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Master list for June 2014
And on this last day of June 2014, we wrap up with a master list. Thanks to all who contributed and read along this year! We had 19 recs for novels, young adult fiction, non-fiction, televisions shows and movies, a Super Queer Artsy Blog, and even, for the first time ever, poetry. The majority of recs were for books, but, with five recs, graphic ( Read more... ) -
Book: The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam
On the surface, The Queer Art of Failure is a light-hearted academic book about pop culture and film, ranging from Finding Nemo to Austin Powers and many things in between. Digging beneath the surface, it's a provocative look at power and resistance in the context of neoliberalism, where Halberstam suggests that failure may offer a more liberatory ( Read more... ) -
Graphic novel: Blue is the warmest colour
First of all, I should say this rec is not about the movie Blue is the warmest colour (orig. Le bleu est une couleur chaude), which I haven't seen -- but which is, or at least that's my impression, very very different from the graphic novel it's based on. So the graphic novel by Julie Maroh is what I'm reccing here ( Read more... ) -
Film: Beyond the Hills
I'll confess upfront that I've only seen the Romanian film Beyond the Hills (orig. Dupa Dealuri) once, and it was over a year ago. I still want to rec it, though, because while it's not a happy movie, it's powerful and fascinating, and one that's stayed with me ( Read more... ) -
Film: Torch Song Trilogy
I’m always shocked when this film is not mentioned on rec lists. I just assume because it’s so well-known and well-loved that there isn’t a person who hasn’t memorized every line already and to recommend it is completely unnecessary? But, just in case:
Torch Song Trilogy (New Line 1988) follows the life of drag queen Arnold Beckoff (played by ( Read more... ) -
FILM: Documented by Jose Antonio Vargas
In 1993, when he was 12 years old, Jose Antonio Vargas moved from Manila, where he lived with his mother, to Mountain View, California, where he joined his grandparents. As he discovered when he went to get his driver's license for the first time, however, Vargas had arrived without papers. Both his grandparents were naturalized US citizens, but ( Read more... ) -
BOOK: Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
The graphic novel Skim is a quick glimpse of the life of Kimberly Keiko Cameron, "Skim," sulky biracial Goth tenth-grader growing up in Toronto in the early 1990s. Skim's broken her arm, tripping over a make-shift Wiccan altar in her bedroom. She snipes at her best friend Lisa, smokes down in the ravine behind her all-girls school, and falls in ( Read more... ) -
BOOK: Fair Play by Tove Jansson
Although she's best known for the Moomin books, Tove Jansson also wrote a wide variety of other books and short stories which are well worth reading. My pick for today is Fair Play, published in 1989: a novel about two older women and the life they've built together ( Read more... ) -
TV: "The Line of Beauty" (2006)
The Line of Beauty is a Booker prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst that charts several years in the life of Nick Guest, a young gay man in the UK who is drawn into the world of the 1980s upper class Conservative Party. The title is taken from an art theory term for an S-shaped curve, which mirrors the narrative trajectory: at first Nick's star ( Read more... )