by Christine A. Yared ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 17, 2020
An important and touching account of a community’s struggles against LGBTQ+ discrimination.
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A high school music teacher stands to lose his job after being outed as gay by a student in this work about LGBTQ+ rights.
Yared, an attorney, offers this true story about teacher Gerry Crane’s fight to keep his job at a public high school trying to force him out for being gay. The emotionally charged legal and personal fight began in 1995, the same year “Michigan Governor John Engler signed a law banning same-sex marriage and prohibiting the recognition of out-of-state same sex marriage.” Discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens was legally endorsed, and a culture of homophobia was rife. A student of Crane’s, one he had disciplined, according to the author, obtained the program for the teacher’s ceremonial marriage to his partner, Randy, and shared it with the administration at Byron Center High School. The school, where Crane taught music and was recognized by students and the administration as an excellent teacher and role model, was “located in religiously and politically conservative West Michigan.” The administration used the town’s religious beliefs to fuel a homophobic battle to oust Crane, portraying him as morally unfit because he was gay. Yared rigorously shares the details of Crane’s struggle to defend his personal life and his courageous efforts to stand up to the school’s many attempts to force him to resign. Crane’s initial refusal to leave his teaching position was met with enmity from the town’s bigoted members but also with dedication and love from many of his students. Crane, a deeply religious man, became a champion for his LGBTQ+ students, closeted and fearful to come out in a hostile climate. Yared was formerly on the board of directors of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Network of West Michigan. In presenting Crane’s inspiring story, the author skillfully depicts the culture of a time when personal protests and supportive communities joined forces against discrimination, paving the way for activists to earn more rights for LGBTQ+ citizens everywhere. The author’s prose is on the anecdotal side, missing opportunities to use rich descriptions to tell this compelling tale. Nevertheless, the moving book serves as a significant contribution to the history of protests that individuals have waged to improve the lives of all LGBTQ+ people.
An important and touching account of a community’s struggles against LGBTQ+ discrimination.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73523-710-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Penning History Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PERSPECTIVES
by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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