Note: this review is being aired this week on the international LGBTQ radio syndicate This Way Out, headquartered in Los Angeles. To listen to the entire news wrap, click here.
One evening before a local class that I teach, I was telling an adult student that I review LGBT books. I live in a very diverse area where it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re gay and I’ve been coming out to my students for so long that it feels like breathing.
This particular student was a little different than the others. She was around my age – so if she had done her homework or at least paid attention over the years – she would have known that they was a time not so long ago when coming out was not so easy.
She sniffed (in a way that let me know she didn’t have a cold) and responded, “Really – only LGBT books? –“ then without pausing, she added (rather disdainfully I thought), “I guess that’s your thing.”
What I didn’t say to my student is that I find LGBT books to be more interesting. I want to know how people survive – and often thrive — outside the box in a culture that is based on conformity. I didn’t say this, because my student might find to be a defensive statement. Maybe it is. Perhaps it is because I am a lesbian that I find diversity to be more interesting. I am the first to admit that I like to see myself reflected on the page. But I am also captivated by the lives of imaginary characters who are different than me.
Recently, I opened the pages of a book that had come across my desk and was reminded of this. The book is titled Acquaintance, a novel (part of Medicine for the Blues trilogy) and is by Jeff Stookey (PictoGraph Publishing in Portland Oregon, 2017). The book is a historical novel set in the early 1920s and the protagonist is a doctor who happens to be gay and is complete with references to artistic giants and gay icons Eakins and Whitman.
It is a love story written in a time when gay love was clandestine. And as the author writes:
“Love stories get especially messy when the love is forbidden. The story of Romeo and Juliet would have been a simple one is their families had not made their love dangerous. But love will flourish, even when it is forbidden.”
In the novel, I learned about gay life way before the liberation of the Stonewall Riots in New York City. I also learned about the medical profession, fishing, Portland Oregon, music – especially jazz – and the origins of the Ku Klux Klan. There’s an interesting subplot regarding the connection between racism and homophobia and another subplot addresses the realistically drawn lesbian couple in the narrator’s life – of whom he is jealous of before he settles down with his male partner. Acquaintance is a well-developed and interesting page-turner, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
So, as I answered my adult student, LGBT literature is “my thing.” Not only does it contain our history, but it proves that yes, we do exist. And because of this, we make things more interesting.
Janet Mason, author 