Here’s the third installment of our Spring books round-up where you’ll find thought-provoking stories from a trans author, a few interesting and self-reflective queer memoirs including one from a longtime AIDS-era survivor, and a curious new title about the history of witches! Happy Spring and happy reading.
FICTION
“Soft Core” by Brittany Newell, $28 (FSG)
Local Bay Area queer author and Stanford graduate Newell’s gritty, enchanting first novel, 2017’s “Oola,” about a young male artist who becomes obsessed with a female writer, was a hit, and her sophomore effort is just as tangy and addictive.
It follows Ruth, who, at 27, casts aside her master’s degree and resorts to stripping at a club using the moniker “Baby,” living in the Mission with Dino, her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend, and enjoying affairs with wealthy men. When Dino suddenly goes missing, she recalls him telling her not to panic if this happens and she becomes a dominatrix to fill the time and space while she worries more desperately as each night without Dino passes.
Newell fills these pages with such an array of sensory detail, it’s easy to read and re-read paragraphs numerous times just to get that thrill of exacting prose into your head again. If you don’t already know the author, she and her wife currently host the monthly drag and dance party “Angels” at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in the Tenderloin District. While you wait to enjoy her parties, go read her new novel. It’s in its own category of amazing. www.us.macmillan.com
“Stag Dance” by Torrey Peters, $28 (Random House)
This unorthodox collection of boundary-pushing short stories and a novella spring forth from the same creative mind responsible for the smash-hit novel “Detransition, Baby.”
In the post-apocalyptic, Seattle-set story “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” a pandemic has wreaked havoc on the general population, making everyone’s sex hormones impossible to produce. The trans narrator is on her own, but finds another person offering hope and even love, but in this hellish landscape of death and decay, can she truly trust anyone?
“The Chaser” is another story populated by insecure characters where a young, closeted boy decides to begin a relationship with his femme boarding school roommate, but the results are difficult and messy.
Perhaps the best of the bunch is the title novella where Babe, a strong, ugly, hulking logger, discovers a new facet of himself after attending a stag dance where some of the other loggers attend dressed as women. Babe finally addresses his suppressed yearnings and finds himself attracted to and obsessed by the prettiest boy at the dance. Written over the course of a decade, Peters shines in this offbeat story collection encompassing themes of identity, belonging, love, desire, and acceptance. www.penguinrandomhouse.com
“Unsex Me Here” by Aurora Mattia, $18.95 (Nightboat)
Another story collection about queer and trans characters that will dazzle readers is this new work from the Hong Kong-born writer, Aurora Mattia. The best entries in the volume consistently employ characters involved in bizarre behavior.
“Cradle Me, Lucifer” features a female narrator whose close relationship with her pet python, Milky –whom her ex gifted to her– affords her great time and freedom to consider herself, her life, her surroundings, and what all of it truly means.
The two trans women in “Celebrity Skin” fall in love while searching for a ritualistic cult that will make their dreams come true in this tale borrowing from Greek and Roman mythology. “Valentine’s Day” follows Raphael, a gay man who attempts to get over the boy of his dreams through a rapid succession of one-night stands, courtesy of Grindr.
The most evocative tale chronicles the wild escapist journey of two lovers in “Wild and Blue” who steal a memory-altering drug from an experimental pharmaceutical company. As Sandy’s memories begin to falter, his trans lover Peach wonders if their fate might be doomed should the drug make him see her in another form other than the one she presents to him. This is a mystical, ethereal, and often emotional ride, but it fits wonderfully into the remainder of Mattia’s masterfully crafted collection. www.nightboat.org
“Elphie” by Gregory Maguire, $30 (Morrow)
Prolific children’s author Maguire charmingly turns back the “Wicked” clock to unveil Elphaba Thropp’s uniquely green origin story. Isolated since childhood with only her younger siblings for companionship (her sister, Nessa, is armless, even), Elphie’s eccentric traveling minister father does little to socialize his green-skinned daughter and this has a drastic effect on her growth toward young adulthood.
Maguire stacks the deck just enough to present the psychological twists and misfires that conspire to turn young Elphie from a sympathetic lonely girl into a vengeful witch. This may be an overly chatty entry in the series for some, but it is one that will nevertheless tickle diehard fans from the first page to the very last, as well as enchant newcomers to the “Wicked” family. The Maguire magic is in full effect in this lighthearted and impeccably detailed prequel. www.harpercollins.com
MEMOIR
“Alligator Tears” by Edgar Gomez, $28 (Crown)
Simultaneously empowering and entertaining, Gomez’s follow-up memoir to his debut, “High Risk Homosexual,” compiles a collective of 10 intelligently crafted and opinionated essays on the author’s youth growing up as a queer Nicaraguan in Florida.
At each piece’s core is Gomez’s ever-present fear of coming out to his mother and the ensuing expected rejection amidst the family’s already immense struggle to survive in poverty.
His father was a drug addict who abandoned the family, and the author carries the weight of that event throughout his life, while unfortunate events strike the family and threaten their security, happiness, and ability to thrive.
Gomez seems better equipped to write about his successes as an adult, earning a college degree and an MFA as well, but the money troubles continued despite these triumphs. Gomez is an entertaining writer and able to keep the witty prose percolating even while chronicling a series of nearly insurmountable troubles. This is another winner for the multi-talented queer Latinx. www.penguinrandomhouse.com
“Self-Sabotage” by Jeffery Self, $27.99 (HarperOne)
Young adult novelist and working actor Jeffery Self presents the intimate inner workings of his messy (but fascinating) life thus far in this adult debut. His descriptions of growing up gay (and bipolar) in Rome, Georgia are bittersweet and often tinged with humor to balance out any sadness.
Elsewhere, Self contributes happier confessionals when related to his life and career as an actor and comedian, as well as his love affair with his husband, Augie. He applauds his decision to enroll in psychotherapy sessions and addresses the many ways it’s helped him overcome rough patches, in making peace with the past, and to carry onward and forward with positive energy and a proactive outlook. This candid, effortlessly honest self-portrait is a winner. www.harpercollins.com
“Wolf Act” by AJ Romriell, $19.95 (University of Wisconsin Press)
Writer AJ Romriell’s beautifully written memoir chronicles his life growing up queer and Mormon, abiding by the strict rules set forth by the church and its sternly devout leaders.
As a teenager, he followed the course preset for him and eventually embarked on a missionary journey. But upon his return as a teenager, he experienced an epiphany about his sexuality. This fresh knowledge presented a harrowing and difficult choice Romriell needed to make, as he became well aware that both being queer and Mormon would not be accepted in the eyes of the church.
The author creatively plays with form and structure throughout this emotionally resonant memoir and the essays and confessionals contained within are beautifully rendered with smooth poetic prose. Any reader who has embraced religion only to be faced with the choice to remain closeted or embark on a painful, unexpected church exodus, will vividly relate to Romriell’s magnificently earnest life story. It’s an outward journey deserving of a wide, attentive, queer audience. www.uwpress.wisc.edu
NONFICTION
“Passionate Outlier: Gay Writers and Allies On Their Work” by Frank Pizzoli, $18.95 (Rebel Satori Press)
Pizzoli, an inquisitive writer, editor, and producer who has spent a lifetime in the journalism and human services industries, has outdone himself with this immersive, diversified collection of notable queer authors (and allies) whose voices are magnificently captured in these previously published interviews.
The author himself is a fascinating queer individual, and this feature is aptly captured in the book’s introduction section where Pizzoli openly confesses to having lived with HIV for most of his adult life, surviving the “First Wave cohort of patients.”
In the 1980s, he valiantly co-founded volunteer organizations and life empowerment groups for people living with HIV, produced a documentary, was named a Living Legacy, and continues his journalism career with articles in the Lambda Literary Review among other publications, and as publisher and editor of Central Voice newspaper.
Chronologically arranged from 2007-2019, queer literary luminaries include the “irrepressible” Edmund White, whose interview with Pizzoli about gay culture is a dream to read. Christopher Bram reflects on the pivotal American gay writers movement. Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Martin Duberman, Michael Carroll, John Rechy and many others impart opinion and observation as they decorate these pages with stories and history that bring their literary oeuvres and legacies to vivid life.
An archive of unique perspective and fond memory, Pizzoli’s crisply edited interviews are not to be missed by anyone interested in queer culture, history, and the ways and means of how it got to where it is now. This is an outstanding archive. www.rebelsatori.com
“Witches: Folklore, History and Superstition” by Willow Winsham, $29.95 (Batsford)
The wild and wonderful world of the witch is deeply and artfully examined by talented author Winsham. “The witch has had a chequered history, and humankind has committed terrible, unimaginable acts in the name of stamping witchcraft out,” she writes.
Her exquisitely illustrated book probes the notable history of witchcraft, as well as the rampant misperceptions about them throughout the ages. And while she acknowledges those who believe in leaving the atrocities committed against witches far in the past, she also believes in remembering what occurred, “regardless of the difficult questions and emotions this may raise.”
Winsham ably escorts readers through dramatic lessons on how witches have been portrayed in the media, across folk tales and children’s stories, and through entertainment vehicles such as film and television. The book vividly describes the Salem trials and how the idea of someone embodying a witch had become the ultimate enemy, punishable by cruel, ostracizing, agonizing torture.
Early methods of detecting a witch (dunking them in a body of water or observing physical signs of devilry) were just as heinous, she notes. Common protective methods against witchcraft are discussed alongside more contemporary shifts in the image of the witch and the ways it’s expressed (“Wicca”) over the course of the twentieth century into the present day.
This is an ideal volume brimming with information and insight for any queer Wiccan practicing today or anyone interested in the craft itself. It doesn’t have to be Halloween to appreciate the awe and glory of witchcraft and the talented Willow Winsham makes it so. www.batsfordbooks.com
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