Lez Liberty Lit #49: Summer Reading Lists
Feature image via booksheflporn.com.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth was removed from a high school summer reading list in Delaware, allegedly due to complaints about its inappropriate language. At Diversity in YA, Malinda Lo discusses the removal:
“Board president Spencer Brittingham told the reader who wrote to him: ‘I can assure you that I am not homophobic and never did…
Lez Liberty Lit #49: Spend More Than 19 Minutes Reading
by carolyn & riese
Feature image via (and of) Brattle Bookshop.
There are more YA books with queer characters and themes than ever before, but almost no mainstream adult fiction with the same:
“Gayness, like actual gayness (versus the unremittingly pleasant kind you might encounter through Modern Family, Ellen, or a David Sedaris audiobook), well, it just doesn’t sell. This issue, when…
South Carolina Punishes Universities for LGBT Reading List with Extra Dose of America
Feature image via Think Progress
As a punishment for spending university resources on LGBT-themed reading material, two state-funded South Carolina schools are being required to teach about the United States founding documents. The University of South Carolina Upstate had the audacity to include Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic on its optional freshman reading list,…
Lez Liberty Lit #48: It’s Totally Okay To Read YA Novels, You Guys
Feature image via ejukfun.tumblr.com.
by carolyn & riese
Linguist Gretchen McCulloch discussed gendered pronouns, writing:
“In the late 18th century, grammarians started recommending that people use he as a gender nonspecific pronoun because they was ostensibly plural, as part of the grand tradition of awkwardly shoehorning English grammar into Latin which has caused many of your present…
2014 Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced, Include Alison Bechdel, Imogen Binnie and More
The winners of the 26th annual Lambda Literary Awards, including Alison Bechdel, Susan Choi, Nicole J. Georges, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Katherine V. Forrest, Imogen Binnie and others, were announced last night at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York.
This year is the first that comics have had a category to themselves, though they’ve won in other categories previously. Calling Dr.…
Lez Liberty Lit #47: Filled With Poetry
by carolyn & riese
Maya Angelou has died at age 86.
In an interview with the Rumpus, Janet Mock discusses her memoir Redefining Realness, misogyny, her family, having a sense of community, conversations about language and more:
“I think it [the Marie Clairestory] forced a lot of people who weren’t having these conversations about trans people to develop better language. And my whole thing on CNN…
Lez Liberty Lit #46: Today’s So Quick
Eileen Myles poems, reading poetry, topless reading parties, excerpts from An Untamed State and more.
Lez Liberty Lit #45: Saved By The Bell Jar
The New York Times bestseller lists for young adult books are, unsurprisingly, not very diverse.
Black Lesbian Books recommended some new books to read, including The Girl With The Treasure Chest, The Rules, Yabo and more.
Lez Liberty Lit #44: Silent Reading Party
Talking about desire is, of necessity, imperfect:
“Precision prevents disaster. It makes up for variability. They say that the same bread recipe followed to the letter in two different kitchens produces two different loaves, and it’s true. (“Why are your cookies prettier?” my mother wants to know.) The wording is meticulous and the instructions exhaustive because of all the things that cannot be perfectly controlled, like the humidity of your oven or the enthusiasm of the yeast. The gram measurements and demands to sift not scoop are a defense against the world’s chaos, and a paltry one, but without them the bread may never materialize, risen and pale goldish, as desired. It may fall irretrievably in the baking.
Lez Liberty Lit #43: Basically An Excuse To Talk About Wodehouse
by carolyn & riese
Kickass female protagonists are often skinny, if not fully emaciated, and that’s weird, and also a problem:
“Today’s strong female protagonists are overwhelmingly described as “small,” “skinny,” and “slender.” It seems literature only goes so far in its message of female empowerment, routinely granting its most kickass heroines classically masculine-levels of strength (physical or otherwise) only when cloaked within the trappings of a more delicate—and recognizable—femininity.
Lez Liberty Lit #42: Didactic Dialogue and Book Doctors
by carolyn & riese
Malinda Lo writes about including didactic dialogue about race and sexuality in her books, and why it sometimes reads awkwardly, and why she does it because of that:
“Even when these kinds of interactions are written in character, some readers will check out of the narrative and think, ‘This is not realistic.’ Some readers always balk at straightforward grappling with race and…
Five Publications You Didn’t Know You Could Get Digitally
Usually, I’m a big fan of real live books made of paper that smell like adventure and imagination. I don’t know how I’d decorate my apartment if I didn’t have scores of books, mostly read but some unread, lining my walls and shelves and tables and all other flat surfaces. I…
Lez Liberty Lit #41: Not Computer Generated
by carolyn & riese
Books! They are really great. You just won’t believe how great they are. You may think that the Internet’s great, but that’s just peanuts compared to books. In Lez Liberty Lit, we talk about literary shit that’s happening that you should probably care about. The name “Liberty Lit” was inspired by the short-lived literary…
Lez Liberty Lit #40: A Page-Turner At Heart
by carolyn & riese
Lit LinksAccording to a new and frankly unsurprising study, women feel a lot less comfortable in literary communities.
At the Toast, Zan Romanoff writes about Nicola Griffith’s Hild its comparisons to Game of Thrones, and why those comparisons are wrong (because it is so much better):
“If [George R.R. Martin] had ever been left out of a story—and not just one, but a hundred,…
Lez Liberty Lit #39: Speed Reading
by carolyn & riese
Lit LinksAt Lambda Literary, queer authors discuss what “queer writing” meansa…
