Quoted: Christopher Bram on queer writers and queer readers

The problem isn't that don't have enough good books or good writers, but that we need more good readers. [...] But let's admit an ugly truth here: real readers -- readers hungry, curious, open-minded readers of fiction in particular and good books in general -- gay and straight -- are a minority, every bit as freakish as the minorities that make up the alphabet soup of the LGBT.  -- Christopher Bram from Mapping the Territory

I was a little hesitant to post this quote, though I agree with the sentiment behind it. It's not really popular or smart to promote a hierarchy of readers, lest you enjoy being called an elitist, but there's a quite a bit of truth here: there aren't enough readers, especially readers of fiction.

Reading: Julia Serano, Sarah Shulman, and Lori Duron

I have a few brief book reviews with a couple more in the wings I'll try to get to before the end of next week. I'll start with Lori Duron's Raising My Rainbow which was better than I had anticipated, and at times, still frustrating in the way that books about LGBT kids written by their straight parents often are. I've never been a reader of her blog about the day-to-day of her gender non-conforming son (whom she alternately calls "gender creative"). For parents, for mainstream readers, it's a charming, fast read, and she avoided all the problematic "born in the wrong body" tropes, but I thought the contrast between her younger and her older, gender-conforming son whom she several times refers to as "all boy" was a little unnecessary.

Julia Serano - Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive
I'm a big fan of Julia Serano. Whipping Girl was the first feminist book I'd read in a long time that really made sense to me, and helped to clarify some of my ambivalence toward the "gender is entirely a construct" trope. Feminism has a long-standing tradition of hostility toward trans* women, and queer communities tend to privilege masculine-identified people first, so this was sorely needed. Plus I really like that it's academic without being alienating.

Sarah Schulman - People in Trouble
This twenty year-old novel set in the days of ACT-UP and AIDS activism is great as a historical tractate and as a really good novel. I love the interplay between gay men and lesbians where most LGBT fiction tends to be either/or. As someone who reads character driven fiction almost exclusively, this is one of Schulman's bests alongside Rat Bohemia.