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frasersimons 's review for:
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
by Jeremy Atherton Lin
I struggle sometimes, to describe to someone why queer memoirs and biographies are so important and different than the typical. A queer person is, in their own way, their own monument of history. Gay Bars are generally transitory and not immutable pieces of historical context. All of that memory is in the gray matter and bones of the people whose queer journey and trajectory were there. There very presence in a space is, in a way, pioneering. The shape of gay and queer history is always the shape of the person who chooses to go to a space that is other.
In contrast, I think cis straight white culture, the mono culture can only co-opt and integrate in its effort to puncture and deflate anything different. The quintessential monument there must be the somewhat interchangeable brothers-in-arms raising of a flag. The culture can only raise a symbol of the country; of nationalism or the penetration and impingement of the norm into every space on the horizon. It is a mass indistinct. Unknowingly or knowingly in service to the status quo.
How different and important it is to have queer history in print versus those monuments history loves so much. Tying a memoir of Lin’s personal history—constructing history itself with his participation and presence—to the spaces that are often subsumed and forgotten, for many never experienced, is both apt and genius. Lin himself remarks on how important it is to have other queer people in life to pass down this kind of memory. Codifying it in this way, for some many more people, must be important, then. Vital, really.
On top of this, Lin has a knack for switching between the voice of his historical context and his personal experience. Combined with the predilection to discuss only those things I found to be interesting, there is really nothing I have to complain about. Some people, no doubt, will find the explicit sections sometimes Too Much. Even voiced by Lin, these meeting of bodies felt as important as the space they went to in order to enable the various acts. It’s sharp, matter-of-fact, and what happened. Sometimes it’s what Lin describes as a desirable reason for going there: Risky.
In contrast, I think cis straight white culture, the mono culture can only co-opt and integrate in its effort to puncture and deflate anything different. The quintessential monument there must be the somewhat interchangeable brothers-in-arms raising of a flag. The culture can only raise a symbol of the country; of nationalism or the penetration and impingement of the norm into every space on the horizon. It is a mass indistinct. Unknowingly or knowingly in service to the status quo.
How different and important it is to have queer history in print versus those monuments history loves so much. Tying a memoir of Lin’s personal history—constructing history itself with his participation and presence—to the spaces that are often subsumed and forgotten, for many never experienced, is both apt and genius. Lin himself remarks on how important it is to have other queer people in life to pass down this kind of memory. Codifying it in this way, for some many more people, must be important, then. Vital, really.
On top of this, Lin has a knack for switching between the voice of his historical context and his personal experience. Combined with the predilection to discuss only those things I found to be interesting, there is really nothing I have to complain about. Some people, no doubt, will find the explicit sections sometimes Too Much. Even voiced by Lin, these meeting of bodies felt as important as the space they went to in order to enable the various acts. It’s sharp, matter-of-fact, and what happened. Sometimes it’s what Lin describes as a desirable reason for going there: Risky.