Fans of the popular podcast of the same name will yeehaw with joy over this collection.
Hidden life stories buried in small towns across America.
Oral historian and audio producer Garringer has spent a decade collecting stories and photos of rural queer folks around America. Themself a country queer, they felt as if the rural LBGTQ+ community had very little representation in comparison to those living in big cities. On a mission to cultivate and collect interviews with country queers, Garringer has threaded every session with fondness and care so that the reader is personally affected by each of them. The interviewees, young and old, hail from Appalachia to Texas to Massachusetts, offering their neighborly wisdom. You can imagine rocking chairs, iced tea, and cicadas while Garringer records. (They do a podcast with the same title.) Questions that they frequently ask: What is the difference between a city queer and a country queer? Does a smaller queer population equal a lesser community? What is the largest issue facing country queers today? With the political climate, is it safe? Why do you think there is little to no representation of rural queer people? These are hard questions with no easy answers, but Garringer jubilantly proclaims to the world, Hey! We’re here! Always have been and always will be! The photos, taken by the author and the interviewees, give this work the feel of a homemade, handcrafted scrapbook, with images of catfish, goats, lawn mowers, ceramic cows, actual cows, and lots of beautiful scenery enlivening the pages. Near the end of most interviews, Garringer asks their subjects where they are happiest—the question behind the question being “Is there anywhere else you’d rather be?” Most people laugh and respond with some version of “I’m happiest just being right here”—readers can almost feel the room brighten with these assertions of pride and place. This is indeed the love letter of the subtitle: to the country, to queer friends and neighbors, to the small pieces of life. Slow down and flip through this uplifting, hand-threaded quilt of lives.
Fans of the popular podcast of the same name will yeehaw with joy over this collection.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798888902486
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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