The Conversation - A queer lit summer reading list

I was 8 years old when I first realized that human sexuality wasn't so simple.

It was March of 1982. Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass had just gotten into an accident in his Rolls Royce that left him paralyzed. A transgender woman was his passenger. An issue of Jet magazine with an article about the crash sat atop a glass table at the home of my father's friend. They seemed to be in disbelief that a masculine singer like Pendergrass might have had a relationship with a woman who was born a man.

It turns out sexuality is seldom a straightforward matter, and the young adult fiction books that Jonathan Alexander, a scholar of queer literature at the University of California, Irvine, recommends for LGBTQ Pride month all explore the complexities of human sexuality.

This week we also liked articles about Mike Pence’s shining moment, the grassroots mojo of Starbucks workers and Tumblr’s rise, fall and rebirth.