m The Girl
Autocorrect: Books content from the last couple weeks at Autostraddle!
- Darcy interviewed Melanie Bell about Chasing Harmony!
- Darcy reviewed I’m The Girl!
- And here’s my Nona the Ninth piece again, just, yknow, in case š
That’s all she wrote, folks! If youāre a queer writer, particularly an early-career queer writer: Iād love to hear about the cool things youāre up to so that I can share links to your published essays, book reviews, short stories, poems, and longform features on LGBTQ+ topics! Please email me links for consideration at yashwina@autostraddle.com with the subject line āRainbow Reading Submission” ā Iām an avid browser-tab-collector, and I especially want to hear from you if youāve just landed your first publication or first major byline.
In āNona the Ninth,ā Tamsyn Muir Zooms In on Her Goth Puzzle Box World
Who here remembers The Thief Lord? It was the debut middle grade novel of Cornelia Funke, the author behind the beloved Inkheart series, and it featured a ragtag bunch of orphans in Venice committing petty theft and pursuing a magical merry-go-round that allowed its riders to age forward or backward in time. I loved this book. I remember practically swallowing it whole after bringing it home from a Scholastic book fair, and itās lurked in the back of my memory, ripe for nostalgia. What does this have to do with amnesiac bone magicians, their semi-undead trash-talking-and-sword-fighting himbos, and the world of Tamsyn Muirās bestselling series? Bear with me.
I was late to reading Gideon the Ninth. Waiting for the hype around Gideon to die down had turned into that distant, wistful oh-Iāve-been-meaning-to-read-that feeling every time someone mentioned it, and it was only when sequel Harrow the Ninth arrived that I got to it. Now, to celebrate the arrival of the newest installment Nona the Ninth, I decided to sprint through a full Locked Tomb series reread. Fifteen hundred pages of lesbian necromancy and intergalactic bone magic in just a smidge over a week? Yeah, itās been a blur. But a blur in the best way.
For all of The Locked Tomb seriesā taglines (ālesbian necromancers in space!ā) and frustrated comparisons (āPeople often ask me to recommend more books like Gideon the Ninth ā¦ Hereās the short answer: There arenāt any.ā), as I barreled headfirst through Nona the Ninth the overwhelming association in my mind was with The Thief Lord. Found family, a childās-eye view defamiliarizing a world that readers understand more than the protagonist does, the magic of pulling a coherent self through various times and bodiesā¦ If thatās a vibe you can get down with, then youāll love Nona. If it sounds cloying, insufficiently action-packed, or too gauzy with metaphor, then you might find it more challenging. I wonāt pretend this book isnāt as intricate and bewildering as Harrow felt. If you enjoyed twisting and turning the Rubikās cube of Harrow, then thereās plenty to surprise and delight you in Nona.
**From here, thisĀ Nona the NinthĀ review is gonna be spoiler city. Gird yer loins.**Ā
A QUICK RECAP: Ā Right, so, Harrow the Ninth. At the end of the last installment, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, has slipped out of her body and into The River between the real world and the afterlife. As a result, the remnant of Gideonās soul that Harrow had hidden within herself awakens and takes over Harrowās body, the only giveaway being a change in eye color. Gideon Nav, weāve learned, is actually the daughter of God (his name is John), a child created of stolen genetic material to one day unravel the blood wards and open the Locked Tomb. With the discovery that their beloved cavaliers didn’t need to die for perfect lyctorhood to be possible, lyctors Mercymorn and Augustine turn on God/John, and Mercymorn dies after an attempt on Johnās life. Augustine is pushed into the mouth of hell in combat. Gideon narrowly escapes the same fate by breaking out of the Mithraeum space station into The River, along with cavalier Pyrrha Dve, where they watch as God/John is rescued from the mouth of hell by another lyctor, Ianthe. Battered and crushed by The River, Gideon is dying again, and the last thing she sees is someone frantically attempting to revive her. In the epilogue, a woman awakens in a war-torn city on an unknown planet, with uncertain necromantic abilities and mysteriously quick-healing injuries. She does not know who she is, but one of her caretakers is none other than Camilla Hect, Cavalier of the Sixth turned rebellion collaborator.
You get all that? Harrow the Ninth was a lot to keep track of, and that tangle is where Nona takes seed. Nona lives in a battered city on one of the planets resettled by those displaced by Resurrection Beasts, and she is the six-month-old soul of unknown origin piloting around someone elseās nineteen-year-old body, learning how to exist in the world. Her caretakers Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamedes form a gruff-but-loving found family, and theyāve coaxed Nona from total incoherence into full, albeit naive and childlike, consciousness in the hopes of ascertaining who exactly she is. Is she an amnesiac Gideon? Is she a further-boggled Harrowhark? Is she someone else entirely?
Nona was a late-breaking addition to what would have been a trilogy, and while other critics have grumbled that this book should have stayed a plot arc in Alecto the Ninth instead of being expanded into its own novel, I actually think that in the context of the overarching series, the introduction of this book adds a satisfying internal symmetry. At first, I thought it was ballsy to the point of bonkers to follow one book about amnesiac necromancers with another, but instead Nona as both character and plot device reflects back the bewilderment of the second book and the character charisma of the first and uses this new perspective to expand and deepen our understanding of Muirās world overall. If anything, I wished the first two books had had a bit more of what Nona does. Having focused primarily on big-picture battles of lyctors and cavaliers and metaphysical rivers, here we finally zoom in and see the day-to-day life of the Emperorās subjects against this apocalyptic background.
Enter The Thief Lord. The central characters of Nonaās world are her friends, a band of children at the refugee school led by stoic fourteen-year-old Hot Sauce (what a name!) and comprising orphans, thieves, and one babyish seven year old named Kevin. As we follow Nona for five days through the motions of breakfast, school, dream-journaling, lessons, dog-walking, and mischief, some readers may bristle at what seems to be irrelevant or boring. I actually found this mundanity refreshing and worth the wait. It takes trust on the readerās part to believe that details about the intra-group jostling of children, the little dramas around their teacher and their science classes, and Nonaās job as āTeacherās Aide” will tie in to the plotline weād thought weād been following from the first two books. But slowly, these details coalesce into a novel loaded like a spring. The Blood of Eden rebels have surrounded a last Cohort army base and await the Emperorās negotiation, and all the while they sit under the mysterious madness-inducing blue glow of the oncoming Resurrection Beast. Itās just that this time around, all the Old Testament space dramas fans loved from the first two books are filtered through The Prince and the Pauper and Oliver Twist. (And thereās a scene-stealing six-legged dog named Noodle.)
In addition to the five days structure (reflecting the five act structure of the previous books), there is also an explicit countdown to the opening of the Locked Tomb at the beginning of each day, just like the countdown to the Emperorās murder in the previous book. This seems to be one of Muirās favorite little tricks ā giving away the twist up front and using anticipation instead of surprise to generate suspense and dramatic irony. Thereās still Muirās signature, what Alix Harrow described as āthe lowering sense that very important things are happening which you are slightly too stupid to catch on the first read.” But with Nona being so new to literally everything, thereās also some real satisfaction for readers as they identify who and what is happening before Nona and her comrades do. Finally, we get to savor the fluency weāve gathered over the last two books!
One of the best things about this dramatic irony in Nona is how Muir uses our character recognition to finally delve deeper into the practicalities of Lyctorhood ā especially its potential for genderfuckery! Palamedes shares Camillaās body, Pyrrha inhabits the body of her dead (male) necromancer, and their genders are distinguished not by the shorthand of appearance but by familiarity with their fundamental characters. Itās not that the body is irrelevant to gender ā these bodies are what save Palamedes and Pyrrha! ā but rather that these characters are always fully themselves despite attributes they inhabit at any given time. Itās gender play that goes so far beyond pronouns, and itās nice to detour into the social consequences of Lyctorhood after two books of attention devoted to magical, philosophical, and military implications instead.
But that isnāt to say that this book sets aside philosophical implications at all. Interspersed between the Nona chapters are John chapters, cheekily titled like Biblical chapter and verse, taking place in Harrowharkās dreams (presumably as she floats in The River) as she listens to God/John slowly reveal his full origin story. How did we get from our world to hers? How did this man achieve the first Resurrection, and at what cost? These chapters gutted me, and despite some initial frustration that they took me out of the Nona plotline, these John sequences were ultimately some of my favorite moments of the book. Hearing the story of Johnās curdled optimism as plans to evacuate Earthās entire population were co-opted by the ultra-wealthy, and recognizing the way that curiosity and discovery are yoked to bureaucracy and corruption by capitalism, the chronology/context questions Iād had since the first book finally clicked. I could feel Muirās world of necromancers and space mausoleum warfare brush up against the real world.
That, I think, is what it all boils down to. If you want to feel the dazzling space-goth world of Gideon and Harrow within reach, to pull it close enough to see its day-to-day details, then Nona will feel like a veritable feast. This book is a narrative departure from the first two books, sure, but after Harrow the Ninthās palimpsest of madness and grief, this book is less puzzle and more kaleidoscope. This little detour into the lived experience in this setting builds up to a dazzling conclusion with payoff to spare āĀ that wealth of experience sets up rich emotional ground for the final installment Alecto the Ninth! Fleshing out her world across both past and present was brave on Muirās part (since scope is where so many ambitious sci-fi and fantasy novels stumble). But damn, Iām glad she did.
Author Melanie Bell on her YA Novel “Chasing Harmony” and the Messy Process of Growing Up Queer
Growing up queer is not for the faint of heart, and for 16-year-old Anna Stern, that stress is compounded by the pressure she feels as a musical prodigy. She was three when she first sat down at a piano and transported herself to a world beyond her living room; but a decade later, as school concerts loom and she tries to navigate a complicated relationships with her parents and best friend, music has begun to feel more like a burden than an escape.
Told in scenes spread across Anna’s young life, Chasing HarmonyĀ captures the messy, imperfect process of growing up, and asks: what does it take to create the life you want, when the people around you, like your parents, have watched their own dreams wither with time? I spoke to author (and former Autostraddle contributor!) Melanie Bell about Anna’s journey, about her writing process, and about what might be on Anna’s Spotify playlist these days.
Darcy: The queer YA scene has flourished in the past decade, particularly in the past five years, and Chasing Harmony is a really fresh addition to the genre! Your other work thus far has been a bit different ā together with Kacie Berghoef, you wrote a nonfiction work, The Modern Enneagram. What drew you to YA? How did you end up wanting to tell Annaās story?
Melanie: I got the idea for this coming-of-age story while traveling across Canada and reading two books, Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing and Leonard Cohen’s The Favourite Game. Both spoke to me about the messiness of growing up. One thing I got out of Bank’s book was the idea of life not turning out how you think it will, and from Cohen’s, I got the concept that people’s idealizations of art or beauty can blind them to the person they’re looking at. So I started writing about a character with immense talent, and the friction between the expectations that creates and the realities and difficulties of growing up. When I was younger, successes and failures felt huge, and this is the case for Anna.
In your novel, we have a main character whose feelings of otherness are tethered not only to queerness, and to a fraught family life, but also to the specter of having been a musical prodigy, and to feelings around the need to escape the preordained path that her potential has set her on. Iām curious what relationship you have to music (if any!), and what led you to choose musical genius as one of Annaās defining opponents in her fight to grow up and become an individual.
Music was an important part of growing up for me. My mother is musical and often had some kind of music playing. I sang in choirs, competed a bit in music festivals, and played clarinet and saxophone in bands, so music was a great social context. I wrote some terrible songs and briefly played piano. When writing about Anna’s musical background, I assigned her the three instruments I was familiar with.
I could get very immersed in listening to music, but I didn’t have a particular knack for it. There’s an element of wish fulfillment in writing about a musical prodigy! More so, I was inspired by the lived experiences of people I met who were identified as musical prodigies and had long journeys involving conflict between their abilities and personal needs and finding who they were beyond the weight of expectations. It’s hard for performance to live up to identified potential. As a former academic high achiever, I could relate to this gap.
The structure of Chasing Harmony has a bit of dream-like quality; the narrative moves between ages, and from scene to scene within those sections, very fluidly. The structure helps us embody the make-believe that helps Anna through her parentsā anger and her own perfectionism. Did you begin writing with that structure in mind, or was it a choice you made later on in the process?
I began writing with that structure. I wanted to explore different times within Anna’s life. Anna is fascinated by time: how it passes, how it changes things, and how things stay the same. I had a bare-bones outline that went back and forth between time periods, deliberately contrasting what happened, though some parts changed in writing and revisions.
In the novel, Anna and her best friend, Liss, have a relationship thatās fraught in ways Anna canāt face head-on as a young teen. Without spoiling too much, Iāll say that it was nice to see Anna and Liss get some closure in the last few chapters. I think a lot of queer folks are familiar with that sort of loaded-friendship-that-could-be-more, the gray areas that exist as a teen because youāre not really ready to fully pull back the curtain and shed light on things. It was cathartic, getting that closure for Anna and Liss! Was it cathartic writing it?
Yes, it was cathartic to write. I think it was important for Anna to get closure in order to move on and define a direction for herself.
I wanted to ask you about your journey to get Chasing Harmony published. While it feels like there are now more LGBTQ+ YA titles out there than ever before, itās also a very troubling cultural (political) time for diverse books, at least here in the States. You live in the UK, but Chasing Harmony has a US publisher ā whatās your sense of the current moment in publishing?
It’s a bit of a paradox. More queer content is being published ā but also banned and censored. Maybe it’s reached a tipping point of being visible enough for a backlash? As you mentioned, I’m not in the US, so I’m removed enough from things that I’m just speculating. But I’m definitely enjoying the diverse and exciting titles that are being published!
Itās so exciting, by the way, to be talking with someone who’s also written for Autostraddle! Iām always curious to speak to writers who are making sustainable careers out of writing in 2022, āin this economy,” as Twitter would say. You write at your day job, and you also publish. Chasing Harmony was published through an indie publisher, Read Furiously. Iām curious about your day-to-day writing process, and how you stave off burnout, which Chasing Harmonyās Anna dealt with in a very real way before she even hit age 18.
Thanks! I stave off burnout by writing at a pace I can handle. My day job involves a combination of writing and editing, and it places a high value on work-life balance, so the rate of production is reasonable. In my own writing, I like trying different projects and genres. I work well with deadlines when I’m writing for someone, but personal work proceeds at its own speed.
I’d describe my writing process as careful. I don’t keep set hours, but I’m usually chipping away at an ongoing project. I often self-edit lightly as I write. All writers are different in what works for them. The key is to get the writing done.
Final question: What music do you think is on twenty-something Annaās Spotify playlist these days?
Anna is always on the lookout for innovative sounds. She’d probably like Caroline Shaw and AngĆ©lica NegrĆ³n, for example. I think Anna would relate a lot to Encanto, with its themes of family expectations and the burdens that “having a gift” can create. In particular, “Surface Pressure” and “What Else Can I Do?” might feature on her playlist. I like to imagine her reconnecting with her mother through music, such as both of them listening to 2021’s inaugural recording of Salieri’s opera Armida. Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” was survival music for Anna, and she probably still listens to it for old times’ sake. Oh, and I should add that there’s a Spotify playlist forĀ Chasing Harmony,Ā featuring songs from the book!
Things I Read That I Love #328: You Never Called That Girl Back Even Though You Were Dating
HELLO and welcome to the 328th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays Iāve read recently so that you can know more about malls!! This ācolumn” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gouldās tumblr,Ā Things I Ate That I Love.
The Enduring Allure of Choose-Your-Own Adventure Books, by Leslie Jamison for The New Yorker, September 2022
Wow, it’s a writer I adore Leslie Jamison writing about a topic I adore (the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books I was obsessed with as a child)!
The forking paths of a Choose book propose a conception of character that differs from that of traditional novels. If a character is defined by the choices she makes, then perhaps these books have no true central character. This main character makesĀ allĀ the choices, effectively nullifying her own identity. If you make every choice, you are no one. But if you understand character a bit differentlyāas a range of possibilities, rather than as a series of inevitable decisionsāthen the protagonists of Choose books are truer, fuller expressions of identity than characters whose novels allow them only one plotline. Each of these protagonists contains an array of potential destinies, rather than just one. Each holds the shadow selves of other lives she could have led.
The Humiliating History of the TSA, by Darryl Campbell for The Verge, September 2022
Sometimes I forget that there was a time before the TSA, you know? Anyhow, this is the history of the agency and also how the job doesn’t pay well or treat its employees well and also how the TSA racially profiles travelers and provides a consistently traumatic experience for gender non-conforming people and also !! that “the reality is that TSA has played next to no role in the biggest counterterrorism stories of the past two decades.”
Whataboutism: Or, the tu quoque gambit., by B.D. McClay for The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2022
Discourse on online discourse.
“But the other great crime of whataboutism is that it solidifies the online sense that the appearance of paying attention is paramountānot actually paying attention. It is true that we have a moral duty not to ignore the suffering of others, even if attention itself is not the highest good or an especially efficacious one. Most forms of paying attention involve reading and listening, not talking. Caring about something and staying informed is not synonymous with public speech about it. The paranoid impulse to believe that everybody is judging you for what you do and do not talk about is as corrosive as always targeting peopleās motives and only rarely their claims.”
The Queen of True Crime, by Molly Langmuir for Elle Magazine, August 2022
Apparently Crime Junkie is a wildly popular true crime podcast (that I realize I’ve seen on the podcast charts constantly but never listened to, I think because I didn’t like the vibe of the logo???) and the host of it, Ashley Flowers, also started Audiochuck? And now she has written a novel? And also doesn’t realize how unethical it is to name an unconfirmed suspect on her show based solely on police information, even though that caused irreparable harm to the man who had in fact done nothing wrong? Anyhow!
Fault Lines Inside the Grooming and Abuse Scandal Engulfing an Acclaimed High School, by Seward Darby for The Atavist, September 2022
An open and intimate teaching style transformed the lives of so many students who thrived academically under its care, but also served as a playground for child predators who convinced students they were special enough to exist not only outside the bounds of traditional learning techniques but also ethical paradigms, which they used to sell the idea that it was okay to be sexually involved with their teachers. Really disturbing stuff here!
Gabby Petito’s LIfe With ā and Death By ā Brian Laundrie, by Kathleen Hale for Vanity Fair, July 2022
I didn’t follow this story very closely when it happened, but wow, it’s sad. Unsurprisingly, I feel very upset at the Moab police! (Warning that she literally describes Gabby getting strangled and it’s pretty graphic.)
Tinder Hearted, by Allison P Davis for The Cut, August 2022
I had been using Tinder for things that occur only sporadically and chaotically ā relationships, good sex, adventure. What Tinder is good at, what it seems designed to do, is make me much better at being single.
Can the American Mall Survive? by Jillian Steinhauer for The New Republic, August 2022
On the history and the future of the American mall and the social issues tangled up in all of it, in this essay inspired by Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.
Semiotics of Dogs, by Katrina Gulliver for aeon, August 2022
“Dogs can easily represent these types due to our notions of āpurebredā and pedigree. After millennia of domestication, we gave our pets family trees, and named them as breeds. They acquired an identity reflecting human projection, and symbolised our own increased focus on lineage and breeding. Lady is purebred, Tramp is a mutt… But these identities are human inventions, and say more about our own use of dogs than the animals themselves.”
Meet the Scammer Who Traveled the World by Swindling Her Closest Friends, by Sarah Treleaven for Cosmopolitan, September 2022
You know I love a scammer story! This one occurred within the world of Anime fans and a group of friends who connected over shared pop culture interests as well as social issues, identity and progressive politics.
How I Remember It, by Sammi LaBue, September 2022
Can you hear me then? Telling you the good news. That I would go to your alma mater. I wanted to be you. To be yours. For you to tell me who to be. For you to tell me when I could be loved, for real.
The Story of Amusement Parks is the Story of America, by Arthur Levine for Vox, August 2021
From The World’s Fair to Coney Island to the most quintessential of American amusement parks: Disneyworld.
āIām the Girlā Is a Harrowing, Complex Story of Abuse Thatās Difficult To Read
Author’s Note: This review contains light spoilers and discussions of sexual assault and abuse.
Sixteen year-old George Avisā hometown sits in the shadow of a mountain resort for the rich and powerful called Aspera. When we first meet George, sheās biking toward Aspera, desperate for a job at the one place where she knows she might make enough money to someday pay her brother back for what sheās āborrowed” in order to pay for some modeling photos. Before she can get there, however, sheās run off the road by a car, passes out, and wakes up in the woods, alone except for the partially-clothed, lifeless body of another girl, Ashley, the younger sister of a classmate. This is how Iām the Girl begins ā with the rape and murder of a child. But unlike Courtney Summersā last thriller, Sadie, this novel isnāt just about the fallout from that crime. George is about to get mixed up in a world far beyond her control, a world sheās been groomed for, a world her mother, who worked as a housekeeper at Aspera until her death, desperately tried to keep her away from. This is a novel about the sexual exploitation of a teenager, and it was very difficult to read.
Speaking of Iām the Girl, author Courtney Summers has been very clear about her intentions for the book. āThis is the world that enabled Jeffrey Epstein,” she says. āIām coming for its throat.” Summers tries to do so by asking us not to look away as George makes choices, or thinks she is making choices, that put her in harmās way, and then isnāt fully able to recognize that harm has been done. Only Nora, Ashley’s older sister and Georgeās one ally (and love interest) is able to see exactly what is happening to George, but as she tries to gently prompt her friend into understanding, she’s often busy elsewhere, working to solve her sister’s murder.
Unlike in Sadie, Summers doesnāt pull away from describing actual (partial) scenes and circumstances of abuse, and thatās something I really struggled with. Reviewers have called the book āgritty” and āunflinching,” but I found myself wondering what exactly Summers was trying to illuminate with her ādonāt look away” strategy. We know that abuse and exploitation happen; pretty much anyone who was ever a teenage girl has had many experiences at varying points along that spectrum, and dipping directly into scenes where George is being assaulted felt, to me, like a strange choice.
Summers writes complex, fully human teenage girls, kids who are trying to make it through the world largely on their own. In Sadie, the protagonist was old before her time, world-weary and suspicious of men by the age of six. In contrast, here we have George, both precocious and naive, a girl whoās just recently discovered the power of her own sexuality as seen through the photographerās lens, the male gaze at its most literal. In the absence of any living parent or many choices for her future, she feels ready to use her youth and beauty as currency in a world she doesnāt yet understand. While my childhood doesn’t come close to mirroring Georgeās, the fact that George is carefully made to feel complicit in these experiences, that some of the adults around George conspire to help her feel a power she doesnāt actually have, felt familiar to me. It will feel familiar to many of us. Summersā first-person narration stays right with George throughout, and itās both effective and suffocating as we wait for her to recognize the full extent of her powerlessness, the full extent of the harm that’s enacted upon her.
Iām the Girl asks us to look unflinchingly at the monsters that hold power in our culture, at the constellation of enablers that surrounds every last one of them, at the damage it does to kids like George and Ashley and the others who arenāt named. It certainly shines a light on a particular dynamic of abuse. But to what end? We know those monsters. We’re the girls. We’ve survived, like we hope George will. But the monsters aren’t reading this, and we know they never will. The story, then, remains George’s, remains ours, and I find myself unsure how to feel about novels like this one.
Don’t look away.Ā
I won’t.
Is that enough?