Not a Disincentive to Be Formally Inventive

A queer newbie rhymes, a mountain lion climbs, and gay brothers seek the divine.

My husband and I, without ever formally verbalizing it, have settled into an accidental rewatch of Sex and the City, and it’s kind of all I want to talk about with anyone. Of course, we’re masochistic watchers of And Just Like That…, chasing that nostalgia high and never quite reaching it. Like most queer folks, we have Che Diaz opinions that we do not share with straight company. Like most humans, we miss Samantha, wonder what on earth has happened to Miranda, and DO NOT consider the movies canon. So, going back to the original source material for the 25th (ugh) anniversary felt like a fun thing to do while avoiding whatever fresh hell the wildfires were doing to our outdoor air in the great northeast.

It’s truly fascinating/horrifying/comforting viewing the world of the SATC ladies through a modern lens. I am absolutely ready to do a spontaneous TED Talk about the "Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl..." episode (*the one where the girls tackle gender roles and bisexuality!) at the next several parties I attend. And they followed up that episode with one about race! Anyway, the rewatch is mostly a lot of fun, and it’s made me really appreciate how good the storytelling was about friendship and relationships - things that are not very easy to make feel genuine and organic. With perspective, I’m noticing how well they laid the groundwork for making Carrie’s relationship with Aidan a disaster. (Run, Aidan!) And now I appreciate how Carrie is such a great anti-heroine. It also remains true that I am a Miranda in gay company and a Samantha in mixed company. (See also, Dorothy and Blanche, if you speak Golden Girls.)

And even though it’s THE 90s/00s blueprint for female friendship stories, I’ve always had a theory that the ladies are the Herman’s Head or Inside Out of the average gay guy who’s got a little bit of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha pulling the levers in his brain.

That was all kind of a non sequitur rant, but it’s my newsletter, so anything goes. Here’s a couple of books I read recently that are formally inventive or just plain weird.

THE LIBRARY IS OPEN

Pedro & Daniel

by Federico Erebia (2023)

Pedro and Daniel are brothers, the middle two of six, in a Mexican immigrant family that settled in Ohio in the late 60s. In this coming of age tale, they both slowly realize over the years that they’re gay, neurodivergent, and survivors of terrible abuse from their mother. This novel tells their tale through both of their perspectives in back-and-forth chapters. It’s deeply personal as Pedro is the stand-in for the author, and Daniel represents the author’s brother who passed away when he turned 30. We cover quite a bit here before that death: AIDS, colorism, depression, the Catholic priesthood, abuse, abuse from the Catholic priesthood, anti-immigrant bias. It’s a buffet of rough situations. Don’t let this dissuade you from digging in, though.

In terms of form, this book is…a lot. (compliment) I’m not even sure how to describe the formats or the genres. I’ve never read a book like it that’s a combination of roman à clef and bildungsroman. It’s part prose, part poetry. A good chunk of the book is in Spanish with lovely explanation of dichos (or popular idioms; Por ejemplo: Mismo perro, distinto collar. Same dog, different collar.) It starts as a young adult or middle grade novel and slowly becomes a novel for adults somehow? There are also illustrations throughout. I guess when you feel so passionate about telling your story, you use every tool in your bag to make it a reality! The author is a retired physician, artist, woodworker who just decided to start writing a couple years ago, first a children’s book about Pepito the Squirrel, and now this. What a life!

As you can tell from the plot description, this book is quite sad! But it’s also hopeful, and it’s lovely to see a story about queer siblings who are able to usher one another into a new phase of their lives with unconditional support. This was the rare new release that was available at my library with no wait time, so I took a chance on it. I’m glad I did. It’s really quite beautifully written and more hopeful than it has any right to be.

Read it if you like: coming of age novels, immigrant stories, sibling tales, finding joy in misery, feeling like Duolingo is actually working a little bit.

Couplets

by Maggie Millner (2023)

Its rhythms may cause a bit of friction,

while its author delivers her experimental fiction.

She sits before relationship gods to grovel

about her strange situation which became this novel.

She pulls at the strings of her partners like puppets

and presents the story in a long series of couplets.

Her husband, first sad, then angry, sheds many a tear

when she came home to say she’d explore the side of her that’s queer.

It was not long before a new relationship would start,

an electric one with a woman who plainly stole her heart.

The gamut of emotions were run, making her smile, laugh, and pout.

Did things work out for her? You’ll have to read to find out.

If you require perfect meter, you’re in for quite a time

(but there’s no shortage of strange cadences and Dickinsonian slant rhyme.)

For example? Overall I’d say that some

things didn’t work for me, but it’s slim tome chock full of wisdom.

Read it if you like: poetry, the growing trend of women leaving men for women, short books you can read in a sitting, wondering what rhyme even means, academic lesbians.

Open Throat

by Henry Hoke (2023)

Listen, this is a book narrated by a queer mountain lion, and you should know from that phrase whether you will be interested or not.

Said queer mountain lion stalks the grounds beneath the Hollywood sign over terrain he hears the humans around him call “ellay.” He’s an expert prowler and is rarely seen by any of the hikers, though he can clearly hear and understand their inanity as they pass by. (This conceit works much better than those dumb homophobic cows from Chik-Fil-A who can manage to learn to write but not spell correctly? Ok, sure.) He’s lonely, extremely hungry, and very concerned for the inhabitants of the tents on the grounds he inhabits. He’s shaken, quite literally, by an earthquake. A traumatic series of events is set off by a particularly awful human, and our feline hero must make a journey to save his own life and regain his dignity. He even befriends a particularly brave and/or ridiculously oblivious human.

This book is maybe a metaphor for queer (human) existence? It portrays our hero as a frustrated observer of a violent majority that takes for granted everything around it, being conditioned on how to behave acceptably. It’s certainly an indictment of humanity generally - grief about the climate, the environment, man-made traffic, and California’s growing housing crisis all feature heavily in the lion’s observations. This book is so sneaky. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it until the very end when a rapturous dream sequence and a killer ending made me tear up and realize that this slim, powerful tale is one of my favorite reading experiences of the year.

Read it if you like: animals, queer animals, California, weird reads, great endings.

LIGHTNING ROUND - slim version

They’re adapting The History of Sound, a WW2 queer romance, and you can actually read the whole thing right here.

Speaking of queer classics you can read in a day, please tell me you keep going back to this classic over and over.

I feel like ever since this book came out, so many slim books use short paragraphs with spaces in between them. We love a trendsetter art monster!

Until next time…happy reading!