The even lonelier city

Exactly six years ago, in the midst of the pandemic, we read Olivia Laing's essay collection The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. If you weren't with us then, or want to refresh your memory about Laing's work, here is a link to the various posts on that subject on this blog.

I bring this up because Laing has just published a powerful op-ed in The Guardian that builds on the thesis of The Lonely City to argue that "Far-right groups prey on loneliness, using the feelings of being left behind, isolated, disregarded and ignored as a recruitment tool, and offering potent narratives that stoke grievances and displace vulnerability on to other bodies that can be hated and attacked." It's well worth your time.

A homegrown D.C. queer story

During our group's illustrious 27-year history (and counting), we've read just a handful of books set in Washington, D.C., or the region. (And most of those are political or policy volumes.) Happily, a new novel sounds like a contender for our next reading list, as a way to start rectifying that sin of omission.

Benny B. Peterson’s debut novel, The Maidenheads, tells the story of an experimental punk duo in the early 2010s. D.C. native Jamie, a singer who (in a somewhat fictionalized version of Jackson-Reed High School) meets an enchanting musical collaborator and first queer love in the bullheaded Mari. Together they create the Maidenheads, an experimental punk duo on the cusp of success when their precarious romance falls apart.

In a Washington Post article Peterson explains: “It’s important for people to know that there’s a real city here, with real people and real culture and real history and a really vibrant music scene and a really vibrant queer scene,” they said. “I wanted to show a world that a lot of people don’t realize exists.”

"Here's My Story"

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide has published Here's My Story, an anthology of articles from its popular online feature with that title. The compilation highlights personal stories centering queer people, in particular those about coming out and finding love and community.

Thanks to generous support from the Leonard-Litz Foundation, the G&LR is able to provide free copies of the ebook to LGBT groups and centers, including BookMen DC. Thanks, G&LR! I'll provide the link and further details in my weekly missive.

LGBTQ Poetry (pre-Pride Month edition)

I've been meaning to post one of my periodic compilations of LGBTQ+ poetry featured in the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter for months now, but never got around to it. But the AAP's announcement that it will spotlight that niche throughout June has given me the incentive to play catch-up by sharing LGBTQ+ poetry disseminated from February through May. Enjoy!

the art of losing by Rabha Ashry

[ ] by Ladan Osman

Window Art by Kwame Dawes

The Emperor Pats His Lips with a Napkin by Sanam Sheriff

Audience by Derrick Austin

Ladletime: Night Time by Hrayr Varaz

Our Book of Delights by Arielle Hebert

Love Poem to Taco Bell by Rebecca Bornstein

Aubade on Piazza del Popolo with Saxophonist and Chopin

by Ashna Ali

Assault by Diannely Antigua

Correct the Record, Can We? by Adam Falkner

The Guardian's 100 best novels list

As it has done roughly once a decade, The Guardian recently polled a panel of 170 writers, each of whom selected 10 books, to compile a list of "The 100 Best Novels of All Time."

Such efforts are inherently subjective, of course, but The Guardian cast a wide net: Any book published in English, but originally written in any language, was eligible. Depending on how strictly one defines LGBTQ literature (Does an author have to be "out" to count? What about straight authors who present gay love stories?), between 10 and 15 of the novels would fit that rubric--including Virginia's Woolf To the Lighthouse. That one came in #4, just after her arch‑rival James Joyce and his modernist epic Ulysses. In fact, with five novels on the list, Woolf is the most voted for writer–beating Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, with four each.

We haven't read that one (yet), but did discuss Orlando (#54) back in 2010. Other novels from the list we've discussed include: The Left Hand of Darkness (#89) by Ursula K. LeGuin, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (#87), Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley (#84), James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (#44)--but not Go Tell It on the Mountain (#79)--Alice Walker's The Color Purple (#65), and E.M. Forster's Howards End (#60). Curiously, we've never discussed any Henry James novels, three of which made the list: The Turn of the Screw (#86), The Golden Bowl (#52) and The Portrait of a Lady (#21)--though we have read his short story, "The Beast in the Jungle" (still one of the most chilling works in that genre, in my own not-so-humble opinion).

Oh, and the top choice? George Eliot's Middlemarch.

The Rolling Stone explained

To save other readers the frustration I felt at trying to decode the title of the Chris Urch play we'll be discussing tonight, "The Rolling Stone," here is the answer: "It was inspired by the name of a Ugandan tabloid newspaper that in 2010 published the names, addresses and photographs of 100 supposedly gay Ugandan men, accompanied by the banner headline “Hang Them.” The paper, which bore no relation to the American music-themed magazine, was in existence for only four months before it was shut down by the Ugandan High Court. But not before a gay rights activist identified in the article was brutally murdered in his home as a result of the exposure."

That information comes from a review in the Hollywood Reporter of a 2019 production of the play. Spoiler alert: The critic was not at all impressed. However, this compilation of reviews of other presentations of "The Rolling Stone" includes some very positive ones.

Meet Chris Urch

Let me confess to a lazy assumption about Chris Urch, whose play, The Rolling Stone, we will be discussing tomorrow night. Because the story takes place in Uganda, and the characters are all black, I assumed Urch is, too. Well, we all know what happens when we assume! :-).

In fact, Urch is a very Caucasian Englishman, judging by his photo. He was moved to write the play after reading coverage of the debate in the Ugandan Parliament of the bill popularly known as "Kill the Gays" (though life in prison replaced execution as the penalty in the final version). As he commented in a 2019 interview, “My play was inspired by real events, but the characters are fictional. I wanted to highlight a political issue through a love story between two men and through the conflicting loyalties in a family when one of the members is gay.”

After the Ugandan High [= Supreme] Court struck down the law as unconstitutional in 2014, Parliament considered various revisions over the following decade. It ultimately passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, which President Yoweri Museveni signed into law in March 2023. Warning: The act's provisions make for harrowing reading.

Nor is Uganda an outlier, sadly. “Initially,” Urch said, “I worried that the story the play tells wouldn’t stay relevant. But it has. It was done in Australia during the debate there over same-sex marriage, and in Brazil, which has the highest murder rate in the world of LGBT people. On our planet right now, there’s still tremendous violence against gay people, and there’s a more general upsurge of people’s rights being taken away. This play sadly couldn’t be more relevant right now.”