Book of the Day Roundup June 18-June 22
Every Body Has a Story
Beverly Gologorsky
Haymarket Books
Softcover $15.95 (320pp)
978-1-60846-907-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Set against the backdrop of the economic crash, Every Body Has a Story is an exploration of how our identities evolve when under immense pressure. Following Lena, her family, and their close friends through employment insecurity and the eventual loss of their home, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel puts a human face on the collective crisis of 2008.
Lena, Zack, and their two adolescent children live a comfortable, working-class life. Along with their friends Dory and Stu, they have worked hard to build their American dream. Companions since their childhood in the projects, the couples are more kin than friends. As economic stresses affect them all, macrocosmic strains manifest on an intimate, interpersonal level.
Spending time inside the head of each character, the book is a poignant exploration of the diverse ways that human beings respond to pressure. The players present various perspectives on subjects from the intersection of masculinity and money to the experiences of a generation coming of age in an era of economic instability.
This is, gloriously, not an “inspirational” tale of unbelievable grace under pressure. Rather, it’s a relatable novel full of characters who don’t always behave well. This is both the book’s triumph and its occasional downfall; there are stretches where it’s easy to lose sympathy for the characters, as they are less than noble in response to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
However, the characters’ fallibility makes the eventual climax and resulting character growth even more resonant. The novel offers redemption for its characters without regarding them as anything other than human in the face of great pain.
Every Body Has a Story holds a reminder that we all carry the complexities of our unique stories. Offering insight into humanity and its rough edges, this book will not disappoint.
JESSIE HORNESS (April 27, 2018)
In Search of Pure Lust
Lise Weil
She Writes Press
Softcover $16.95 (330pp)
978-1-63152-385-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
“My whole life, I have loved women,” writes author Lise Weil. In Search of Pure Lust is a breathtaking, deeply felt memoir of queer sexuality. From experiencing her first romantic feelings towards women to her meaningful relationships later in life, Pure Lust describes an evolution of lesbian love and identity.
In Search of Pure Lust has a long, satisfying arc that begins in the early 1960s. The book, without necessarily being a personal history of the gay rights movement, includes some excellent moments that express how LGBTQ people were closeted or erased socially to such a degree that even they themselves weren’t aware of their own identities.
Weil describes fumbling through her analysis appointments: “Woman loving, I knew, was the real reason I was showing up to his office three times a week.” The historic context raises the stakes for Weil: in a culture like this, who can be gay and happy about it?
As Weil enlarges her world view, she meets women who excite, challenge, and frustrate her. She begins to appreciate her place in a movement that seems, at times, to exclude her. Weil’s narrative describes a person who is fluid and difficult to label. She’s neither butch nor femme; she’s from a mixed-Jewish family—she’s hard to pin down, and an irresistible narrator as a result.
Weil’s writing is smooth, polished, and lovely. Pure Lust explores a wide range of emotions and experiences, from laugh-out-loud moments to love scenes that take your breath away. Weil develops into a self-aware, sophisticated woman. Her humor is counterbalanced with deep, moving insights about her family and her changing role as a daughter, partner, and teacher.
In Search of Pure Lust is more than a meditation on queer identity. It’s an incredible coming-of-age memoir that claims a woman’s right to be herself, wherever and whenever she may be.
CLAIRE FOSTER (March 27, 2018)
The Trans Generation
How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution
Ann Travers
NYU Press
Hardcover $25.00 (288pp)
978-1-4798-8579-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Ann Travers’s The Trans Generation is an astounding and essential qualitative study that collects heartfelt, honest anecdotes from a variety of transgender children and their parents. This book explores how trans people interact with everyday elements of society that become great sources of stress—how they navigate bathrooms, schools, sports, and their own bodies.
The Trans Generation is detailed, exhaustively researched, and heartwarming. Too often, stories about the death and suffering of transgender people are their only presence in mainstream media, if they are present at all. While transgender children’s precarity to death and pain is an important aspect of this book, it is refreshingly not the only one. Travers tells a comprehensive story that documents hope, perseverance, and a changing world along with the struggles that the children face.
Rather than exploring the lives of trans kids in a vacuum, the book takes into account various factors, such as race or wealth, that also contribute to a child’s well-being and place in the trans community. This intersectional approach is one of the highlights of the study.
While this book is readable for nonacademics, it is less so for those who aren’t familiar with certain terms that are common in queer and activist communities. Though there is a glossary included, terms like heteropatriarchy, neoliberal capitalism, and biopolitics are used without much explanation beforehand.
The Trans Generation sheds light on a marginalized group of people with respect and academic skill. For those who want to push themselves to learn more about the transgender community, or those with a transgender child themselves, this book is crucial. Travers contributes a necessary addition to sociological literature during a time when stories like these are needed most.
MYA ALEXICE (March 27, 2018)
Queer Magic
LGBT+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World
Tomás Prower
Llewellyn Publications
Softcover $19.99 (312pp)
978-0-7387-5318-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Tomás Prower’s Queer Magic explores the seemingly heteronormative history of the world’s religions and turns it on its head. It delves into overlooked or rewritten deities, historical figures, and religions with inclusive politics, resulting in a truly important work.
Queer Magic probes the world’s religions for evidence of queer figures, mythological or otherwise. Each chapter provides numerous insights into the historical existence of queer people in religious texts or traditions—as with Hindu deities who defy gender norms and the controversial tale of the only female pope. This book packs every page with carefully researched information.
There is a constant focus on queer empowerment, including advice on how to take this newfound knowledge and use it for personal fulfillment. At the end of every chapter, a range of diverse speakers who belong to the LGBTQ community comment on spirituality, life at the margins, and more. Prose is straightforward and accessible, and reading is quick and engaging.
Queer Magic falters only in its broad assumptions about certain cultures. For example, it assumes that West Africa has a certain attitude about homosexuality because of Catholicism’s influence there but does not provide broader evidence for this notion. Several such opinions are presented as uniform facts. In addition, despite presenting itself as a progressive book and denying the existence of an inherent gender binary, phrases like “the opposite sex” abound.
In a world where history is told by the victors, large swaths of the past are erased as times change and certain identities are deemed “unnatural.” Queer Magic asks us to unlearn what we’ve thought about the global past and instead substitutes an inclusive, more accurate world history, where queer identities are plenty.
MYA ALEXICE (May 27, 2018)
The Four Noble Truths
A Guide to Everyday Life
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Wisdom Publications
Softcover $17.95 (312pp)
978-1-61429-394-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Suffering is our national obsession. From wonder drugs to life-changing diet plans, to exist in the modern world is to be constantly plied with images of a life free of suffering. The Four Noble Truths, compiled from the teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, presents a different course. Aimed at uprooting the very causes of our suffering from the inside out, this work outlines an ancient framework for radical freedom in the modern age.
A work of devotion by Rinpoche’s longtime student Yeo Puay Huei, The Four Noble Truths possesses all the richness of a disciple’s meticulous notebook. Particularly lovely are the anecdotes from Rinpoche’s life shared at the close of each chapter, precious glimpses into a life lived in the dharma typically accessible only from the intimacy of studenthood.
The lessons explain the human condition with the extemporaneous tone of the teacher’s expository speech for the students at his feet. This is both the book’s triumph and its downfall; for all its richness, it is not a work for the uninitiated. Like borrowing a student’s notebook, it’s enriching if you’re taking the class and want to compare observations, but for the aspirant without a guide, the lessons may be intimidating, esoteric in their simplicity, and rife with seemingly impossible expectations and the occasional fire-and-brimstone image.
Heavy on theory and light on practices, The Four Noble Truths is best suited to enrich an existing library of Buddhist thought. These teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche are a sweet contemplation of life on the path. Generous, sincere, pleasantly conversational, and punctuated with bountiful metaphor, The Four Noble Truths brings the guru into your living room, with enough inspiration to enliven practice through many rereadings to come.
JESSIE HORNESS (May 27, 2018)
Hannah Hohman
