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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 1998)
r* t a n t 19 I W I .^ ■l i z> T V * s h /A sizzling Eist ©f regi©nal personalities ©ffer t© beat *; v > by ✓ *7 7 % W ill O’B ryan ^JVU K r ith the au tu m n al E quinox still more than a m onth a w a y , O regonians have plenty m ore h azy, laz y d ays o f sum m er enjoy. A n d , as O regonian rum ored to be a fa irly w ell-read crow d, sum m ertim e fo r m an y o f us m eans m ore reading. C e rta in ly there’s tim e enough before the days get short to squeeze a couple ? eren DeMotier, a Portland-based syndicated lesbian columnist with two small children, may actually have less time to read in summer, considering school’s out and the kids are at home. Nevertheless, she’s currently read- ^ ing two books: SUITS *M e : T he D ouble L ife of B iliy T ipton (Hough ton Mifflin, 1998) by Diane Wood Middlebrook, chronicling the life of a transgender performer who had her audiences and the authorities fooled as to her native sex; and THE LESBIAN AND Q ay B ook of L ove and M arriaqe (Broadway Books, 1998) by Paula Martinac. With the kids, she’s reading aloud from T he W orld of W illiam J oyce S crapbook (HarperCollins, 1997) by Wil liam Joyce, with photos by William Gould. M i* I > g j? For other adults, DeMotier has a few recommendations, start ing with T he D ivine S ecrets of t h e Y a Y a S isterhood (Harper Collins, 1996) by Rebecca Wells, which, DeMotier says, also makes a great gift. “I’ve given four copies already. ...It’s just so good!” She feels similarly about Alan Gurganus’ P lays W ell W ith O thers (Knopf, 1997). The novel, recalling amorphous sexu alities and engaging personalities in New York at the dawn of the AIDS pandemic is, DeMotier says, “fantastic and moving.” On the lighter side for summer, DeMotier admits she enjoys a lit tle brain candy in her book list. “But not insulting brain candy,” she assures. For DeMotier, and many others, that means mysteries. One she recommends is REPORT FOR MliRDER (Spinsters Ink, 1998) by Val McDermid, featuring a sleuthing “cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist” Lindsay Gordon cracking a case at an elitist private girls’ board ing school. For those who think they may have tastes roughly in line with DeMotier’s, there are a couple books she’s willing to warn you about. W hen the D ead S peak (The Naiad Press, 1998) by Therese Szymanski, a novel about a former underworld fig ure trying to leave her violent life I behind and start fresh with her lover “was so darned hard-boiled,” says DeMotier, adding, “If you like heart- of-gold strippers and serious butch- femme tough guy stuff, it’s not so bad.” The other book she’s not terribly thrilled with is T he L esbian L ove C ompanion (Harper, 1998) by Mamy Hall. Hall’s premise, DeMotier explains, “is that partnerships never last. It was too depressing, [and]... not for monogamy nuts.” Some highly literate young people also served up some thoughts on good reads. Polling 10 young people from YouthNet, a Multnomah County- funded group of and for young queers, Thv PmiMp Life of Billy Tipton n o te books into yo u r schedule. at one of their weekly meetings during a Portland sweltering summer afternoon was a gold mine of suggestions. Ranging in age from 15 to 30 and representing the lesbian, gay, bi, trans rain bow, they offered titles— generally in a sort of free form simultaneous vol ley— spanning the gamut. The B orderlands series, mosiac novels edited by Terri Windling and fea turing punk elves got a rousing endorsement, with the comment thrown out that “some of the punk elves are queer.” Urvashi Vaid’s V irtual E quality : T he M ainstreaming of Q ay & L esbian L ibera tion (Anchor Books, 1995) was suggested along with Judy Carter’s T he H omo H andbook : Q e t - tin q I n T ouch W ith Y our I nner H omo (Simon & Schuster, 1996) ; T he T a o o f P ooh (Penguin Books, 1983) by Benjamin Hoff; Loren Cameron’s female-to-male transsexual’s chronicle, B ody A lchemy (Cleis Press, 1996); as well as anything by William Burroughs or Toni Morrison. And so many others. When asked what sort of reading list they might suggest for young people in the coming-out process, old standard RfBYFRUIT JUNQLE (Daughters, 1973) by Rita Mae Brown—even in 1998— was still an obvious choice. Other selections were E yes OF D esire (Alyson, 1993), an anthology of work by deaf, queer writers, edited by Raymond Luczak; A nnie ON M y M ind (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982) by Nancy Garden; any books from Alison Bechdel’s D ykes T o Continued on page 20