A soaring celebration of selfhood and diversity that urges readers to move through the world with joy and positivity.
A series of inspirational lessons aimed at helping members of the LGBTQ+ community gain the freedom to be themselves.
Author and educator Oak has learned a lot of lessons over the course of his life. (Fun fact: He was a contestant on the 2005 reality show My Fabulous Gay Wedding.) He’s compiled 18 of them in this book in an effort to help the LGBTQ+ community and their allies “approach the world with more passion, flair, innovation, and liberty to be yourself.” The author shares personal anecdotes, cites statistics, and provides step-by-step guidelines to encourage readers to “celebrate Queerness as a force of positive contribution to the world.” With lessons like “Raise the Bar” (in which Oak details his infiltration of an anti-transgender rally to investigate the misinformation being spread) and “Gender-Free Yourself” (which consist of writing exercises designed to challenge readers’ expectations of gender roles), the book details steps readers can take to feel more confident and dispel widespread “flawgic” (flawed logic). The author also directly addresses those allies who want to support the LGBTQ+ community, reminding them that they hold the power for change, too: “We often admire the first as the one with courage, and that’s fair. But their role is to start the story, to create the possibility. It’s the second person—the ally—who makes that possibility real.” With a compassionate narrative voice, Oak offers an articulate and well-researched look at the LGBTQ+ experience in the current volatile social climate. The sheer comprehensiveness of the book—the author addresses the social, political, and historical aspects of queerness—is truly impressive. Oak eloquently discusses concepts that may be lesser known even in the LGBTQ+ community, such as the history of laughter in queer liberation and the Indigenous idea of Two-Spirit. The author’s emphasis on actionable steps and his unrelenting positivity make for an absorbing read that audiences—regardless of their sexuality—are sure to reference again and again.
A soaring celebration of selfhood and diversity that urges readers to move through the world with joy and positivity.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781774585542
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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