Each week, when available, a local library will recommend a selection of books available for check out. For pride month, the bibliophiles at the Shawangunk Journal recommend two books with themes of queer relationships and identity, that are also written by queer authors.

If you would like to suggest a book for a future column, please send the recommendation, followed by a short blurb on the book, your name and place of residence to news@gunkjournal.com.

In the Dream House

By Carmen Maria Machado

“In The Dream House” is a memoir that encapsulates the concept of memoir itself; what it means to write your truth, despite how this truth is perceived by society as a whole. This memoir sheds light on the historical implications of writing a story of domestic violence through the lens of a “cisgendered queer woman”, when the predominant portrayal of domestic violence narratives are seen through a hetero lens. Do I think that reading this novel about domestic violence through a queer lens impacted my reading of it? Not really, if anything, what impacted me was Machado’s blatant honesty, and even, at times, her acknowledgement that “You have no reason to believe me” (225), as a way of both protecting her narrative and understanding that because there was no evidence of physical abuse, she assumes that people will be more flippant to regard her experience as abusive. Through her experimental memoir Machado creates a page-turner that employs both research and rhetoric to amplify her message about domestic abuse in queer relationships.

Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast

By Oscar Wilde

As the title may indicate, these short, opinionated, and commanding takes, on life, art, relationships, and society are thoughts one would have when maybe eating breakfast in the morning, or while taking a shower and pondering things like “A poet can survive everything but a misprint” (4), or “the great superiority of France over England is that in France every bourgeois wants to be an artist, whereas in England every artist wants to be a bourgeois” (7) … right. There is a wide distinction between Wilde’s modern and more dated tidbits in this text, but the more modern ones are the ones that stand out the most, for example: “Every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment” (28) and “You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it” (11). Being an openly gay man during a time when homosexuality was widely condemned, Wilde’s was a voice that stood out amongst the crowd because of his blatant honesty in his writing and his ability to defy social standards and norms in an effort to be totally and authentically himself.