God in Pink by Hasan Namir

Title: God in Pink
Author: Hasan Namir
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 140
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 Stars

What does a gay man do in the modern world? Perhaps coming out to himself and his family would be the first step you’d say. But what would a gay man do in Iraq in 2003? Would he have the courage to come out? Would he at all, knowing that it would only mean death for him and nothing else in the world could save him besides marriage to a girl? Would he marry? Or will he choose love and want to run away from his country of birth?

Hasan Namir’s “God in Pink” is a stupendously small book trying to answer these questions through the protagonist Ramy – a young gay Iraqi struggling to find balance between his sexuality, religion and culture. On the other end is Ammar, a sheikh who is a staunch believer of Islam and is tested through and through from the moment he receives an anonymous letter from Ramy asking him for his help.

I will not give away more of the story but yes, this book haunts me – even though I am done reading it. As I was reading it, I was perhaps thankful that I was born in India – where no one is out for my blood for being gay (or not that I know of), but is that enough?

Namir gets all nuances just in place (but that is also because he is gay and that matters because this book is written from the heart, all of it). “God in Pink” to me was way more personal – it made me relive the times I dithered and almost didn’t want to come out. What would life be then? Would it be any different? Oh yeah! I am glad I came out when I did. I think the book is needed by all. We all need to read it – straight or gay people to understand our phobias, fears and the need to always be someone we so aren’t. Hasan Namir can say so much and yet use so little words. The brevity and the rawness of his prose makes this book a stellar read.

P.S: The title is so intelligent and brazen. I loved it.

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

Title: These Violent Delights
Author: Micah Nemerever 
Publisher: Harper 
ISBN: 978-0062963635
Genre: Coming of Age, LGBT, Literary 
Pages: 480 
Source: Publisher 
Rating: 5/5 

So this book is really unlike anything I have ever read, and that makes it perhaps even more special. There is violence, loads of it. There is also desire and passion, both in the same measure. There is love, but always scared to be spoken out loud. This book has gutted me to such an extent, that I might not recover from it at least in the next couple of months. It is wickedly delicious, and more. A perfect combination of The Secret History with Lie with Me or even Call Me By Your Name, but more sinister in its approach, more real, and cunning to its core.

The novel takes place in the 1970s in Pittsburgh, and centres around Paul Fleischer and Julian Fromme. They are two freshman students and instantly connect during their first interaction in class. The chemistry is evident. They are poles apart from each other. Paul is shy, a loner, and artistic. Julian is wild (well, in a sense), charismatic to the boot, and wicked to the core (or so it seems). They two develop a great fondness for each other, a friendship that grows more intense each day, finally leading to love that is of catastrophic proportions.

This book had me gasping for breath. Their love is nothing that I have read of in books. It is strange, it breaks and pushes boundary after boundary, it begs for more violence – both physical and emotional, and it won’t stop at anything. The conversations are intellectual and provide fantastic insights into their lives, their families, and all about what it is to be good or moral, and the opposite of that.

Their bond could be called unhealthy, an obsession, a kind of love that destroys everything in its path but you just cannot get enough of it. It doesn’t read like a debut. Nemerever’s writing is never reassuring or comforting – it is brutal and you love that as a reader. It isn’t straightforward. Its turns are atmospheric, and scary, and always tipping the balance one way or the other of the relationship between the two young men, more so given it is set in the 70s, when things were way far more difficult for the queer community. I literally couldn’t stop turning the pages.

These Violent Delights is for me one of the best books read of 2020. I say it with much assurance and confidence. It is dark, humane, ugly, brutal, with a dash of murder as well (oh yes, forgot to mention that), it is full of rage, self-loathing, hate, and inner recesses of the human heart where perhaps compassion resides.

 

How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones

Title: How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir
Author: Saeed Jones
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 978-1501132735
Genre: Memoirs, LGBT
Pages: 208
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

This book to some extent made me see the mirror. Saeed’s story isn’t very different from mine, though it is. His story of being bullied because he was “different” is the same as mine. The sense of being called a faggot, a homosexual, and to understand that you have to survive in a world of hate and the world that treats the “other” differently, isn’t easy to do so. I live it every day, and as a fellow gay man in that sense, I understand it even more.

You have to fight and reclaim a lot, snatch even, and make your own terms to live and be respected for who you are. “How We Fight for Our Lives” by Saeed Jones is a memoir that has several layers to it. Of being gay. Of being a black man. Of growing up gay and black.

I loved how Saeed depended on books while growing up (just as I did) and I could see how that made him embrace his desire, till he reaches college and unleashes himself both, physically and mentally. This book is a collection of reflections of his life, of loves, and losses, but more than anything else, it is his relationship with his mother and grandmother that hit me hard. The detailed sexual experiences that are noted are needed for people to understand what goes on in a world different from theirs.

The honesty of the memoir is heartbreaking and often cuts through all prejudices. The language is emotional and makes you sit up and notice Jones’ life and the world in context. How We Fight for Our Lives is a memoir that is much needed in a time such as ours, to make us see that not everyone is the same, but everyone deserves the same respect, dignity, love, and the same opportunity irrespective of their orientation or skin colour.

 

Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman

Title: Heartstopper: Volume 1
Author: Alice Oseman
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books
ISBN: 9781444951387
Genre: Graphic Novel
Pages: 263
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

I’ve been waiting to read this one. Heartstopper is a story of two boys, Charlie and Nick, studying at the same school. Charlie is gay. Nick isn’t. They have started getting to know each other. They are great friends. Till, Charlie falls hard for Nick. Does Nick feel the same way? Heartstopper is a story of love – between two boys. One whom the school knows is gay and is bullied for it. One whom the school sees as this stud on the rugby team. The stereotypes are there for a reason. You will also see them break as you go through the book.

Heartstopper is the kind of book that should be read by everyone. It is the graphic novel that will make you understand relationships that beyond the heterosexual ones and just the thing that is needed in 2019. Just the thing that was needed way before.

I can’t wait for the second volume to reach me. Alice Oseman gets the vibe of the teenagers. The confusion, the heartbreak, the acceptance, and the bullying. The relationship between Nick and Charlie took me back to a time when I was in school and in love. It is the kind of book that will remind you of what it is to be young or what it was. A super book. I love it.

Books mentioned in Heartstopper: Volume 1

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History by Hugh Ryan

Title: When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History
Author: Hugh Ryan
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
ISBN: 978-1250169914
Genre: LGBT Nonfiction, Social and Cultural History
Pages: 320
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

I had never read something like this before – yes cities and the queer culture did merge in books and I have read parts of it, but nothing like this book. I honestly also believe that every city’s culture needs to be talked about through the people who live on its margins, and maybe that’s why this book hit a nerve the way it did. When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History by Hugh Ryan is the kind of book we all need to read, irrespective of orientation and labels.

The story begins in 1855 with the publication of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and ends in the 1960s when Brooklyn’s queer identity declined, due to several factors. You have to read this book only because the way Ryan unearths how there was a systematic erasure of the queer history of Brooklyn. What must one remember then? Who decides that? What is at the core of people’s histories and more than anything else of places?

Not only this, this book is fantastic if you want to get to know people’s voices and lives – queer lives – right from the famous drag kings and queens of the 1800s, of a black lesbian named Mabel Hampton and how she worked as a dancer, of a WWII gay spy scandal and so much more between its pages.

Ryan’s writing is never just a dry documentation of facts. There is so much more to it. There is tenderness and empathy and above all it is a voice that strives to let people know more. Also, the nuances of gender identity, orientation, and sometimes even race are handled with such a sense of larger understanding of issues, that it makes you want to read more.

More than anything else it is about resistance and no matter what governments do or stand for, people will always continue to live the way they want to, which should be at the core of every identity battle. Ryan’s research is spot-on, so much so that you instantly feel that you are in that world, the minute you start reading the book. He shares letters, diary entries, and publication excerpts to support and validate his arguments of what was erased and how it was found.

What I loved the most was the beautiful prologue – a short one at that but so effective – a glimpse into the lives of Gypsy Rose Lee and Carson McCullers, and from thereon begins what it means to be “queer”.

When Brooklyn Was Queer is one of those rare books that makes you want to sit up and take notice of what’s going on in the world. The past, present, and future merge seamlessly in this account of what history allows us and what it doesn’t. The small joys, sorrows, the sacrifices made, the lives that carry on regardless, and most of all what it means to be queer is what this remarkable book is about. Do not miss out on this read.