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.
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