Customer Reviews

Queer Street

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Toni Mirosevich is a wonderful writer and a master of observation. With beautiful language and striking insight she brings the world of Queer Street to life. If seen from a distance, Queer Street would appear as any other line on a map, indistinct and commonplace, yet Mirosevich trains her eye on the particulars of this street and brings it to glorious, messy, complex life. It is as if the reader sits behind a big picture window with the author and watches life unfold in this racially and economically diverse melting pot of a neighborhood. The tension of difference and unification exists throughout this volume making it a true portrait of fissured and mended American life.

"...tell me, what would Gandhi do, would he follow/the march, the procession, all day long, of the Irish, the Vietnamese,/the Jamaicans, the Russians, the Filipinos, the mixed blood, who/walk by our house, or would he join us here, behind the window,/the queers, if only there were no separation, if only we could/bring up the rear, tomorrow I will stop the dog barking when/you pass, will clean off the fence, will do you no harm, if only/we can break bread together, if only the twain shall meet."

Mirosevich is in turns humorous, lyrical, blunt, and a kind of literary documentarian--a reporter of human experience and struggle, well-crafted and heart-felt. If you ever have an opportunity to see Mirosevich read in person-GO! She is entertaining, hilarious, and totally revamps the meaning of the words "poetry reading."