Amazon.com Review
It's probably a healthy sign that the autobiographical essays collected in
Queer 13 display not only relief and anger, but nostalgia. Most of the contributors, including well-known writers like Wayne Kostenbaum (
The Queen's Throat) and Rebecca Brown (
The Terrible Girls), have overcome the stigma they felt in junior high. When they look back now at their sufferings, they're also able to recall moments of pure, unthreatened pleasure--although, having found the courage they once lacked, they tend to criticize their younger selves for having pandered to repressive parents or playground tyrants. It may be inevitable that these stories have a shared aura of sadness, since the universal experience of junior high seems to be bleak and crushing, but there are other commonalities that emerge: the "gay" childhood friend, for instance, who gets mercilessly dropped, or the casual cruelties of physical education. Some of the most affecting pieces are by writers who were battling other differences in addition to their sexuality, such as Rebecca Zinoric's "Becky's Pagination," about the indignities of being given special education because she was legally blind, and Marcus Mabry's lovely "Mud Pies and Medusa," about growing up black and gay.
--Regina Marler
Review
"A collection of not only some of the best current gay literature but also of the most compelling autobiography." --
Newsday"Queer 13 contains 25 tales of the doldrums of the teen years from various points of view. The book highlights many up-and-coming new voices in literature, including Joe Westmoreland, Rebecca Brown and Michael Lowenthal. The memoirs range from painful to hilarious to eerily ral as these authors recount that time when our minds were raging almost as fast as our hormones. There's much to appreciate in this thoughtful reflection on past youth and the ungainly task of trying to assimilate, a sentiment anyone can identify with." --
HX Magazine, Oct. 23, 1998"When casting about for survival tales of the seventh grade, Clifford Chase, who edited this book of essays, found that most gay writers had suppressed it, like time they'd spent in a cultural junior-high version of Dachau: utter oppression, grueling days, anxious and terrifying nights. They'd simply blocked it out. Seventh grade wasn't too fun for anyone, but it seems to be a particular watershed event for these wordy gays and lesbians, who have risen to the assignment and reconjured that particular year with pubescent horror: the longing, the armpit hair, the confusion, the shame, the teasing -- it's all here. Thankfully, as the sage Judy Blume always assured us, it's only seventh grade, and most everyone survives it. Even gay kids. Seen from these 25 collected pieces -- many of them quite clever memoirs; some of them merely more overwrought gunk from the para-memoirist craze -- seventh grade is quite a hurdle, but also a magic place." --
Hank Stuever, Austin American-Statesman
