The Book Bear
Book Reviews by S. Bear Bergman
A quick note about this column: Since beginning this book review endeavor, I've started receiving dozens of books for review per month - some good, some bad, and some ugly. Since this column only has room for couple reviews per month, I'll be concentrating primarily on the best of the crop. If a particularly terrible or egregious book comes along, so bad that I think people ought to be warned, I'll make note, but this should be considered, in general, to be a recommended reading list - the highlights of that month's offerings. Enjoy.
February 2006
Tales of the Closet
Ivan Velez, Jr.
Planet Bronx
The same queer-teen comics I loved as a li'l queer Bear (and wore out
reading folded inside out on the train) have been reprinted in a lovely
bookstyle edition for queer teens of the new millennium. Whatever critiques
anyone might have of the artwork (which is admittedly somewhat rudimentary),
Velez nails the intense, internal struggles that GLBT folks so often
endure when weighing the freedom and humanity of coming out against
the expectations of the people in their lives. Especially lovely is
the unmistakable ear for teenaged internal narrative that Velez displays
- after suffering through a lot of pseudo-realistic young-adult fiction
it's a pleasure to read something that feels true.
Boy In The Middle
Patrick Califia
Cleis Press
Trust me when I tell you that I read Califia's collections for the
pleasure of it, and not to review. I could do the reviews by heart
at this stage: interesting character dynamics, scorching sex, hopeless
sentimental romanticism bubbling up through every crack, calculating
taboo smashing, and at least a couple of places where the book falls
open all on its own after a couple of weeks in my house. Check. After
twenty years of sizzling smut, Califia gets my vote for a Lifetime
Achievement Award and an annual stipend to facilitate devoting all
his time to enhancing our collective sexual consciousness. Bonus happiness
for a reprint of It Takes A Good Boy (To Make A Good Daddy), originally
serialized in the sadly-now-defunct early 90s dyke BDSM mag Venus Infers,
and deserving of another life in print.
Transgendering Faith
Tigert & Tirabassi, eds
Pilgrim Press
Clearly written with great love and the hope of acceptance and
understanding, Transgendering Faith more than meets its mark for
everything it sets
out to do - explain trans issues to Christian religious and lay leaders,
and offer suggestions for trans inclusion in those services. I might
wish that there were more genderqueer voices, or more non-Christian
information, but those things fall outside the job of the book and
with Tigert and Tirabassi having done such a marvelous with what
they set out to do I really should not complain. I am not a Christian
myself,
but it seems as though it be a great blessing to a Christian transperson,
a balm to whatever sore or wounded place had been hurt by rejection
of a community of faith.
Red Light: Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts
Anna Camilleri, ed
Arsenal Pulp
Oh, my goodness. From Mrs. Butterworth finally freed to Pam Grier
being channelled by a white man to the Virgin Mary reimagined as
a modern-day
welfare mother (and I think we know what would have happened to her
and the baby Jesus), this book raises and burnishes some female icons
to the luster they should have had and then on the other hand reminds
us how and why some of the others were created. I love this book
for being packed full of brilliant women writers and artists doing
long-delayed
justice to women whose contributions to the world got lost, stolen
or ignored by the hunters writing the history of the hunt, and for
providing me something with which to slap people who use the phrase "women's
work" is an insult.