#this arab is queer

[notyournecromancer]

top 5 queer book reccs for someone who’s just getting into queer literature? :’)

Hello! What a glorious question. Here are some of my absolute favourite queer stories and writings to get your hands on. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Icarus by K Ancrum

I will always recommend this book. It felt unlike anything I've ever read. Actually, no, it feels the same way fanfiction feels. Like, it reaches into your chest and moves things around a little. It's soft and careful, and you fall so deeply in love with the characters without even realising it's happened. It has absolutely fantastic representation, as well as some truly gorgeous lines and moments.

2. Maurice by E.M Forster

So this is probably the first 'classic' I ever read. It's a story about class, politics, society and queerness from a time when everything revolved around those things, even though nobody really liked to speak about them. It was so different to everything I'd read before, so it took a little getting used to. An old friend recommended I listen to the audiobook, so I did, and it was absolutely fantastic, really, really well done. I also desperately need you to read the Terminal Note at the end of the book, as well. It made me cry to hear how far we've come and how far we still have to go.

3. Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin

This is a glorious story about grief, queerness and identity, and relationships with religion. The main character's brother dies, and the catholic church decides to turn him into a saint. Literally. What follows is our MC trying to figure out how to reconcile that within themselves, whilst also trying to stop her grief spilling out onto everyone around her. It's really well written, it has a fantastically honest portrayal of what it feels like when you've lost someone, and it takes a good, hard look at the saintification of people that happens when they die (in this case, literally, but you catch my drift).

4. The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

This is my favourite series ever. Maybe you've read it already, I'm super late to the party on this one, having only read it for the first time this year. It's a coming-of-age, YA, fantasy masterpiece, full of so many beautifully queer relationships and identities and diversities. It has magic on each page, both in the plot but also in the power of observation of being human. The characters are well-rounded and fascinating, the plot is somehow both ridiculous and genius, and it is quite easily home to some of the best writing I've ever clapped eyes on.

5. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Again, you might have read this, but I fear it would be a bit insane of me not to include this. It's absolutely on its way to becoming a classic, I think. This story's reputation is notorious: beautiful, heartbreaking and very, very queer. It's got some of the most quotable lines you'll ever come across, it introduced so many of us into this particular genre, and has an audiobook that will surely go down as one of the best ever created. If you prefer your queer mythology retellings without quite as much tragedy, I also really, really recommend The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley. It feels more modern in language but just as ancient in story, and is quite easily one of the best books I've ever read.

Honourable mentions of varying genres:

If you like your books to feel like fanfiction with a hefty dose of trauma but character fanart and a fandom to make up for it, check out All For The Game by Nora Sakavic.

Olivie Blake's Masters of Death is a gorgeous and batshit story of Death and his son, some vampires, ghosts, and some sensationally witty banter.

If We Were Villains by M.L Rio doesn't seem like it's going to be queer, but then also it does, and also how couldn't it be when it's literally a bunch of murderous theatre kids obsessed with Shakespeare?

If you like to be creeped out while you read, I highly recommend Don't Let The Forest In by C.G Drews. I particularly encourage buddy reading this with a friend to see if you get similar outcomes. I reckon you won't. Let me know.

London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp is one of the most disturbing, enlightening and moving books I've read. It follows three men, 50(?) years apart in era, and is an absolutely audacious account of what the life of queer men has been like and continues to be like to this day.

The Locked Tomb Series (Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth) by Tamsyn Muir is one of my favourite series on the planet. The characters, the plot, the acrobatics my brain has to do to try and keep up with what the everloving f*ck is happening. The wit, the yearning, the diversity. Lesbian necromancers in space. I repeat: Lesbian necromancers in space.

This Arab is Queer by Elias Jahshan. This is a collection of essays and thoughts written by Queer Arabs all over the world, from all walks of life. As a very proud, queer, Lebanese person, it changed my life. It's beautiful and harrowing and hopeful. I implore you to read it and step into our world that looks nothing like the names people give it.

You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson. This is not exactly what you asked for, either, but it's a collection of poems by one of the most beloved voices in the Queer community. Andrea's words have touched so many of us that it's hard to quantify. They spread magic and hope across the world at a time when it felt there was none left. Even since their passing, these poems live on and keep them alive in all of our bookshelves. Highly recommend.

A little self plug here: I recently started a Patreon to help garner some support for Just Friends Book Box: a queer subscription book box I'm working on bringing to life. I talk more in depth about queer books I'm reading or have read on there, so you're very very welcome to follow along.

All my love,

Lana xoxo

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Nonfiction Books Bracket: Round 3

Choose a book:

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers, edited by Elias Jahshan

Voting ended onJun 27

Book summaries below:

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

Nonfiction, history, gender, queer theory

This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers, edited by Elias Jahshan

This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers – some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. Here, we find heart-warming connections and moments of celebration alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab.

From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; and from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience.

Nonfiction, anthology, memoir

[godzilla-reads]

I went to the library to check out a bunch of CD’s, but then I found myself at the bookstore afterwards, which is counterproductive, but at least I found some great things.

[theultimatenonbinarynerd]

Readalong For Palestine 2: This Arab Is Queer

Introduction

We are all horrified and enraged about the vicious slaughter happening in Gaza especially in Rafah at the moment. No food, no hospitals something that breaks my heart into a million pieces over and over again. I unfortunately don't have the money but have decided instead to set up some readalongs to try combat censorship and help educate those when the media and news has become biased and unreliable. I've been reposting fund raisers but have still felt like this isn't enough so I knew I had to try set up something else. All books used in the Readalongs apart from this novel will be donated to my local library so that hopefully a few more people will be able to pick it up. I know it may seem small but I truly believe one small action can make a difference.

Censorship is becoming a rife problem with what's happening and a ton of people are getting misinformation so I believe the best way to combat that is by reading books from Palestinian Authors and fighting back against Censorship to get Palestinian Voices heard. It might not seem enough but I hope to make a little difference. There's also the issue of pink washing where tons of people are saying Palestinians deserve to be mistreated because it's not Lgtbq+ friendly, I shamefully once fell for this myself. Everyone deserves freedom and in fact that place is not as Lgtbq+ friendly as it claims. So due to this my second Readalong For Palestine will be This Arab Is Queer and Anthology edited by Elias Jahshan a Palestinian author.

This readalong will go through all the way to the beginning of May and I have several discussion boards open. I know that this Anthology is not solely by a Palestinian Author but I still found it important to include as unfortunately there is a stigma that comes from being ARAB. Most ARAB people don't feel safe with their own community but they also don't feel safe with the queer community as we like to strongly assume you can't be both queer and muslim. I believe this will be a key read for those that need to work on their internal racism and biases. I promise you this will a hundred percent be worth reading.

My Aims

My aims for doing these readalongs are pure and not for any malicious reasons. I was one of the people brainwashed by the deadly and brutal narrative that the media is pushing. So because of this I want to fight back and help educate people as there's no justification for Genocide. I also as a queer person want to fight back against the deadly narrative of Pink Washing as I'm sorry nothing justifies taking away life.

So here's all my aims and hopes with these readalongs.

1: Get more books from palestian authors out there.

2: Getting people to talk about what's happening through reading and discussing palestinian content.

3: Fight back against censorship and allow people to access to palestinian media that they want to silence.

Please be assured that these are my own intentions. I hope that for those that want to take part it's there intention as well.

Other Readalongs

This is not the only readalong I will be doing. Minor Detail has come and gone but I will also be doing Readalongs for On Palestine By Noam Chamsky Ilan Pappé and In My Mother's Footsteps By Mona Hajjar Halaby. I picked On Palestine as I've seen the book recommended a lot especially when it comes to educating those who are completely unaware of the severity of what's happening. Its a quick read but also a super important one. I then chose In My Mother's Footsteps as I realised the important of hearing from the child of a Palestinian Refuge and fully learning what it's like. If this goes well I might host some more next year doing a sort of similar thing to the Trans Rights Readathon. It'll depend how uni's going for me though.

Unfortunately I'm not out of the closet yet so this one is being kept quiet on some of my socials but I still hope to get some people involved with each readalong.

Conclusion

The dates for the other two readalongs will be posted in a separate post once confirmed but for now This Arab Is Queer is the next one on the list. I would especially recommend joining this one if you've accidentally been part of the pink washing crowd. Once I've got my hands on this one I'm definitely keeping it as it's a super important book to have as it shows queernesss from a none western lens.

-Melody-

They/Them

[ladychlo]

I missed the feeling of getting the depth of my core hooked on a book like I go reading books and it passes but then I'm reading this book and it's like these types of books that come from time to time, a type of book that hits all the right places and makes you exactly feel so attached to the feeling of raw life like a breeze scaring the inside of your nose from inhaling it and remind you of the need for reading like the need of warm piece bread

[tigger8900]

This Arab Is Queer, edited by Elias Jahshan

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This collection of eighteen short essays by queer people with roots in the Arab world covers a wide variety of experiences, from gay and lesbian to trans and nonbinary, in many permutations. The content of the essays themselves are as varied as the authors, featuring everything from informative expository pieces(The Artist's Portrait of a Marginalized Man, by Danny Ramadan) to incredibly personal narratives(Return to Beirut, by Saleem Haddad). There's even something that appears to be short fiction(The Bad Son, by Raja Farah) as well as a piece that reads closer to poetry than anything else(Tweets to a Queer Arab Poet, by Omar Sakr). The contributors are Lebanese, Syrian, Sudanese, Iraqi, Egyptian and more, raised in both the Arab world and in the diaspora. The variety of voices featured, and the differing ways they choose to express their queerness, is this book's greatest strength.

There was little that really bothered me. Some essays were better than others. As mentioned in the introduction, there is some sexual content, both discussed and depicted in narrative form. I wasn't so much a fan of the latter(sex scenes in nonfiction always get me like that, it's too personal), but I understand why it was included from an artistic standpoint. My biggest complaint is that the included glossary was largely useless. Most of the terms in it were explained or translated in the works themselves, and every time I was unsure what a thing or phrase was, it was never in the glossary!

I recommend this book to anyone — LGBTQ or otherwise — who has an interest in exploring intersectional queer identities.

[lgbtqreads]

New Releases: October 18, 2022

New Releases: October 18, 2022

Hazel Hill is Gonna Win This One by Maggie Horne In this funny, feminist, and queer middle grade debut, seventh-grader Hazel Hill is too busy for friends. No, really. She needs to focus on winning the school-wide speech competition over her nemesis, the popular and smart Ella Quinn, after last year’s embarrassing Hyperbole/Hyperbowl mishap that cost her first place. But when Hazel discovers Ella…

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