sara_m_martins's Reviews (334)

"and sometimes, our stories were honored and our history did get told. - This book is one of those times"

simply put / TL;DR: READ THIS BOOK!

This is a really informative, clear and factually correct book, as far as I'm aware, in regards to definitions and describing parts and moments of queer culture. "Well, it's about LGBTQ+ history written by a LGBTQ+ author, shouldn't that be a given?" - you'd be surprised (/appalled) by some (recent) books i read!
The book starts by framing necessary vocabulary and historic/social/cultural context to fully understand the rest of the book, which is one of the reasons i find this book a great resource for any beginners into the subject (LGBTQ+ or allies)!
The rest of the book then is centered in tales of people who were part of the LGBTQ+ community (some more, other less, well-defined historically, but that's half the fun!). It's filled with such great nuggets of knowledge, that I'm sure to bring to the next party! Did you know that Michaelangelo's David has heart eyes? Doesn't the concept of the "power of love" kiss sound so right for a gay love story, actually? Isn't "bittersweet" exactly the kind of word that'd be created by a wlw?
Disseminating queer history in such an accessible, engaging way is so incredibly important for so many aspects of our community! From forwarding civil rights, to educating both LGBTQ+ youth/people and non-LGBTQ+ people, to preserving our history! From showing "it's not a lifestyle - it's a life", to honoring our ancestors, and showing youth (and older people too) that we're not alone in the world, not now and not ever, Lee Wind's Queer History Project is such a necessity. This extraordinary work is held up by amazing referencing, and I know I'll be following up on quite a few of those!
The writing is beautiful and is full of great quotes both from the author and from sources, on being a queer person.
This book will give you Queer History the best way you could receive it; for LGBTQ+ people it'll also tell you "We are not alone"!
"The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you" - Lee Wind

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing me an eARC for review

Perfect for any of your pug/dog-loving friends! The book's author is well-known online (as 157ofgemma on instagram) for her humorous comics about her pug, and Living with Mochi brings them together in a collection documenting the highs and lows of this pug's life, bringing you those lovely, fuzzy and funny feels
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC

thank you to netgalley and button poetry for providing me a free copy of the book for an honest review. 
firstly, I am reading this as a white queer woman, and i urge people to look up #ownvoices reviews too. 
as a long-time fan of button poetry i was really excited to get to this book, and upon further inspecting i had listened to a few (very good) poem performances by the author, Natasha T Miller. so, it was only natural that i loved the writing style, as you can sense the slam poetry rhythm in them, plus the play with pausing to affect sentence meaning (some fav examples of this: Sangria, I See You, and Say Less).
this short book has poems that overlap the author's experiences with grief, blackness, queerness, womanhood and the different forms of discrimination that come from it, and touches heavily on her relationships with mother, brother and nephew. As always, i recommend to read books that feature intersectionality of underrepresented experiences 
to list favourites i would almost write the index, so I'll highlight two:
1. Correction - a simple short poem, that says so much
2. The title poem Butcher - This poems really helps to round out the perspective from which the book comes from, which is why I'll talk a little bit more about it (this is my interpretation, so do take this with a pinch of salt).
I think the word Butcher can be folded out into the Slaughter and the Cutting. The slaughter reads like a metaphor for the prosecution of black bodies + overlap with queer people and/or women, an uneasiness that Natasha portraits throughout the book. The concept of butchering /cutting yourself up into different representative sections (the concept of the book): splitting yourself up into different labels, dividing the different facets of your life, things that feel present in the life of so many minorities (see e.g. Nobody's Body is a Crime); and how this book is an exploration of all of those things coming together and being present together. 

although short it is a really informative read, covering Harriet's entire life (&then some). i believe it would be a great read for anyone not overly familiar with Tubman's path. it gave me such a deeper appreciation for all the work she did in her life, so much of it unrecognized/unsupported & once again drove home what forces of nature black women are and have always been in our world. 

talked about a lot of interesting and important ideas, and together with the rep its a v important book (esp for the youths)
also The Best description of going to a pride march I've ever read & made me miss them so much

 "....só quando lês as últimas palavras é que vês como o livro é bom"
"Nos meus sonhos sou o escritor da minha própria história, embora nunca escreva sobre mim mesmo, sendo este obituário a primeira e única excepção. Os lugares para onde os meus sonhos me levam, não importa se nunca lá estive ou se nunca lá irei... ajudam-me a compreender de onde venho.. e para onde quero ir. (...) Os meus sonhos dizem-me quem sou."
A really interesting take on a multiverse story

I went into this book mistaken on the premise - mostly I saw a dog on the cover
Which made the ending of the first chapter unexpected
And the second too - "wait... i though this was a flashback"
By the 3rd i got what the chapters titles were about
And meanwhile it was all in the blurb... 

sports just isnt my thing

a piece of art

At first glance this book is a good start off point for queer history (part 1) and terminology (part 2), albeit with it's flaws - the first being that it is lacking a reference/further reading at the end of the book; this is the type of book where one of those is quite essential, in my opinion. Like the word Handbook is in the title.
At first, i saw this as a school book: it gives you the basics, some info isn't exactly right, isn't there and sometimes is even plain wrong, but it's meant to give you the tools to expand on it (which is why it needs those references at the end!)
Positives first: i did learn some bits of history that i didn't know, and i really appreciated that; although flawed, i quite enjoyed the history section. 
However, i feel that the research was really lacking. The fact that the writers are queer is commendable, but, as they state, they didn't know much about queer history/theory/discourse beforehand, and it shows. There were parts where i strongly felt this was written by someone either younger than me or that didn't take part of the queer discourse before like 2015 or so. 
Even more obvious is that they didn't consult many other queer people - the bisexual sections are the most obvious example, being just plain wrong, and i saw significant flaws for a few other identities' terms. 
The visuals are fun and what made me get the book, but the font and font size isn't fun to read, especially at parts where the font colour and background colour clash (this might me an copy thing, because i've noticed the colours on my cover are off). Furthermore, the tone fluctuated so much and the subjective comments didn't mesh seamlessly. And this is only a pet peeve but i cannot read "and so on" one more time.