Happy Pride Month! 🌈📅
Wait, what’s that? Pride Month normally happens in June???
While it’s my firm belief that we should celebrate & uplift LGBTQIA+ pride & joy & solidarity in every month, let me rephrase: Happy Pride Month, Mid-Missouri!!! 📅🌈🌽
Your library hopes to see you out & about for the 26th annual MidMO PrideFest, happening towards the end of this month on September 26th & 27th in the North Village Arts District in Columbia. In fact, we’ll be there ourselves with one of our bookmobiles, sharing lots of sparkly library resources and fun rainbow-colored giveaways! 📚✨🚚🌈🎁
Pride, whether you observe in June or September or every month, is a time to center ceremony and community in all the ways that feel meaningful and affirming. It’s also a time for reflection and learning, especially if you are newly out as a queer person or if you are trying your best to support your queer friends and/or relatives as an ally. What is life like for the queer community now? What has it been like in the far and recent past? Where are we going as a society regarding our acceptance (or rejection) of queer peoples, and how can we create a world where each person feels safe, supported and celebrated for their unique contributions and self?
One resource we’ve been loving that has some of the answers to those loaded, essential, existential questions is “Trans History: From Ancient Times to the Present Day” by Alex L. Combs & Andrew Eakett. This graphic nonfiction primer is PACKED with so much information about and insight into how trans and gender-diverse folks have lived, survived and evolved across time, culture and place. I personally came to the book wanting to know more about my #trancestors (trans ancestors), curious about how transness and gender variance has existed throughout history, as a way to feel connected to and affirmed by the immense, ever-changing tapestry of experience that is the human condition. But I stayed for the really tender and expansive questions the authors posed at the very beginning of the book (p. 8), which gently challenged and nurtured my reading experience:
Why do we care whether historical figures were trans or not?
How do these individual’s lives reflect or resist contemporary trans narratives?
Do these stories challenge any common assumptions about the timelessness of gender roles?
How has this history shaped the lives of trans and gender-nonconforming people?
Does learning about the people in this book open any possibilities for self-understanding?
Along with the content, I found the format of this history textbook of sorts to be really engaging and accessible. I loved the illustrated comics style; the detailed drawings of people, places and events really helped me digest and remember the information overload. After all, history “from ancient times to the present day” is kind of a lot to cover! 🤓
In particular, I really loved how the authors of this book provided portraits of the various scholars, journalists, archivists, organizers, activists and artists whom they cite in the book. Usually, when reading a work of nonfiction, there are lots of quotes that illuminate, describe or analyze some piece of information, whether that be a historical person, place, event or practice. Often, writers of history will attribute these quotes to their respective speakers, but rarely do they attribute who said or thought what with an image of that person. This immersive and personable style of citation made me feel even more connected to the material as a reader and as a person — a stylistic choice which embodies why I recommend this book so highly. It’s easy to forget in learning about any kind of History™️that within the intense or monumental moments of the past, there were folks as ordinary as you and me who were affected in ways big and small. Additionally, it’s nice to be reminded that on the other side of a big idea or insightful quotation is a person who is also just trying to make their way through the world.
Ultimately, I recommend this book because it is deeply empathetic in subject and style and drives home such a simple, yet vital point about trans and gender-nonconforming people: that, beyond harmful stereotypes, we trans folk were, are, have been and will continue to be people, just trying to make our own ways through the world. 💓🏳️⚧️💓
Content warning: While I do recommend this book to any and everyone curious about trans history, it’s important to mention that a lot of trans history concerns the violence and injustice that has been perpetrated against trans people and their bodies by various systems of power and control. Take care of yourself when reading and learning about these painful and disturbing chapters and moments. 🫶🏻😢💔
P.S. If you’re a fellow enjoyer of — or newcomer to!!! — the graphic nonfiction format and want to read more, check out my booklist on “Graphic Queer His-, Her-, Their-, Eir-, Hir- & Zir-stories” at this link!
