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4.49 AVERAGE
4.49 AVERAGE
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
“We are the faggots, the fairies, the queens. We live!”
I first read Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions in a Queer History class in college, and I have never forgotten it. It wasn’t just a book—it felt like a revelation, a relic, a radical song passed down from queer ancestors. Larry Mitchell’s 1977 cult classic, illustrated with evocative and playful line drawings by Ned Asta, is an underground treasure of queer literature that deserves far more visibility than it often gets.
Despite its deliberately provocative and, to some, potentially inflammatory title, this book is a vibrant, unapologetic affirmation of queer life. It challenges norms, mocks empire, and imagines a world where queer joy and resistance take center stage. At its core, it’s a fable—part satire, part fantasy, part manifesto. It celebrates those pushed to the margins with tenderness, defiance, and humor.
Mitchell’s writing is poetic and slyly sharp, weaving political critique with utopian imagination. The "faggots" and their companions live communally, love freely, and create a world in contrast to the "men of the empire," who symbolize repression and control. The structure is loose, a collage of vignettes, parables, and proverbs—yet the emotional and political impact is cohesive and lasting.
This is a book that doesn’t care to fit in. It’s weird, bold, and fiercely alive. Reading it in the context of queer history added profound weight; it’s not just art, it’s survival—an archive of resistance and pleasure. In our current climate, its messages remain startlingly relevant.
To those unfamiliar with the work, don’t let the title deter you. It reclaims language that was used to harm and turns it into a banner of solidarity and joy. Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is a love letter to queer existence, and to me, it will always be a reminder that even in the face of oppressive empires, we live—and we love.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A lovely little joyful little sad little whimsical little insightful little book. I’d recommend 2 gay ppl [shocking]
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
A book on queer community and what it will actually take for us to tear down the patriarchy. I’m not much of a poetry reader but this had enough of a story line that it felt exciting. Definitely could see myself re-reading this as a reminder of how much we need all need each other
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
- I want to buy a crate full of copies of this book and give it to everyone I know.
- A beautiful and necessary queer text.
- Here are some of the shorter highlights:
Romantic love, the last illusion, keeps us alive until the revolutions
come.The faggots cultivate beauty and harmony and peace since these are states that the men do not know about. The lucky faggots live in the most beautiful places and make love in the most beautiful places and dance in the most beautiful places. Since the men are blind to beauty, they do not know that the lucky faggots live in the most beautiful places. And the lucky faggots do not tell them.
Instead, they ask the unlucky faggots to come and join them.The rule is: You get more warm fuzzies by giving away all your own warm fuzzies. Keeping your warm fuzzies to yourself results in a large accumulation of cold prickles.
The strong women told the faggots that the more you share, the less you need. At first the faggots thought the strong women were being either obtuse or utopian. But as they began to share their clothes and their secrets and their magic potions and their spaces and their incantations and their animals and their books and their visions and their food, they learned, slowly, that the more they shared with each other, the more there was that could be shared and the less any one faggot needed. THE MORE THAT GOES AROUND THE MORE YOU
GET BACK.NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. The fairies know that the earth will not tolerate the men much longer. The earth, scarred and gouged and stripped and bombed, will deny life to the men in order to stop the men. The fairies have left the men's reality in order to destroy it by making a new one.
The faggots have the routines of community and the rhythms of
the streets to live by: visiting, lunches at small cafes, late day tea, walks, accidental encounters, organizing, issuing manifestoes, putting on plays, changing lovers, shifting alliances and living arrangements and gossip, endless gossip. They share shifting notions about the men and power and how to take it away from them. They find routines in their collective lives and turn them into rituals. They created the ritual of the brief encounter, the ritual of dying love, and the ritual of outrageousness. They live in a world invisible to the men.They will begin slowly to move their energy from the men’s deathly dance to a stillness. No movement and and high invisible energy will be their goal.
They will begin slowly. They will fast a few days at a time until they do not need to eat unless they want to eat. They will put aside, from time to time, their magic substances until they do not need their magic substances and take them only when they want to. They will begin to abstain from sex to rest from the exhausting chase and get. They will stop flirting and seducing until they no longer need another warm body to feel real. Then they can make love when they want to. As what they need decreases, their activity decreases. They will then be close to doing no-thing and therefore close to not being what the men created them to be. They will cease to be other and the men will begin to fear for their own sanity.
The men's needs are strong and overwhelming. They need the faggots and their friends in order to know who they are not. But the faggots and their friends will no longer need the men. They can sit and produce high, invisible love energy or they can do anything. But they will not need. And when the faggots and their friends cease being the faggots and their friends, the deathly dance of the men will begin to wane and a new dance will begin to emerge. Then the third revolutions will engulf us all.
This book is truly like nothing ive ever read before. Makes a lot of sense that the author initially intended it to be a children's book. It reads like a fairy tale. Somehow it manages to highlight the absolute horrors that the LGBTQIA+ community has had to undergo while at the same time maintaining a beautiful, whimsical tone of voice. I loved how this takes the derogatory word 'faggot' and truly internalized it and used it to build a beautiful community.
I don't know who I would recommend this to, but somehow if you've found yourself here, I think you'll enjoy this.
I don't know who I would recommend this to, but somehow if you've found yourself here, I think you'll enjoy this.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
bonito, poético. not gay as in equal but queer as in fuck you.
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced