Felt in the Jaw
Kristen N. Arnett
Split/Lip Press, 2017, 220 pages
$16.00

Sarahland
Sam Cohen
Grand Central Publishing, 2021, 208 pages
$15.99

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories
Lydi Conklin
Catapult, 2023, 256 pages
$16.95

Reviewed by Grace Gaynor

Felt in the Jaw by Kristen Arnett, Sarahland by Sam Cohen, and Rainbow Rainbow by Lydi Conklin are short story collections linked by their representations of lesbian and queer identities through varying narrative styles and contexts. Each collection invests in a thorough examination of themes such as exploration, self-discovery, transformation, isolation, and connection. These common investigations build bridges between each of these vibrant collections, allowing their stories to stand out as unique examinations of identity.

Within each collection, exploration and self-discovery are represented through literal and figurative journeys. In Sarahland, characters are constantly searching for and finding new ways of expressing themselves and understanding the world. Readers are invited on this exploratory expedition through the lush, second-person narration of “Dream Palace,” the fourth piece in the collection. The narrator of “Dream Palace” places the reader within the story by simply stating, “Now you are Sarah. Here you go, driving down the highway…” (91) and later saying, “You’re running away, untethered, a girl and her car and a thousand dollars you’ve saved from tips. You want to start over you think and why not do it this way” (91). As we travel within the enormous building that is the Dream Palace, we are oriented to the experiences of a Sarah, becoming intrinsically embedded in the world of Sarahland. Similarly, “Playing Fetch,” from Felt in the Jaw uses the second-person to send the reader on the journey of coping with grief. As the characters discover life after loss, the reader is required to adjust at the same pace, as the narrative seamlessly immerses readers into the life and perspective of Danielle, the narrator.

Self-discovery is a central theme in Rainbow Rainbow, particularly in the story “Pioneer.” Coco, a fifth-grade student who has always felt inherently different from those around her, experiences moments of clarity as she goes through a simulation of the Oregon Trail with her classmates. Though she may not have the exact words to describe her realizations, the story culminates with Coco’s understanding that her journey of self-discovery is just beginning: “Really, the end of the simulation was just the beginning. Coco knew that now. Not even Ms. Harper could help her. She pulled away and turned to face the yellow field, the milkweed, the curved path of cones. The sun was a low white hole in the sky. She would go on her journey now. She would set off” (108). In this moment, Coco realizes that her survival depends on her willingness to explore the reality of her gender nonconformity and identity. She understands she must embrace the things that disconnect and differentiate her from her peers.

Connection and isolation are explored at length in each collection, as these themes often serve as the foundation of narratives centered on lesbian and queer identities. In one instance, Felt in the Jaw’s “Blessing of the Animals” depicts the difficulty of isolation as Moira is severed from her church family and lifelong dream of a large, conventional wedding when her pastor casually refuses to perform a traditional ceremony for her and her partner. The narrative quietly represents the feelings of loneliness and isolation that come with embracing queer identity, while emphasizing the value of gaining sustenance from acceptance and connection through images of Moira’s supportive partnership.

This theme of sustenance through connection is similarly explored within “Pink Knives,” the third story in Rainbow Rainbow. The narrative opens with the following images: “We meet in the plague. Your gray roots have grown out four or five inches into the red—we’re that deep in. We sit on opposite hips of a circle printed on the grass in a crowded public park in San Francisco” (57). The narrator, after describing the circumstances in which the two main characters meet, discusses those around them in a swirl of connection, at odds with the aforementioned “plague”:

Around us are first-date kisses, teens huddled dangerously close together on tarps, techies dancing to rubberized jewel-toned radios. Everyone massing into Dolores Park for whatever they need: sex, friendship, family, work meetings, chess lessons, air, rigorous jump rope, letting their toddlers scream like wolves, pudgy arms extended, anticipating a fall (57).

Against a backdrop of isolation imposed by uncertainty and illness, the main character makes connections that provide them with new insight into the reality of their gender identity. In this way, Rainbow Rainbow’s “Pink Knives” is a story about queer survival and the ways isolation and connection, though often at odds with each other, might work in tandem to provide us with self-knowledge.

Connection is further explored in Sarahland’s “Exorcism, or Eating My Twin,” as Cohen explores the formation of an intense bond between two characters. The narrator, Sarah, speaks intensely about her “twin,” whom she has renamed Tegan: “It turned out, of course, that we’d both been solitary children, obsessed with Stephen King and Tori Amos. We’d both grown up lying on quilted girlbeds biting our cuticles and feeling an intense sense of missing, of pining for a twin” (70). These perceived similarities between the two characters escalate Sarah’s feelings of attachment and dependence. When the seemingly sudden severance of the connection forces her to exist on her own once again, she struggles to make a life outside of her relationship with Tegan. The emphasis placed upon this struggle makes this narrative a contemplation of the ways isolation and connection work together to create charged relationships imbued with unwieldy power.

Each collection also explores the way long-term relationships and the people within them transform over time. Felt in the Jaw’s “Aberrations in Flight” depicts a growing distance between two partners set against a backdrop of death and the complications associated with house renovation, which magnify the tedium within the relationship. As the story comes to a close, the narrator, Amber, realizes that her partner, Elizabeth, is no longer the person she fell in love with and asks: “How do you reconcile loving two different versions of a person?” (188). The first story in Rainbow Rainbow, “Laramie Time,” seeks to answer this question in the context of the uncertainty and doubt embedded in their struggling relationship. Leigh, the story’s narrator, is torn between continuing her difficult relationship or coping with the pain of leaving a person she loves, a turmoil represented when she says: “This person had lied to me. She was happier than she could admit; she was thriving. My heart lifted for her joy, even if it was separate from me” (28). In the end, the dissolution of the partnership allows the story to stand out as a meditation on the impact of insurmountable change on a relationship.

“Becoming Trees,” the eighth story in Sarahland, opens with a line that centers on the pressure associated with transformation: “It began in the season when everyone was changing” (155). The narrator discusses the tension related to this overwhelming sense of change, noting that “it seemed like everyone was wrapping themselves in chrysali and having late-in-life emergences as different kinds of creatures, and what this made clear was that we weren’t becoming anything. We felt like caterpillars who didn’t know that being a caterpillar wasn’t the endgame” (155). This lack of becoming dramatically impacts the narrative’s main couple, Jan and Sarah, who feel inadequate in their lives and relationships as normal people. Soon, they make the decision to trade in their physical bodies and become trees, hoping to strengthen their relationship and escape the expectations of a rigid society. In the same way, the stories within Sarahland transform and shift the expectations associated with traditional narrative structures and systems. Retellings, recastings, and refusals support the queer power of this collection.

Each of these story collections hold valuable perspectives on human experience, most notably in the context of identity and connection. The experience of reading these collections comparatively might allow readers to gain new understandings of themselves and others.

Grace Gaynor is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. She earned her BA in English from Hollins University and is currently an MFA student studying creative writing at Virginia Tech. She is a Sinister Wisdom intern and serves as an editor for the minnesota review and SUNHOUSE Literary.

Still Alive
LJ Pemberton
Malarkey Books, 2024, 290 pages
$19.00

Reviewed by Rae Theodore

LJ Pemberton’s Still Alive is a raw, evocative exploration of love, self-discovery, and the relentless quest for meaning against the backdrop of a fractured American landscape. The novel traces the tumultuous journey of V, a bisexual temp worker whose life is intricately entangled with Lex, a butch painter. Pemberton’s narrative deftly captures the poignant complexities of V’s relationships and personal growth, weaving a story that is both deeply intimate and widely resonant.

From the moment V meets Lex at an underground punk show, their chemistry ignites a whirlwind romance that drives much of the novel’s emotional core. “We’re waiting and she says her name is Lex. The x trips off like every other name is lacking without it” (17). Pemberton’s prose is both lyrical and incisive, capturing the dynamics of love, heartbreak, and obsession. I found myself going back and re-reading sentences to let the words roll around on my tongue a little longer.

Lex, with her artistic flair and strong presence, becomes a central figure in V’s search for stability and identity. “There was poetry in the way she carried groceries from the store. There was meaning in the way she ignored responsibility. I wanted her. I wanted to be her. I barely knew myself,” V acknowledges (22).

However, their on-again, off-again relationship is far from idyllic, punctuated by the dysfunction of V’s family, which looms over her like a specter. “The problem is I know how it all ends, in blood and quiet, and I learned that final lesson when I was too young to know what was routine and what was unusual and how everyone mixes up the two,” V says (276).

In parallel, the novel examines V’s relationship with Leroy, her gay best friend, who has chosen a more serene rural existence. Leroy’s peaceful life serves as a foil to V’s restless pursuit of meaning, highlighting her internal conflict and dissatisfaction. Pemberton skillfully portrays V’s inability to find contentment, whether in the structured routines of temp work or the conventional expectations of mainstream life.

Pemberton’s narrative is not merely a chronicle of V’s romantic entanglements and family discord–it’s also a profound meditation on the search for personal freedom and authenticity. V’s restless journey across the United States from New York City to Portland to Los Angeles symbolizes her broader quest for self-fulfillment and a life defined on her terms.

Still Alive is a modern-day Rubyfruit Jungle that will resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with finding their place in a world that seems perpetually at odds with their true self. If you’ve rarely found yourself represented in a book, you just might catch a glimpse of yourself in Pemberton’s.

Rae Theodore (she/they) is the author of the memoir collections Leaving Normal and My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys and the poetry chapbook How to Sit Like a Lesbian. She is the story curator for the new anthology Swagger: A Celebration of the Butch Experience.

Your Dazzling Death: Poems
Cass Donish
Knopf, 2024, 128 pages
$24.00

Reviewed by Lya Hennel

Written for their late partner and poet Kelly Caldwell, in the aftermath of Kelly’s suicide, Cass Donish’s Your Dazzling Death is a beautiful and shattering elegy, taking us on a journey where love and grief meld as one.

In Your Dazzling Death, Cass invites us into a realm where everything can coexist. In their writing, present and past blend together; dreams meet reality and what could have been.

The collection paints their previous life together, starting with memories. Those poems are at once an ode to queer love, transness, and infinite transformation through the process of grief.

One can read it almost like an ongoing conversation with Kelly, in life and after, or as an altar to her. We share their mundane as much as their magic–the unforgettable, the precious moments which are striking with their beauty. Cass finds words where they are hard to find–in the in-betweens, capturing remarkably the immensity of grief. The absence someone leaves when they “shake themselves out of the world,” the questions we are left with, and “the question of surviving this” (5, 34, 77, 101).

The poet takes us to their next life, the one where Kelly is no longer. “Let me paint this / entire country / the colors of your face / the last time I / saw you alive” (6). In the face of loss, we witness the isolation of dealing with one’s grief as a global pandemic unfolds.

Different timelines and realities, one where “In another life / that’s how we go: that day, together. [...] You never make it to your other death” (18). Donish rewrites the present and the past, and creates infinite possibilities for them.

The theme of transness weaves through themes of rebirth and the constant state of becoming. Transcending as a way to become whole, responding to different rules, the same way grief suspends time, yet the world keeps moving.

“my is-are-were, have-been-is [...] I mourn you-her, her-you, who were born-dreamed [...] yet reinvented through an inner radiance, the radiance of a name, the name that is yours, the radiance that is-was yours” (33).

Nature is omnipresent in their words, they are magical instances, yet grounding. In the poem “Similitude,” lichen becomes a verb, and Kelly becomes part of everything.

Your Dazzling Death is an essential book that should be read more than once. With each reading, more layers unfold. It has been written as a companion book to Kelly Caldwell’s Letters to Forget.

Lya Hennel (they/them) is a Sinister Wisdom intern from France based in London, UK. They are passionate about queer art and literature, creating, and daydreaming.

The Italy Letters
Vi Khi Nao
Melville House, 2024, 192 pages
$18.99

Reviewed by Lara Mae Simpson

A broke writer living in a small apartment in Las Vegas, caring for her ailing mother while crafting long, emotional letters to her Italian lover in London, who’s married to a man. . . The premise of The Italy Letters sounds like an irresistible, unrequited sapphic love story–but the delivery feels more like wading through a depressive episode, with nothing but moments of beautiful prose to keep you afloat.

The Italy Letters plunges you right into the narrator’s stream of consciousness with no mercy. This wandering narrative style allows Vi Khi Nao to explore a wide range of pertinent, contemporary issues—as well as the narrator’s overarching desire—in a way that reflects the overwhelming nature of our modern-day life. Whether this translates well into an epistolary form, however, is uncertain. The novel is ostensibly a series of letters, but as the present-tense narrative (addressed to ‘you’) shifts between letter-writing and ‘writing’ through back-and-forth texts, the result is disorienting.

Through the fog of the narrator’s turbulent mind, what stands out are Nao’s insightful reflections on relationships and complex societal issues. Money is a key theme in the novel, and Nao shows how poverty makes every part of life near-impossible, from trying to make it as a writer when tickets to writers’ events are extortionate, to always losing teaching jobs at the university to white men. Money also casts a dark cloud over the narrator’s relationships–she struggles to care for her mother, not only because of her mother’s constant suicidal ideation, but also because she gambles all her money away. Her behaviour creates endless stress and guilt for her daughter, who then feels forced to write and publish as much as possible in case it makes any money. Furthermore, the narrator finds herself exploited by her best friend–in exchange for cheap rent, she does all the cooking and cleaning for her friend, is kept at home by her and not allowed to socialise with others, and is made to have uncomfortable sex with her.

When the narrator isn’t making incisive critiques about inequality—on both a societal and personal scale—she spends a lot of time trying to suppress her desire for her lover. The erotics of this novel are also a highlight–as suggested by the book’s cover, depicting a naked body holding a lemon between breast and arm. The narrator is unafraid to write about how her clitoris feels and to describe in-depth her dreams about having forbidden sex with her married lover. There is also a deep romance running through the novel—inherent in the art of writing letters, of course—and the moments of fondness and longing from across countries and time zones are often touching. The experience of loving a woman who loves a man is a very universal lesbian experience.

However, I wouldn’t have been left feeling so empty after reading this book if these lesbian love letters had more of a sense of direction. I love stream-of-consciousness narratives and how they can almost truly represent our chaotic minds, but Nao’s lack of structure did not land for me here. Perhaps the title—The Italy Letters—misled me, as I kept waiting for the lover to be in Italy, but she’s only ever in London, with the narrator in the US. The lover being Italian is only mentioned a handful of times. The only thing that breaks up the narrator’s letters is when she changes location–from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, for example. Perhaps if the novel was moving somewhere solid rather than ambling around like one’s thoughts in a journal, it would be more hard-hitting.

While The Italy Letters has instances of beauty, perceptive commentary, and even comedy, it did not resonate with me overall. However, it is clear that Nao is a highly talented writer, and I look forward to checking out more of her work and seeing where she grows from here.

Lara Mae Simpson (they/she) is a poet, writer, and editor based in London. Their work has been published by The Poetry Society, fourteen poems, Queerlings, and more. They were Literature Editor at STRAND Magazine, and they are currently Poetry Editor at Phi Magazine and part of The Writing Squad. You can see more of their work at www.laramae.com.

Queer Power Couples: On Love and Possibility
Hannah Murphy Winter, photographed by Billie Winter
Chronicle Books, 2024, 248 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Bailey Hosfelt

Journalist Hannah Murphy Winter and photographer Billie Winter explore the power of queer love and the politics of visibility in a collection of in-depth interviews and intimate photography in their new book, Queer Power Couples: On Love and Possibility. A collaborative project by the authors who are also wives, this release is both a visually beautiful art book and a thought-provoking read. It offers readers a glimpse into the rich lives of fourteen queer couples, spotlighting their thriving relationships, varied forms of creative expression, and personal and professional achievements.

Divided into three sections, the book interviews queer power couples, which the authors define as couples who are out, coupled, and able to influence mainstream culture across diverse industries and from different embodied perspectives. The book features famous partnerships such as Mike Hadreas and Alan Wyffels of Perfume Genius, Jenna Gribbon (artist) and Mackenzie Scott (musician known as Torres), Roxane Gay (author) and Debbie Millman (designer), and comic artists Molly Knox Ostertag and ND Stevenson, among others. The book also includes partners with successful careers in other fields, such as fine-dining chefs Samantha Beaird and Aisha Ibrahim, academic scholars Marilee Lindemann and Martha Nell Smith, and influential scientists Barbara Belmont and Rochelle “Shelley” Diamond.

Whereas Murphy Winter’s journalistic work often covers queer pain—namely, the laws, legislatures, and political administrations trying to erase queer people—Queer Power Couples intentionally deviates by centering queer joy and affirmation. As the authors write in the introduction, queer people must often locate queerness in small moments or nuances to find proof that they’re not alone, a process that involves “sifting for scraps” (10). In contrast, Queer Power Couples’ presentation of queerness is neither ephemeral nor implied. Instead, it offers an authentic showcase of queer individuals who are out and proud, spanning various ages, demographics, and lived experiences. By highlighting queer lives and amplifying their visibility, this book and its interview subjects make a crucial contribution to broader LGBTQ+ representation, especially for younger queer readers.

Queer Power Couples certainly spotlights its interviewees’ big wins, such as publishing a book, going on tour, and producing a television series. However, the book’s strengths ultimately lie in its emphasis on the joys in the smaller, everyday moments couples experience together: reading on the couch, walking a dog, or preparing a meal. Through these depictions, the authors celebrate the experiences of building and maintaining a life together, including its mundanities—something queer people often fear will forever remain out of reach.

In each interview, the authors asked couples the same question: Who was the first person you recognized as queer? Despite the same query posed to every couple, each conversation was unique. Insightful reflections emerged on how queerness intersects with other identities—such as female, trans, immigrant, Black, Muslim, Christian, Southerner, and parent—and how interview subjects navigated these aspects of themselves, both in times of conflict and harmony.

Murphy Winter’s journalistic chops draw out stimulating meditations from the interview subjects on what it means to step outside the confines of heteronormativity. Winter’s photography (in both black and white and color) provides tender insight into the couples’ lives and loves. With full-page spreads dedicated to both words and photography, and pages that intersperse or alternate between the two, Queer Power Couples gives equal weight to the visual and written, allowing each medium to shine and interlace with the other.

In addition to Winter’s photography, the work includes self-portraits taken by couples and photos partners took of each other. These provide the work with greater intimacy and highlight the relationship between seeing and being seen. Much like lesbian photographers Joan E. Biren (JEB) and Donna Gottschalk, Winter captures couples’ intimacy and connection by photographing them in physical locations that are part of the world they have built together, establishing increased authenticity in her images.

As a quote from Dr. Ilan Meyer, a researcher at UCLA’s Williams Institute, emphasizes early in the book, “A happy gay couple is, in the context of history, a very revolutionary idea” (21). Queer Power Couples celebrates queer life and love, introducing readers to “a catalog of trails that have already been carved out by queer people who are changing the world in their own way, not in spite of their queerness, but at least, in part, because of it” (246). Queer Power Couples is a resonant read, offering queer readers “more maps, torches, and possible selves” (246), just as its authors hoped it would.

Bailey Hosfelt is a lesbian writer. She recently graduated with a master’s degree in gender and women’s studies from UW–Madison, where she wrote a thesis on Dyke TV and queer activist infrastructure. Previously, Bailey lived in Brooklyn, New York and worked as a journalist for local newspapers. Bailey lives in Chicago with her partner and their two cats, Hilma and Lieutenant Governor.

The Avian Hourglass
Lindsey Drager
Dzanc Books, 2024, 212 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Sara Youngblood Gregory

Author and professor Lindsey Drager’s latest novel, The Avian Hourglass, is a kaleidoscopic, rigorous, and sometimes disorienting movement through speculative fiction and surrealism.

Written in the first person, the novel follows an unnamed narrator struggling to manage her life in a small, sometimes claustrophobic town. The narrator is a bus driver but dreams of becoming a radio astronomer, dutifully studying to take the exam she has already failed four times. Meanwhile, she acts as the legal guardian to triplets—children she gave birth to as a gestational surrogate but whose parents died in a car accident before the novel’s opening. As if this weren’t enough, the narrator, her children, and a patchwork of town folks must grapple with The Crisis, a looming and insistently vague upheaval that disappears birds, covers the stars, and acts as a stand-in for environmental and political degradation and emotional estrangement.

However, if you are expecting a typical end-of-the-world novel about loneliness, climate change, and the human spirit, The Avian Hourglass is a different beast entirely. Rather than focus on the material pursuits of apocalypse—like food or pollution or gathering supplies—Drager is concerned with emotional and linguistic sustenance. The narrator frequently considers etymology, memory, birds’ nests, planets, and legends with an almost orbital obsession.

Near the novel’s opening, the narrator shares some of these stream-of-conscious, cyclical thoughts:

“Luce tells me the world effect comes from the Old French and Latin for completion, result, accomplishment, and ending. Intent, she says, comes from intend, which in Old French means to stretch or extend. The problem is this: the idea of having intention—the idea of having control over effects by altering their causes—seems silly when my deja vu confirms for me that every move I make was meant to be. This is how I know I’ll pass the test” (18).

At times, these musings are arresting—at others confusing—but perhaps all the more powerful for it. All in all, The Avian Hourglass is a compelling, intellectual, and emotionally-charged take on climate fiction.

Sara Youngblood Gregory is a lesbian journalist and poet. She serves on the board of directors for Sinister Wisdom.

The Land is Holy
noam keim
Radix Media, 2024, 180 pages
$24.95

Reviewed by Courtney Heidorn

“My blood is trying to tell me something, and in the dark of the house I am trying to listen” (15).

In The Land is Holy, noam keim crafts lyrical essays, each braided with profound metaphors containing miles of connections across generations and geography. Through stories of storks, aoudads, and linden tea, the reader witnesses a mosaic of keim’s ethnic and cultural reality. keim is a Jewish Arab born in Occupied Palestine, who spent their childhood and young adulthood in France, and finally moved to Turtle Island in their adulthood. The Land is Holy is a gift for readers searching for a home in our postcolonial world.

For keim, home sometimes means freedom and exile. Their complicated relationship with home is put into perspective with their striking natural metaphors. Like keim, the aoudad has an interesting history of migration and displacement. They write, “The aoudads have switched homes, trading their ancestral West to the West of the new world” (33). This migration and displacement is keim’s lived experience. All of keim’s geographical homes are tainted by histories of conquest and colonization, so they must find true home amidst grief. They lament, “I am grieving and I want to blame geography for my grief. If I were home, I wouldn’t feel grief anymore” (40, italics theirs). What is home, then? Geography? A feeling? People? To keim, home may be constant migration.

Birds are an important motif in The Land is Holy, but their prime function is to display the natural reality of movement and liberation. keim recounts a rare outdoor prison visit with their friend, where they see a starling fly over. At this time, they were discussing liberation (24). The collection opens with a stork flying home for spring: “They will return. Storks always find their way back home” (12). keim suggests that migration, seasonal travel towards a place that meets your needs, is liberation. Starlings and storks know when and where to fly by instinct. Their act of flying home, and keim’s act of discerning their own home, should be as natural as breathing.

keim leaves the proverbial nest of their childhood to answer the call of liberation. When she is young, keim’s mother changes her name from Hassiba to Hassida. Just one letter changes the meaning of her mother’s name to the Hebrew word for stork, “becoming the only home she would know” (16). Hassida’s chosen name is the driving theme of this collection. However, keim has not spoken to their mother since they left France. Despite this, they write: “I seem to always return to the feeling of being my mother’s child” (17). Their relationship with their mother is a place of deep love yet also hurt, requiring sacrifice and grief. Like the stork, keim always finds their way back home to their mother, albeit metaphorically.

keim discusses how important the concept of flâne is to them; it directly translates to “wander,” “stroll,” or “saunter” aimlessly. But to them, it gains a political meaning: flâne is “the holiness of the unplanned, the cycles of rebirth that come from experiencing new realities” (145). The reader must practice flâne when reading The Land is Holy. This collection of essays is meant to be wandered through. Read only a few essays at a time and savor its holy land.

Courtney Heidorn (she/they) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Azusa Pacific University. You can see more of their work in their chapbook, Palimpsest, from Bottlecap Press and at CURIOUS Magazine and Pearl Press.

Queer Art: From Canvas to Club, and the Spaces Between
Gemma Rolls-Bentley
Frances Lincoln (Quarto), 2024, 240 pages
$35.00

Reviewed by Bell Pitkin

Divided into three acts, renowned curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley explores how contemporary LGBTQI artists have utilized various mediums to explore ideas of queer space, queer bodies, and queer power in her new book: Queer Art: from Canvas to Club, and the Spaces Between. Whether you’re an artist, a curator, or just an admirer of the arts, this book is required reading. Rolls-Bentley goes beyond providing historical context and looks to the ways in which queer art and visual culture have radically shaped and aided our communities. She writes, “Queer people channel the power to redress realities: excavating queer histories and distilling lessons of the past to create a foundation upon which to project, manifest, and build better futures, new ways of being, and new worlds” (214).

Included in the list of highlighted artists are many who have collaborated with Sinister Wisdom, such as Tee Corinne, whose photograph graced the cover of Issue 3, Clarity Haynes, whose oil painting was featured in the 2023 calendar, and JEB (Joan E. Biren), who has been a long-time collaborator and friend of the journal. In addition to providing more context about some of my favorite queer artists, there were many names I was pleased to be introduced to, including drag king Whiskey Chow, cubist painter Nina Chanel Abney, and documentary photographer Bex Wade. As the years pass and the shape of art continues to change, I’m excited to see which artists join those listed in these pages. There’s so much beauty that’s yet to be created.

All art is magical, but queer art is especially magical. Of the more than two hundred artists included in Queer Art, each has used their creativity to explore their identity, share their unique perspectives, and advocate for their community. Take inspiration from the beauty within these pages and create your queertopia.

Bell Beecher Pitkin is a multi-media artist who lives and works between Charlotte, North Carolina and Boston, Massachusetts. They received their bachelor of arts from Wellesley College, where they studied Cinema and Media with a concentration in Photography. Within their practice, Bell works primarily with medium format photography to explore notions of the archive, family, and the queer identity, often situated in the landscape and mysticism of the Southern United States. Bell currently serves as the Gallery Manager for the Leica Boston Gallery and as a Curatorial Assistant for Sinister Wisdom.

All In: Cancer, Near Death, New Life
Caitlin Breedlove
AK Press, 2024, 152 pages
$18.00

Reviewed by Margaret Zanmiller

Caitlin Breedlove’s All In delivers a raw experience of an often ignored queer woman’s perspective concerning an ovarian cancer diagnosis. The memoir follows Breedlove from winter 2021 to autumn 2022, though readers are occasionally transported to Breedlove’s life before her diagnosis and to moments with ancestors. Breedlove encourages us as readers, all experiencing a collective sickness, to understand the cycles of our lives, be in communion with our ancestors and community, embrace change, and move forward with radical honesty. We are living in a time when disability is becoming more common for the American people. Our institutions ignore COVID-19 and other mental and physical illnesses, and our support for the disabled community wavers. Breedlove shares her experience with disability, working against persistent erasure.

Breedlove writes for mothers, queers, immigrant daughters, those passed on, and those surviving with cancer (27; 119). Stories from people like Breedlove fight against the traditional expectation to erase sickness and death from Western culture and discourse. Through engagement with stories such as Breedlove’s, change and suffering become a little more approachable simply because we no longer feel we are doing it alone. Breedlove notes the small number of books about cancer written by and for oppressed individuals. Breedlove, in the personal process of becoming a ‘filled bowl,’ is filling a collective bowl with her story. She approaches her story of cancer and near death with care, love, and empowerment. She adds new and collective tools to dismantle the masters’ house. For example, her descriptions of pain and near-death help to dismantle the white supremacist ideals of perfectionism and individualism (Okun, 2021) we typically find in books written by white women with cancer.

Themes of this chronology include motherhood, queerness, and Eastern European spirituality and culture. Readers searching for depictions of motherhood in all its pain and glory, the safety and healing of queer communities, and the beautiful simplicity of spirituality should be pleased with this book.

Towards the end of the book, Breedlove addresses her repetitive approach to writing; she states that this repetition reflects her natural state of forgetfulness that comes with sickness and opioid usage (95). I think the book’s repetitive nature also emphasizes a necessary approach to our collective struggles. Our brains and, often, our social status protect us from hearing what invokes change. We are rightfully rehearing and repeating congruent lessons. This (un)learning furthers our ability to be intersectional and non-binary in our thinking. Each lesson relearned directly challenges our individualistic comfort, our collective comfort, and our regime’s stability. The institutions around us, the systems that rule the Western world, work tirelessly to erase our stories and our progression. They encourage the disregard and silence surrounding our stories. Breedlove chronicles herself. She writes fully in her life, body, mind, and spirit.

Overall, Breedlove’s story is not just her own, but our collective experience with an oppressive state demanding overwork, overproduction, and silent death. She uses a refreshing writing style that inspires acceptance and confidence. In this book, readers sit with the reality of our collective sickness, the power of our stories, and our ability to be reborn alongside the ever-changing world.

Margaret Zanmiller is a Saint Paul dyke with a BA in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from the University of Minnesota.

Private Rites
Julia Armfield
Flatiron Books, 2024, 304 pages
$27.99

Reviewed by Catherine Horowitz

When will you know that the apocalypse has arrived? When will the realization come that we’ve progressed too far in destroying the world to reverse it? Julia Armfield’s speculative novel Private Rites is a vivid depiction of an apocalypse of the mundane, where people make gradual adjustments to the world’s worsening conditions, ultimately doing what it takes to continue their lives around it.

In the world of Private Rites, there is heavy rainfall every day, with only a few minutes of respite. Water levels continue to rise. People live on the upper floors of collapsing high-rise buildings and take public boats to work, while the wealthy flee to less affected areas and use advanced technology to delay being impacted. This didn’t happen all at once; it was a gradual decline, with fewer and fewer sunny days until people were stuck trying to remember the last sunburn they had.

Amid this, Isla, Irene, and Agnes must navigate the death of their father and their own strained relationships. Isla is a high-strung eldest daughter, Irene is short-tempered, and Agnes, ten years younger than her sisters, is distant and impossible to reach. Their father was an acclaimed architect who designed many of the buildings adapted to the rising water levels but was absent and sometimes cruel to his daughters. The sisters are forced together when he dies and find themselves entrenched in conflicts both familial and widespread.

At its core, Private Rites is a beautiful and lifelike depiction of sibling and family relationships and their complexities. It puts words to facets of sibling relationships I hadn’t thought to name, like the “strange back-dated nature of the things [siblings] choose to know” about you and how uniquely frustrating this is.

There is another layer of complexity as well: how to navigate one’s personal life during the literal apocalypse. Is it worth it to try to work through relationships or to grow as a person when the ocean could rise about your apartment any day? Although our world may not feel quite as dire as this one, it can still be challenging to balance both one’s personal life and the fact that the planet is burning and people are suffering in a much more pressing way.

Armfield is also a thoughtful and meticulous world-builder, constructing a landscape that extends far beyond the confines of the book. The world-building goes down to the smallest details, like the fact that people drink chicory coffee because coffee beans can’t grow anymore, cremations are mandated by law since it’s impossible to bury bodies, and the cleaner, more controlled suburbs are called the “millponds.” The landscape of Private Rites is as important as its plot, and Armfield makes it feel both real and terrifyingly feasible.

While Private Rites starts off slow-paced, focusing primarily on its three protagonists and their histories, relationships, and daily lives, Armfield scatters hints throughout the landscape that something more catastrophic is coming. This sense of anticipation grows gradually throughout the book, which turns from a slice-of-life novel set at the end of the world into a thriller. For the last third of the book, I couldn’t put it down.

There is also the King Lear element of the book, which is labeled as a “speculative reimagining.” The parallels are clear: a powerful father dies and causes conflict in dividing his properties among his three daughters. The youngest daughter is the clear outlier. Tense familial relationships lead to destruction. I wouldn’t exactly call Private Rites a reimagining, though; I would say it exists in conversation with King Lear. The plots diverge in ways that sometimes feel like deliberate inversions but more often feel unrelated. It might be a fun exercise for someone familiar with both texts to further interpret them in comparison, drawing out thematic parallels and significant differences. Ultimately, though, while knowledge of King Lear might be rewarding in some ways, it isn’t necessary to understand Private Rites and its larger themes.

Private Rites is a thoughtful, moving book that intertwines a personal story with a larger climate catastrophe. Although thrilling and fast-paced at the end, its larger world and multifaceted characters are what make it powerful. It’s also a masterful representation of rain and wateriness; I’ve never felt more relieved to emerge into hot, sunny weather.

Catherine Horowitz is a writer and teacher living in Washington, D.C. She earned a B.A. in English and Jewish Studies from Oberlin College. You can find her other work in Bright Wall/Dark Room, New Voices, and the Jewish Women’s Archive.