Volume 3, No. 4: What Do We Owe the Dead?

It's certainly more than "We Have Always Been Here"

Greetings, book people! Thank you for being here. It truly means the world to me.

The best books I read in January were all queer books published in the 20th century—Alexis by Marguerite Yourcenar, Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay, and At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid. So I’ve been thinking a lot about queer literary ancestry. I’ve been thinking about it since reading Lou Sullivan’s brilliant diaries We Both Laughed in Pleasure last year, and, truthfully, for a long time before that. I am always grappling with it. Sometimes it feels like the defining question of my life as a queer reader and writer: what does it mean, not only to honor, but to truly see, my literary history and lineage? This piece doesn’t include all I have to say on the subject. It is merely the beginning of a lifelong untangling.

This essay includes “spoilers” for Alexis and the film My Beautiful Launderette. I don’t think anything I write here will detract from your enjoyment of either work, but fair warni…