Hugo Schwyzer

6 Responses to “Call for book suggestions”

1. 1 Stephen Frug
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   Still smarting over your thoughtless dismissal of stuff I both esteem and hold dear — editing it out notwithstanding — I have decided to be mean and recommend a …. gasp… comic book.

   But it actually a fabulous book. (Truth to tell I was trying to think of comics that might appeal to you, when I realized it would fit this too.) It’s called THE ESSENTIAL DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR, and is a best-hits collection of the comic strip by Allison Bechdel, which ran from the mid-1980’s to a few years ago. There’s a great deal that’s wonderful about it, including her satirical eye and fabulous ability with character. But relevant for this course is the way that you can see the lesbian community (portrayed accurately so far as I know, but I wasn’t there and haven’t read THAT much about it) changing over the time. It starts off with an all-lesbian cast, all quite dedicated to leftist politics as part of their identity, and then gets more complicated; bisexual and transexual characters slowly enter the strip. There are a host of different characters, some from the beginning, some who join in mid-stream, and it really portrays, well, a community.

   It’s a fabulous book. As a long-time Bechdel fan, I’m quite sad about all that got cut — only about 50% of the strips are there, and none of the many extras which were often the best part of the collected editions. But fortunately I still collect comic books after my adolescence, so I have all the old versions to read…

   Snark aside, I’m quite serious about the recommendation. It’s a fabulous portrait of a changing community, done in real-time over several decades. The best-of version is wonderfully done (the huge gaps evident to long-time readers will be invisible to you), and it will be very accessible to students — it’s fun, but they’ll get a great sense of change over time as they have the fun.

   So, seriously, check it out. If I were teaching a GLBTQ class (not my field, really, but I do do modern US history so it’s hardly out of the question (although I certainly include some in survey classes and the like)) I’d use it in a hot second.

2. 2 Bond
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

   I don’t know what’s on your syllabus already, but I can’t think of a more important book on the topic than Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues.

   And this is too new to be historical and more in the feminist and queer theory veins, but Whipping Girl by Julia Serano is incredibly good, too.

3. 3 Hugo Schwyzer
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

   These are all excellent suggestions. Thanks!

4. 4 John
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

   I came here all eager to contribute, but found my thunder already stolen–sorta. My suggestion is also Alison Bechdel, but I say get her autobiographical book, “Fun Home”. It’s a two-fer: Alison Bechdel herself showing how she grew up as a girl who was never comfortable withe any aspect of femininity, realizing as a college student that she was a lesbian, but also it’s about her father, who raised a family but was probably primarily gay. There are themes on openness and secrecy, what artists share, what families share, about death and love and how children see the world. It is altogether wonderful. It’s a person with incredible perception and intellect favoring the reader with entertainment.

5. 5 John
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

   Being a person of conscience, I have to fix something. I said Alison Bechdel’s father “raised a family but was probably primarily gay”. Of course anyone can raise a family, gay or straight! I meant that Bruce Bechdel made a heterosexual marriage, but the conflicts involved in his life as a married man made for constant tension in the family. As an adolescent, Alison caught a glimpse of the New York gay community, and later wondered whether her father would have been happier there, although she recognized that then, her own existence would have been impossible. It’s paradoxes like that which make the book so interesting.

6. 6 Stephen Frug
   Nov 17th, 2009 at 6:36 pm

   Fun Home is also fabulous, and I recommend it whole-heartedly. And it certainly *could* provoke good discussion in a GLBTQ History class. But I think ESSENTIAL DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR would be better in that context.

   Both awesome books though. What can I say? Bechdel rocks.