Category Archives: Non-Fiction

October 6, 2012 · 12:15 PM

Thoughts: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson


winterson Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 2012 by Grove Press
Review e-book sent by publisher via Netgalley
Read September 2012
224 pages

Along the way to reading this book, I joined a book club.

I had been trying (well, “trying,” I kept getting distracted by other things) to read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal for a few weeks without luck, never getting past page two. Then I told myself I had to read Winterson’s classic semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit before I could read her actual memoir. Some time went by, I bought the Oranges e-book, read it, and didn’t particularly care for it, so I went back to ignoring the memoir. A few months later I received an email from a local organization that happens to also run a queer book club and lo and behold, their title for September was Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 

I’d never been to a book club meeting before, although I’ve always been really interested. The best thing about this particular book club is that they specifically focus on LGBTQ titles, which, as you may have noticed, is a specialty of mine.

I’m so incredibly thankful that my new book club chose Winterson’s memoir because despite my reservations about Oranges and how long it took me to delve into Why Be Happy, it ended up being one of my favorite reads of the year.

It’s a book that I could just quote over and over again:

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home–they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

There is warmth there too–a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm. (614/2245, Kindle edition)

Or

Black is all the colours and Shakespeare is all the alphabet (1137/2245, Kindle edition)

Or

Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open–the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. (1171/2245, Kindle edition)

For anyone who was affected by Oranges, it’s fascinating to read about what “really happened” and how it was actually much worse. For anyone who loves books, it’s heart-warming to be reminded how important books can be to someone who is otherwise all alone. For anyone who has ever looked for love and worried they weren’t strong enough for it, or for anyone who continues that endless search for home, there is so much in this memoir to love and think over.

Grade: A
Recommended: To anyone who has ever found an escape in literature.

 

This book and post count toward the Literary Others event hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader in honor of LGBT History Month.

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Filed under 2012 Reviews, A, E-Book, GLBTQ, Non-Fiction

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September 25, 2012 · 6:31 AM

TLC Book Tour: Before the Rain by Luisita López Torregrosa

Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
by Luisita López Torregrosa
Published 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review copy received from publisher via TLC Book Tours
Read September 2012
228 pages

In the years since that first letter came, postmarked New Delhi and written on pale lavender Claridges Hotel stationery, I have begun this story a hundred times, and each time I was afraid. (p. 3)

So begins Luisita López Torregrosa’s engaging memoir Before the Rain, and as soon as read that first line I knew I was in for a treat. The book tells the story of her love affair with a woman: fellow journalist Elizabeth Whitney, as well as a place: Manila, Philippines.

Torregrosa is a former editor at the New York Times and has the writing skills to uphold the  reputation of that venerable institution. Her writing is at its best when she is setting a scene, and the reader will find herself transported. For instance, in a passage where she imagines what Elizabeth is seeing on assignment in New Delhi:

There was an earthen hue to the city: colonial grays against the stark desert red of government mausoleums gave New Delhi an austerity far removed from the steel and glass and flashing neon of the modern world. Deeper into the city, Old Delhi reeked of death. Filthy alleys, foul food markets, vegetables and spoiled meat and chickens spread out in the muck. Flies crawled over everything, and children with runny noses and muddy hands, moaning and whining, pulled at your clothes, kissing your feet. Multitudes spilling out from crumbling buildings, from stores, from buses, from brothels and mosques, taking up every centimeter of city space, all yelling, gesticulating, chattering and chanting in one momental human chorus. There were no brilliant colors, only a pastel wash over all of it against a soil the shade of dried blood. (p. 24)

Descriptions like this appear throughout the book and were my favorite parts. I didn’t have to take notes while reading because the only word that would come to me when I read those passages was ‘lush.’ I was swept away again when Torregrosa travels to Manila later on to be with Elizabeth, and I could feel the love and comfort the author felt within the city. As a travel memoir, and even as a love story for Manila, Before the Rain is a roaring success.

The love story written about Elizabeth, however, was a bit more illusive. I never got a clear idea of Elizabeth–of who she was, of what Torregrosa loved about her, of what made the author so happy to be with the woman she loved. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Torregrosa was in love with her; it was more that even when I was reading about the happy times the two spent together I could feel Torregrosa’s pain over the end of their relationship.

In fact, the best writing about their relationship comes after they have broken up. It was like the author was finally able to shake off the pain of remembering just how wonderful it was to be together and felt more comfortable remembering the hard times. Despite the reserve in these parts, I never doubted the love the two women shared.

Before the Rain is a quiet memoir full of lush, lovely, and at times transcendent writing. I bookmarked the hell out of it.
Grade: B

Recommended: If you enjoy travel memoirs and/or heart-felt love stories.

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Filed under 2012 Reviews, Book Tour, GLBTQ, Non-Fiction, Print

June 3, 2012 · 4:02 PM

Review & Giveaway: The Letter Q edited by Sarah Moon

The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves
Edited by Sarah Moon with contributing editor James Lecesne
Published 2012 by Arthur A. Levine Books (imprint of Scholastic)
Hardcover received for review from the publisher
Read May 2012
281 pages

Summary From Publisher: In this anthology, sixty-four award-winning authors and illustrators such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline, Woodson, Terrence McNally, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin, make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love, messages of understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself.

Sixty four LGBT writers contributed to this anthology! If that doesn’t help you realize that We Are Everywhere, I don’t know what will.

If someone were to write a heartbreaking YA novel about me, they’d set it in my sixteenth year, the year my mother died and I started realizing I might be gay and Everything Changed Forever. So maybe it’s a little understandable when I tell you that the idea of writing to my sixteen year-old self is overwhelming. Oh, to swoop in on teenage me and let her know she makes it out of that terrible house, that terrible town, finds love, and spends her spare time writing a book blog and “entertaining” friends with Nixon facts.

As an adult, reading The Letter Q was more a thought experiment into what I’d say to teenage me than the stated intent of an anthology marketed to teens to remind them that, well, it gets better.  I certainly can’t argue with that message.

I do have to point out that although the summary and the jacket copy mention that the authors are “telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people,” not a single contributor overtly mentions their experience as a trans person.

At its best, The Letter Q is an excellent companion anthology to Dan Savage and Terry Miller’s It Gets Better, and for those of us who are no longer teenagers, it’s a great mental exercise in “how could I help my teenage self?”

“How are you going to mail a letter to twenty years ago?” she said.
“I don’t know, ” I told her, finishing the sentence on the page. “But wouldn’t it be terrible, the day comes we learn how to ship something back in time, and we’ve got nothing to send? So first I thought I’d get the package ready. Next I’ll worry about the postage.”
How many times had I said to myself, it’s too bad I didn’t know this at age ten, if only I had learned that at twelve, what a waste to understand, twenty years late!
–p 24, The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach

Okay, I admit, Richard Bach has absolutely no connection to The Letter Q other than the coincidental circumstance wherein I am reading The Bridge Across Forever and I came across this quote and it seemed fitting.

Favorite Quote (From The Letter Q this time): 

You see, love doesn’t end despair. It deepens the poignancy of it by opening your eyes to what there is to lose. — p. 59, Adam Haslett

Grade: B-

Suggested further reading:  It Gets Better edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller; How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity edited by Michael Cart; Am I Blue? Coming Out From the Silence edited by Marion Dane Bauer

Giveaway!

Scholastic has kindly offered to give two people copies of The Letter Q and an “It Gets Better” t-shirt beneffiting the It Gets Better Project! To enter, just fill out this Google form. Winners will be announced June 10th! (Sorry, this giveaway is U.S. only.)

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Filed under 2012 Reviews, B, GLBTQ, Non-Fiction, Print

October 31, 2011 · 8:35 PM

BAND #4: Anthologies

carton images representing various types of nonfiction with the text "BAND: Bloggers' Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees"Bloggers’ Alliance of Non-Fiction Devotees (BAND) is a project to “advocate non-fiction as a non-chore,” and is a joint effort with  Amy,  Anastasia,  Ash,  Joy, Kim, Kit, and myself. Any and everyone is welcome (and encouraged) to participate! 

This month Ash asked What are your favorite nonfiction anthologies?

I have a confession: essay anthologies are a bit of a weakness of mine. I may be troubled by the lack of quality fiction featuring complex queer characters (particularly ones that aren’t coming out stories or about hate crimes), but there are many essay collections that give voice to the complexity and variety of queer folks and their experiences. I’ve decided to list a few of my favorites, all pulled from my shelves.

20111030-210355.jpg

Baby, Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing edited by Michelle Tea (2007)

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (2010)

Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie (2000) I bought this book entirely because there is a quote from

The Femme Mystique edited by Leslea Newman (1995)

Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity edited by Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri (2002): It sounds like hyperbole when I say that this book changed my life, but I promise it’s completely true. My favorite is the essay “Quantum Femme” by Elizabeth Ruth.

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman (2011)

Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2006)

 

What are your favorite essay anthologies?

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Filed under Gender Studies, Lists, Non-Fiction

September 28, 2011 · 2:00 PM

Review: Tension City by Jim Lehrer

Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain
by Jim Lehrer
Published 2011 by Random House
Ebook received for review from publisher via Netgalley
Read September 2011
224 pages

Why I Read This Book: Although this book was featured at BEA and I wanted to pick up a copy, it didn’t quite work out that way. In fact I didn’t even realize it was on Netgalley until I did a search on there for “Nixon.” Because that’s how I roll. (I’m currently having a read-all-about-Nixon thing; see my Nixon Reading List.)

The Nixon Connection: Since the Nixon part of the title is what initially drew me to the book, I feel like I should take a moment to mention the quality of the, uh, Nixon content. It’s rather lack luster, mostly a paragraph or two about how folks who watched the Nixon-Kennedy debate on television thought Kennedy won and how those who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon won. It brings nothing new to the table.

The rest of it: Jim Lehrer has moderated eleven presidential candidate debates, so many that Bernard Shaw has called him The Dean of Moderators*. In Tension City, Lehrer reflects on the history of the debates as well as his own time moderating them.

As might be expected, the book is most vivid and engaging when Lehrer is discussing his own experience; this section of the book reads as a memoir, complete with behind-the-scenes information and reflection. When Lehrer writes about historical debates that he was not a part of, however, the narration sags under the weight of Lehrer’s obvious boredom with events of which he was not involved.

Tension City tries at once to be both history and memoir and suffers for it. If Lehrer had focused on his own memories of the debates he moderated and his discussions with the presidential candidates, Tension City would be a great book. Instead, it’s a decent read with some interesting tidbits.

Grade: B-
Recommended if you like: Memoirs, insider-tales, journalism, politics

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Filed under 2011 Reviews, B, E-Book, Non-Fiction

August 8, 2011 · 7:02 AM

REVIEW: Who Is Ana Mendieta? by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron


Who Is Ana Mendieta?
by Christine Redfern and Caro Caron
Published 2010 by Feminist Press
Received for review from Feminist Press
55 pages
Read June 2011

I don’t often read about art. Art just isn’t my thing the way, say, Presidential history has been. That being said, the first book explicitly about art that I remember reading was Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls’ Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes (Penguin 2003), which I bought and read when I was in high school. Its feminist take on art history got me excited about art for the first time, and led me to take an (ill fated) Art & Music History course in high school (not nearly as interesting, although I also took a course in college called Women & Art which was much better). When I received Who Is Ana Mendieta? in the mail from Feminist Press and saw a quote on the cover from the very same Guerrilla Girls, I did a little happy dance* and read it immediately.

Ana Mendieta was sent with her sister to the United States by their parents in 1962 to escape Fidel Castro’s rule in Cuba. Mendieta created art in several mediums, and is best known for her “earth-body” work. In 1985 she died from injuries sustained after falling from her bedroom window following a fight with her husband, Carl Andre; he stood trial for her murder and was acquitted, after arguing that he was not in the room at the time.

There is a lot to love in this little book. Redfern’s story encompasses both Mendieta’s life as well as the violent situations of other contemporary female artists. By artfully (heh) contextualizing Mendieta’s life, the reader is able to more fully grasp not only the mores of the time but the implications of being a female artist in a world that over-congratulates male violence and exhibitionism. Caron’s illustrations are rich with detail, and often panels merge into one another, adding to the overall contextuality of the writing.

At the end, there is an annotated bibliography entitled “Blind Spot,” which presents the resources used (including newspaper articles, phone records, poetry, etc.), laid out like a newspaper and featuring more of Canon’s stellar drawings. It sealed the deal for me (by reaching out to my nerdier, fact-collecting side). I adored Who Is Ana Mendieta? and if you are anything like me and want to know more about art but have no idea about anything, this book is a great, engaging way to start learning.

Grade: A
Recommended: Highly!

*it happens

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July 20, 2011 · 7:51 PM

Review: Secret Historian by Justin Spring

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade
by Justin Spring
Published 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Audio book borrowed from the library
Narrated by Sean Runnette
Winner of the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography
Read February 2011

Let’s start out with a totally true and undeniable statement: Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade is one of the best titles ever. If you are awesome (which you obviously are on the basis of reading this blog), chances are you have been the tiniest bit tempted to pick up this book based on the title alone. Let me assure you that this is one of the rare occasions that an intriguing, over-the-top title correctly reflects the contents of the book.

Samuel Steward was indeed a professor (at a religious university, no less), a pioneering tattoo artist, a writer of erotica, and an obsessive record-keeper of his sexual trysts, which numbered in the thousands. He was friends with Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, Thornton Wilder, and Alfred Kinsey, to name a few. Steward had sex with Lord Alfred Douglas entirely because Douglas had had sex with Steward’s idol, Oscar Wilde. Steward even had an elevator-rendezvous with a young Rock Hudson! Basically, Steward was a fascinating man who did fascinating things, and his story was almost lost to time.

When Steward died in 1993 (of chronic pulmonary disease), he left all of his belongings, writing, and photographs to a GLBT library; however, because this was near the height of the AIDS epidemic and so many other gay men were dying at the time and leaving their estates to the library, it didn’t have the room. When Justin Spring began his research into Steward’s life, he found all of Steward’s belongings in a dusty attic. Thankfully, Spring was able to access these documents and write the fascinating biography that is The Secret Historian.

Grade: A-

On the Narration: Sean Runnette is perfect for this book; his narration is a complement to the text. Highly recommended in audio, especially if biographies are not usually your thing but audio books are.

Also recommended: Steward wrote a two book mystery series featuring Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas as the main characters. The first book, Murder Is Murder Is Murder, was available at my library and it is charming, funny, and a great read.

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Filed under 2011 Reviews, A, Audio Books, GLBTQ, Non-Fiction

July 18, 2011 · 11:58 AM

TLC Book Tour: Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

Radio Shangri-LA: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth
by Lisa Napoli
Published 2011 by Crown

Summary from Publisher:

Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan—said to be one of the happiest places on earth.

Long isolated from industrialization and just beginning to open its doors to the modern world, Bhutan is a deeply spiritual place, devoted to environmental conservation and committed to the happiness of its people—in fact, Bhutan measures its success in Gross National Happiness rather than in GNP. In a country without a single traffic light, its citizens are believed to be among the most content in the world. To Lisa, it seemed to be a place that offered the opposite of her fast-paced life in the United States, where the noisy din of sound-bite news and cell phones dominate our days, and meaningful conversation is a rare commodity; where everyone is plugged in digitally, yet rarely connects with the people around them.

My Thoughts

I tend to have very SPECIFIC feelings about books I read. I have a little spreadsheet where I keep track of all the books I read and it has a column for ‘grade’; each book gets a letter grade, partly because I have an obsessive desire to keep track of everything and partly because I almost always know, without internal debate, which grade to give a book.  Imagine my surprise with Radio Shangri-La, a book I thought was well-written, interesting, and a good addition to the travel-memoir niche. The problem was that it just didn’t click with me—but at the same time I wanted to have a couple extra copies to give out as gifts.

“It’s not you, Radio Shangri-La ,it’s me.”

As I was browsing around the interwebs, checking out other folks’ reactions and trying to figure out why I really liked the book without loving it or connecting with it, I found a repeated sentiment that made me want to be a staunch defender of Radio Shangri-La. It was, of course:

“This book is just like Eat, Pray, Love.”

Really? You know how no one can talk about young adult novels without mentioning Twilight? Even if the book has nothing to do with anything remotely connected to Twilight? Apparently one cannot discuss a memoir written by a white lady without mentioning Eat, Pray, Love. Clearly even I am not immune to this, but at least it’s to make a point.

The ultimate problem with this book, for me, was that I wanted Napoli to find the truly unhappy people in the supposed happiest country on Earth. Call me a cynic, but there has to be a group of curmudgeonly folks somewhere in that place!

Ultimately, if you enjoy armchair traveling and a lack of negativity in your travel memoirs, this is the book for you.

Read an Excerpt

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Filed under 2011 Reviews, Non-Fiction, Print

June 23, 2011 · 9:24 AM

TLC Book Tour Review: Thoughts Without Cigarettes

Thoughts Without Cigarettes: A Memoir
by Oscar Hijuelos
Published June 2, 2011 by Gotham Books
Advance copy received for review from TLC Book Tours
384 pages

Have you ever wanted to sit down at the kitchen table and have a long chat with a Pulitzer-winner?  While this may not be within reach for most of us, reading Thoughts Without Cigarettes provides the same sort of experience without having to worry about spilling your coffee all over Oscar Hijuelos.

Upon his first trip to Cuba at a young age, Hijuelos contracted a bacteria infection that attacked his kidneys and, upon returning to the US, was sent to a convalescent hospital in Connecticut. His time here, surrounded for the first time by people who only spoke English, affected his understanding of Spanish and left him unable to communicate with his mother who did not know English. This removal from his family’s ancestral language leads him to question his “Cubaness,” as he calls it, through out his life.

While Hijuelos examines his family roots with sensitivity and introspection, he does not apply the same sort of insight regarding folks he is uncomfortable with, mainly gay men. For instance, on meeting William Burroughs:

I don’t even know if he was gay–at least he did not check me over the way some men downtown in the Village did during my occasional excursions to see a show or check out music. Instead he seemed like he would have been perfectly at home in some midwestern high school counselor’s office. (p. 212)

Hijuelos also worries at one point that by going to a therapist he is becoming a “faggot.” Because, you know, that’s what talking about your feelings with a professional does to a person. Obviously. In a similar vein, women, at least those outside his family, are only given a cursorily acknowledgement, mostly in his haste to describe his sexual encounters with them. I found the treatment of women and gay men offputting (to say the least), even while trying to cut Hijuelos some slack like I do with my macho Italian-immigrant relatives.

For the book nerds Hijuelos name checks a few other authors beyond William Burroughs, including John Irving (who Hijuelos seems to have admired a little for attracting ladies) and Alan Ginsburg (who Hijuelos didn’t take to because he was a) “homosexual” and b) a phony).

Overall Thoughts Without Cigarettes is an intriguing and heart-felt, if uneven, examination of one award-winning author’s life and path to success. The memoir is at its best when examining the author’s frustration with the lack of acknowledgement Latino authors receive and when examining his relationship with his father.

 

 

To read more reviews of Thoughts Without Cigarettes, check out the list of participating bloggers on the TLC site!

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Filed under 2011 Reviews, Non-Fiction, Print

February 7, 2011 · 8:25 AM

Review: Reality Bites Back by Jennifer Pozner

Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV
by Jennifer Pozner
Published 2010 by Seal Press
392 pages
Recommended by Melissa Harris-Perry via twitter (sadly, not directly)
Purchased by me from a local independent bookstore

Do you feel guilty for indulging in reality television? I will admit, for the merits of this post, to watching American Idol and Project Runway regularly, and being a former viewer of America’s Next Top Model, The Real World, Survivor–even, horrors of all horrors, Flavor of Love and Rock of Love. And these are just the ones that I watched for entire seasons.

Chances are, if you’ve watched American reality shows, you’ve either pretended not to, or you’ve followed the sentence “I watch [reality show name here]” with “But just because it’s funny.” In Reality Bites Back, Jennifer Pozner argues that watching reality television has consequences on culture that go beyond being merely entertaining; happily, she does it in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a terrible person for indulging. So rest assured: even if you can name all the winners of American Idol in order (ahem) or you can recite Tim Gunn’s favorite lines (“Use the bluefly.com accessory wall thoughtfully”), you won’t come away from this book feeling guilty for watching.

You will, however, feel a whole heck of a lot smarter and aware of the stereotypes and -isms (sexism, racism, classism, etc.) reality television perpetuates. It’s an excellent and readable feminist analysis of popular culture. With chapter titles like “Bitches and Morons and Skanks, Oh My!” Pozner keeps her humor cap on, fully aware of the ironies of “scholarship” and “reality television” while arguing convincingly that there is much to be done to make reality tv more inclusive and less reliant on typecasting and archetypes. The chapter I mentioned, for instance, lays out four tropes that reality tv relies on when portraying women:

1. Women are catty, bitchy, manipulative, and not to be trusted, especially by other women.

2. Women are stupid.

3. Women are incompetent at work and at home.

4. Women are gold diggers.

–p. 98-127

If you’ve ever watched any of these shows, I’m sure you can come up with a bunch of reality show “stars” who fit those categories. We can all agree, I hope, that women are more than, and better than, this–so why aren’t any of those women on reality shows?

The most unique, impressive part of Reality Bites Back, is that unlike many other feminist books on popular culture, there is a chapter full of resources on what you can do to make it better. There are drinking games (although Pozner thoughtfully encourages you to use non-alcoholic beverages because if you followed the rules with alcohol, you’d end up with alcohol poisoning). There is a “backlash bingo” game to help stay aware of the portrayals of women and minorities on the shows. There is a guide to writing useful protest letters to the networks that broadcast the shows. Instead of just leaving the reader angry without a way to be proactive about what’s going on, Pozner’s resources to fighting back will help you be mad and ready to do something about it.

Highly recommended to anyone who has ever watched and enjoyed a reality show (but cringes at the ridiculousness of it all).

Grade: A

Also: Pozner gets extra points for including a short essay from Julia Serano (author of the brilliant Whipping Girl) entitled “Improving Representation of Transgender People: Tips for Media Makers.” Can’t let that go unmentioned, since it made me really, really happy.

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Filed under 2011 Reviews, A, Gender Studies, GLBTQ, Non-Fiction