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A review by bibi003
Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker
2.0
I am torn. While I appreciate the work that went in to summing up this rather expansive topic, I feel like I was tricked into reading it. It was graphic in a sense - there were illustrations in a certain style. But it was not what I expected.
While reading, I kept having flashbacks to my university Lit Theory classes slogging through academic essays and trying to wrap my head around the language and ideas of Foucault and Derrida. Blah. I mean, I get it. It's important work....thinking all those big thoughts and critiquing the status quo. But it's not fun to read and a few cute drawings can't fix that.
As a cis person, I care deeply about the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and I like to read books because I'm curious and I want to learn how to be a better ally. But this book reads more like an homage to the queer theorists of the last half-century than it did a real-life exploration of the history of queerness. I only finished it out of pure stubborn determination.
While reading, I kept having flashbacks to my university Lit Theory classes slogging through academic essays and trying to wrap my head around the language and ideas of Foucault and Derrida. Blah. I mean, I get it. It's important work....thinking all those big thoughts and critiquing the status quo. But it's not fun to read and a few cute drawings can't fix that.
As a cis person, I care deeply about the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and I like to read books because I'm curious and I want to learn how to be a better ally. But this book reads more like an homage to the queer theorists of the last half-century than it did a real-life exploration of the history of queerness. I only finished it out of pure stubborn determination.