Queer Community Book Club
2020 hit us all pretty hard. Many of us were struck with deep isolation and a desperate need for community. Worse yet, lockdown came at a time of increased political hostility toward (and within) the LGBTQ+ community. People needed connection more than ever. That's where James Young (He/They) - co-founder of Queery, educator and activist - stepped in and created Queer Community Book Club (QCBC)!
In partnership with The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center, Queery now hosts QCBC to invite LGBTQ+ and allied communities to come together to read and discuss a variety of LGBTQ+ literature.
Join us:
For a weekly discussion on:
"Exile and Pride"
When: Every Saturday, 10-11 AM EST
Where: Zoom
How: Register with The LOFT
Get your book here
Our Next 3 Books
"Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation"
By Eli Clare
First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.
Get your book here
"How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays"
By Alexander Chee
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing — Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley — the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump
Get your book here
"Female Husbands: A Trans History"
By Jen Manion
Female Husbands: A Trans History is a history book by Jen Manion, a professor of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College, published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press.
Get your book here
QCBC is founded on 4 core principles -
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Community is core - We are a community first and foremost, that uses books to lead us into discussions and connections and a book club second.
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Your voice matters - We utilize literature as a means of exploring new perspectives, as well as a way of exploring our own lived experiences.
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There is always something new to learn - and that's a beautiful thing!
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No book? No problem! - Come as you are and jump into the conversation as the readings we discuss are about our lives. Through the generous donations of supporters, QCBC has offered books to club members. Not being able to afford a book QCBC is reading should NOT stop you from participating if you wish to. Click Here Queer Community Book Club Book Request to find out more about how to get a book donation. If you don't have time to read or don't have a book yet, come for the community instead!
