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Category: Queer Perspectives

  • Feast on the Fierceness of Ballroom in All Its Categories

    By Ricky Tucker | This was one of the first images my friend and “And the Category Is . . .” photographer Kareem Worrell developed while I was writing the book—and it became an aspirational photo. The audacity of Lee, the central figure, drove my urge to match in tone his ferocity in the first…

  • Making Ways Out of No Way: A Native American Heritage Month Reading List

    President Biden sure is making up for lost time. At this year’s tribal nations summit, skipped over the previous four years by you know who, he signed an executive order for the US to take steps to protect tribal lands and address the epidemic of missing and murdered Native Americans. He proposed a ban on…

  • The Dangerous Myths About the Trans Community in Dave Chappelle’s Comedy

    By Laura Erickson-Schroth and Laura A. Jacobs | The belief that transgender people are recognizably distinct from nontransgender people assumes that there is something we can pick out about a transgender person’s clothing, body shape, or speech that “gives them away.” It assumes that trans people never escape their “essential” gender assigned at birth—that they…

  • Kick Back This Summer with Beacon Audiobooks!

    This will be our second summer with our favorite global party-crasher, the pandemic. (Leave already, Pandy! We want to get on with our lives.) Seems like a lifetime ago when this started, huh? Except this season, the rollout of vaccines is making outdoor time under the sun a little freer and a little less fraught…

  • The Fight Continues!: A Pride Month Reading List

    Raise your hand if you’re going to Pride this year! 2020 has been voted off the island. More importantly, we missed Pride. As we strut our stuff under the sun, let’s not forget why we have the parades in the first place. The queers, drag queens, and trans women—especially the folx of color—who fought back…

  • Advancing Writers as Leaders: An AAPI Heritage Month Reading List

    This year’s theme for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is Advancing Leaders Through Purpose-Driven Service. Beacon Press views their writers as leaders, charting the way to a better future with uncovered histories, cultural commentary, and more. Which is why, as AAPI Heritage Month wraps up, we’re putting the spotlight on the work of…

  • Trans Youth Need Our Support, Not Anti-Trans Legislation

    By Laura Erickson-Schroth and Laura A. Jacobs | Many transgender people have been marginalized from a young age. Children and adolescents who demonstrate gender variance can be harassed by their peers simply for dressing in the “wrong” garment or for having a hairstyle that more closely matches norms for the “other” gender. Teachers often refuse…

  • Black Inner Life and Black Joy Make Black History, Too

    Black history isn’t just about the history-makers and big social movements. They begin as everyday people whose day-to-day experiences, inner Black life, and Black joy—this especially!—are just as much a part of Black history. Without daily life and joy, the picture narrows solely on struggle and trauma, and comes off as incomplete. We need it…

  • Readers and Their Cats Are Loving “Ace”

    By Angela Chen | When I published “Ace,” I hoped for positive reviews and perhaps a reader email or two. I did not, however, expect that social media would bring a very particular joy to my life, which is that of readers sending me photos of the book with their cat.

  • The Uses and Abuses of Narrative

    By Angela Chen | I distrust narratives, always have. The child too shy to open her mouth and captivate others with story became the science journalist who fetishized data instead, fond of talking about how stories can stand in the way of justice—just look at how a blond girl suddenly kidnapped can receive so much…