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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 1998)
20 august 7.1998 1011 Alison Bechdel W atch O ut F or comics series; and the zine WlLIY B oy , was recommended warmly by every one in the room, including its creator, Jayson Barsik. Regardless of age, no one in the room seemed to have much trouble locating queer literature. Some even reported fairly accommodating high school libraries. Friends, they said, offer a good net work for borrowing or trading books, and they list ed their favorite bookstores as Laughing Horse Books, Reading Frenzy, Powell’s, In Other Words, Gai-Pied and “even Barnes «Si Noble— It’s the only thing in Vancouver.” Although this group of young queers reported no trouble finding queer reading material, Venae Rodriguez, the youth services manager for Phoenix Rising, says SMYRC (Sexual Minority Youth Recreation Center) is always seeking donations of queer books for their library. Rodriguez also offered an interesting suggestion for summer reading. Her social work probably Barry Pack recently walked away from the influences her taste, which leads her to “like ’em heavy world of politics when he hung up his hat as heavy- all the time.” The book she’s reading and the executive director of Right to Pride, leaving enjoying at the moment is P ush (Knopf, 1996) by him to greet the summer with nary a worry and Sapphire. Rodriguez calls it an urban story of a time to kill. Right now he’s reading Michael young woman coming to terms with surviving incest, her HIV-positive status and motherhood, j Chabon’s W onder B oy (Random House, 1995). But for summer reading, H ey , J oe (Simon «Si Heavy, indeed. Confessions, Comix, and Dykes To Watch Out For Schuster, 1996) by Ben Neihart comes to mind. “It’s a great piece of fluff,” confesses Pack. “[It’s about] a 16-year-old kid who falls in love a dozen times.” Unable to dismiss his political roots, Pack also recommends Joan Did ion’s THE L ast T hinq H e W anted (Knopf, 1996). “It tells the fictional story of a woman caught in [the] Iran-Contra [scandal],” says Pack. “It’s an engaging book.” He also endorses Caleb Carr’s historical mysteries, A n qel o f D arkness (Simon <&. Schuster, 1997) and T he A lien ist (Random House, 1994). “He’s done his homework in terms of setting.... The his torical perspective is right on.” Despite his political tastes, Pack would offer a warning to anyone thinking of sitting down to A ll ’ s F air : L ove , W ar , and R unninq for P resident (Random House, 1995), the autobio graphical tale of politicos James Carville and Mary Matalin falling in love: “It was just a drag.” Trans activist Margaret Diedre O ’Hartigan finds her current summer reading a drag as well. She’s plowing through Oregon revised statutes, which she says she “wouldn’t recommend.” She’s reading it in order to help a transsexual person file a court case. When she has time for something a little lighter, says O ’Hartigan, she turns to mystery writer Andrew Vachss, whose latest effort is S afe H ouse (Random House, 1998). “I like him because he has the best fictional transsexual character I’ve seen: Michelle,” O ’Hartigan explains. “She’s never in the books enough to my liking, but I’m biased.” O ’Hartigan exposes another bias in panning Daphne Scholinski’s T he L ast T ime I W ore A D ress (Riverhead, 1997). O ’Hartigan has previ ously taken issue with the autobiography and its criticism of the Gender Identity Disorder diagno sis. Says O ’Hartigan facetiously, “It’s a great piece of fiction.” Like O ’Hartigan, coastal Oregon’s famous les bian author Lee Lynch is also spending her sum mertime with less-than-recreational reading, spending her days studying the postal workers’ exam book and dispelling rumors that her latest novel, R afferty S t r eet (New Victoria, 1998), has brought her riches beyond her most indulgent