This is not about how Pride Month was officially June and I am still getting through the books I planned on reading (though that would be a completely logical guess).
It is not about how although Pride Month is officially in June but Portland celebrates it in July (because of Rose Festival and graduation and everything). I was more aware of the timing because I volunteered there this year, so it was my first year attending.
This is more about how in my other reading I kept encountering queer authors.
I thought about titling this post "Is everybody gay?", but I was concerned that it could seem derogatory. Instead, I am going to save a really corny and obvious joke for the end.
The pieces started falling into place when I was reading How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler.
It would not have been unreasonable to read it for Asian-American heritage, or even science, but it came up because a friend recommended it and I had asked friends for their favorite books because of a reading challenge.
Imbler is queer.
I might not have even noticed that if more time had elapsed between reading How Far the Light Reaches and The Viral Underclass, whose author Steven Thrasher is also queer.
Of course, I was also reading Ocean Vuong and Demian DineYazhi in between.
Now, DineYazhi's work, An Infected Sunset, was inspired by the Pulse Nightclub shooting; I was reading that specifically for Pride. He nonetheless could fit comfortably into my Native American Heritage month reading, and probably will be mentioned when we get to that, just like Ocean Vuong was featured in the Asian-American reading.
The point is that the boundaries are blurring, and I think that's a good thing.
Often when there are attempts at representation, it is not done with very much thought. So, if we get a lesbian couple where one half is Black and one is of Asian descent, without any insight into how their backgrounds go together, that might not advance us as much as we would like. It will still make some people really angry, and it may help in terms of acclimatization to something other than a white monolith, but there are probably missed opportunities.
More people from a wide variety of experiences telling their stories and sharing their viewpoints helps in many ways. It can be more honest than even the best-intentioned white straight person checking boxes.
Consider The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. A gay Black man is probably going to have a more accurate perspective on that than I could. I encounter inequality in some ways, but there are ways in which privilege shelters me. I want to reach beyond that.
One interesting thing I just learned (from an e-mail from the Movement for Black Lives) is that October is LGBTQIA+ History Month. Now my writing is timely!
Sure, it seems like I should have already known that, and starting in the second half of Hispanic Heritage Month and going right to Native American Heritage Month could present some conflict, but the key is more to learn and remember, not the schedule. (Says the person who is always behind, and is now thinking that maybe October 2025 should focus on queer Latinx and Native American people, but there is a lot of indigenous overlap there anyway.)
If anyone is curious, other queer authors featured during Asian-American Heritage month were Laura Gao (Messy Roots), Trung Le Nguyen (The Magic Fish), and George Takei.
Around that time period I also read The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. That was more for science; I don't have a strict schedule there.
Ready for the corny joke?
Maybe the real Pride Month was the friends we made along the way.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/09/spotlight-on-george-takei-apahm-2024.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/09/summer-reading-challenges.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/08/graphic-novels-for-apahm-2024.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/07/spotlight-on-alice-wong.html
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