Dear Maggie Nelson,

I am grateful for what I imagine to be your endurance through the process of obtaining a Ph.D. so that you could command the audience to prove that a book does not have to be spoon-fed narrative pablum to be richly satisfying and saturated with the truths of the human condition, to inspire innovation and reinforce lesser-expressed ways of being that transcend the status quo and imagine a more liberated future.

Can we know The Garden of Eden for its queerness? Written by a queer man in a time that would not affirm him? 

As I watch my body reach for my phone over and over before I remember I’m not doing that anymore, and like a gift basket from The Universe, Dean Spade’s Love in a F*cked Up World arrives in my hands. 

Piepzna-Samarasinha’s thought-provoking work can help us to excavate any rugged (toxic) individualism we may have adopted, and rebuild our brains with collective care in mind. 

For those among us gasping for air these past few weeks, Undrowned, Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs  is a perfect companion to this moment. If you have not yet heard of it, please add to cart. Preferably from an indie bookstore.

I’m adding “NECESSARY” to the badges this paperback wears on its cover. 

Between Queers, this book is a necessary cathartic cry with a friend who gets it. Comforting. Loving. A cool drink of water or a cup of hot tea. Being seen. 

While the question is not directly asked in the text, multiple disappointments and betrayals are on display, and I pictured Orlando entertaining a question many trans people have asked themselves: “If this implicit gender performance I’ve been providing does not serve my happiness, why not just be myself?”

In What It Takes To Heal, Prentis Hemphill joins the renaissance chorus of voices who are singing us out of the dark ages of pathologizing the impacts of trauma, that age-old and expiring practice of making an individual wrong/bad for having perfectly reasonable responses to the oppressive systems they are tangled with.