Current Curiosities
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[Reading] It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese

[Listening] Lovett or Leave It Presents: Bravo, America! (with Dr. Terry Dubrow)

[Watching] Have I Got News for You

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Today, Wednesday, October 1, marks the beginning of LGBTQ+ History Month, which began in 1994 by a Missouri high school teacher. This month we reflect on our queer and trans history, honoring those who came before us, and continue our fight for equality, liberty, and justice. This LGBTQ History Month is particularly important as Trump and his MAGA regime strip rights away from queer and especially trans communities across the country. Below are a few queer and trans selections from my bookshelf. What additional titles would you suggest folks read to learn more about LGBTQ+ history and the current fight for our rights? 


Sections From My Bookshelf
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• Meg-John Barker & Jules Scheele's Queer: A Graphic History — The graphic novel brings together developments queer theory with LGBTQ+ liberation movements and is an excellent way to explore major activists, academics, and creatives. (Check out their graphic guides on Gender and Sexuality, too.)

 

• Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? — The counterbalance to Fun Home, this graphic memoir combines Bechdel's relationship with her mom and her exploration of the works of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. (I like Fun Home, but I love Are You My Mother?) 

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• John Paul Bammer's Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons — Brammer uses his own experiences, his own learned wisdom to answer questions from strangers for a queer advice column. You will laugh. You will sob. You will be better for reading Hola Papi.  

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• Mike Curato's Flamer — Initially, I read Flamer ​as a part of a campus banned book reading group (surprising given how conservative the campus is). The graphic memoir explores the stakes of coming to terms with sexuality between junior high and high school at a scouting camp, a place not historically known for acceptance. 

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• Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer — This graphic memoir charts an examination of self identity and the trauma (and beauty) of being a queer and trans teen in America. A much-banned book, Judy Bloom could never.

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• Tony Kushner's Angels in America — In a two-part play, Millennium Approaches and ​Perestroika, Kushner investigates queer and trans life in the 1980s against the AIDS epidemic and Reagan Era culpability in its spread. (And check out the HBO adaptation.)

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• Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name — Not only does Lorde canvass her life from childhood through her time in Mexico, but also she reflects on the women who informed her life. (Check out The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House, too.)

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• Larry Mitchell's The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions — This fable critiques the patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy — and it has pictures! (This was a solid Vibe Check ​recommendation.)

• Tourmaline's Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson — This biography documents the live of artist and trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, with cameos from others such as Andy Warhol and RuPaul, among others. Don't let this thick tome fool you; it's a fast and fascinating read.  

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• ​It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese — This collection of essays explores the ways in which horror movies, know for their misogyny and queer and transphobia, often appeal to LGBTQ+ audiences.  

If you're a Fargo-Moorhead local, be sure to check out More Than Words Bookshop in person or support them online via their Bookshop.org storefront. 
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Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form.

Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, 

Creighton 

Today’s Pen(cil): TWSBI Eco-T [Fountain Pen] | Noodler's V-Mail Midway Blue [Ink]

Current Curiosities

​[Reading] ​Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer
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[Listening] Britney Spears Greatest Hits: My Prerogative

[Watching] Shōgun


Selections From My Bookshelf
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• Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi — This graphic memoir depicts the Nakba (violent removal of Palestinians during the formation of Israel in 1947) and the establishment of the permanent titular refugee camp. 

 

• Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life — This theoretical work traces how easily citizens are stripped of their rights from the Roman Republic to the present.

 

• Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza — This part-memoir, part-theoretical text explores the impacts of navigating between dominant and colonized cultures on the southern U.S. border. 

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• Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message — This piece of travel writing investigates contemporary segregation and colonial violence in Senegal, South Carolina, and Gaza.

 

• J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K — This novella recounts how Black bodies in apartheid South Africa were documented, tracked, and restricted in their movement. 

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• Edwidge Danitcat's Brother, I'm Dying — This memoir details how People of Color become caught up in Kafkaesque U.S. immigration policies, the explosion of for-profit prisons, and the deadly consequences of both. 

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• Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — Part investigative journalism and part memoir, this text reckons with contemporary colonialism and its violent consumption of land and bodies with an emphasis on the ongoing genocide in Palestine. 

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• Michel Foucault's Discipline & Punish — This theoretical work investigates the history of surveillance and may help frame current corporate and governmental digital surveillance (e.g. Meta or DOGE).

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• ​Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed — Relying on community-based research, this theoretical text explores the pitfalls of Western educational systems through the dynamic of colonizer and colonized.

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• Regina Jackson and Sairo Rao's White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How to Do Better — The text is perfect for interrogating niceness, especially for readers in the land of Minnesota Nice, and is a call to action to dismantle white supremacy. 

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• Miriame Kaba's We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice — This text explores collective liberation through the abolition of the prison industrial complex. 

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• Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place — This travel jeremiad chronicles the deep connections between Western capitalism and Black bodies, using Antiguan tourism and the slave trade as its lens. 

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• Audre Lorde's ​The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House — This essay examines white supremacist power structures and strategies to dismantle them. 

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• Larry Mitchel's The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions — This allegorical novella depicts the coalition of LGBTQ+ people surviving and challenging the violences of heteronormative culture.

 

• Joseph Osmundson's Virology: Essays for the Living and the Small Things In Between — This essay collection examines viral structures (e.g. HIV or COVID-19) and the political systems that impact our daily lives.

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• Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric​ — This poetry collection probes the experiences of being a Black person in the U.S. and how even wealth and fame cannot protect you (i.e. Serena Williams and racist French line judges). 

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• Ziwe's Black Friend​ — This essay collection comically, poignantly, and terrifyingly explores simply exiting as a Black woman in the United States.

If you're a Fargo-Moorhead local, be sure to check out More Than Words Bookshop in person or support them online via their Bookshop.org storefront. 

Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form.

Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, 

Creighton 

Today’s Pen(cil): TWSBI Go [Fountain Pen] | Noodler's Firefly [Ink]

If you're curious about my former life as an academic and teacher, check out "On Common Books, Civic Engagement, and Claudia Rankine's Citizen," published by the brilliant Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.