rainbowbrarian's Reviews (1.85k)

 This is a collection of poetry and self care written by Kai Cheng Thom, a Chinese diaspora non-binary trans woman who self identifies as a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto.  

Falling Back in Love with Being Human is a collection of poetry/essays.  My library received this book in January when it came out and I picked it up on a whim a few days ago.  I am trying to be more intentional in choosing diverse authors who represent voices I don’t hear from often enough.  This was a beautiful, approachable, volume and didn’t leave me feeling like I’m not smart enough to understand poetry.  I often feel that way when reading poetry, which I don’t fault the poets for necessary, I just don’t think we are exposed to enough poetry and school teaches us that the only way to engage with it, is to pull it apart and examine it like a medical examiner doing an autopsy.  

These texts were lovely and honest.  And I’m trying to describe them so that you’ll understand and want to read them too.  Here again, my poetry education is failing me I think.  I was touched by the haunting ones written to those who have passed away or who struggle in loneliness and depression.  Letters to queer and trans ancestors, gone too soon.   And it hurts and makes me angry to think of all we lost in history and queer elders because of the AIDS epidemic and because of violence against trans folks.  We were denied access to all that wisdom and experience.  

Read this one.  It’s wonderful. 

Friends, this book was awesome.  Big thanks to @netgalley and @torbooks for letting me read this ARC copy!

Bury Your Gays is a tale of a queer writer, Misha, trying to keep his characters alive in Hollywood where the execs only care about numbers and profits and say the only queer stories worth telling are the ones that end tragically.  When he's given an ultimatum to kill off his queer characters in their season finale he puts his foot down and refuses.  Soon after weird creepy things start happening to him.  Characters from his horror stories start appearing in real life.  How far will "The Board" go to force him to step back in line?

Like Camp Damascus before this, Chuck Tingle has written a fantastic horror tale.  I love the way he has of taking a story you think you know and upending it to give it a new twist.  You really feel for Misha, who is sort of out, but sort of not, especially not to folks back home in Montana.  His boyfriend Zeke doesn't get a lot of development, but is a great supporting character anyway.  His best friend Tara, the aro ace techie friend from work is AWESOME.  I love her fashion and her attitude and things that I won't tell you because spoilers, but dang, she's one of the best things about this story, I'd read more of her story any day.

Favorite Parts: any scene with Tara - also her tech data privacy paranoia is awesome, all the little homages to TV tropes and shows that are worked through the story, the genuine creepy factors in the monsters we get to see.

Read this if you: Are 9,000% done with the "Bury Your Gays trope", Love horror movies, Liked Chuck Tingle's last book "Camp Damascus", don't mind some gore.

TW: horror movie style gore, mention of childhood abuse/neglect, homophobia 

It was okay. The art is average and the story is pretty basic.