A review by maiakobabe
Pass with Care by Cooper Lee Bombardier

4.0

An extremely strong collection of memoir essays, centered on themes of queer community, gender transition, reckoning with white masculinity, being a working class artist, relationships, trauma, healing, and accountability. Two short pieces about childhood, "Lincoln Street" and "Boombox", ached with the feeling of the last period of freedom before the full onslaught of gender policing and puberty. Many of the pieces provided a window to a specific queer moment in San Francisco in the 1990s, when punk artist collectives could still afford rent and run wild through the city. Bombardier also writes about working in traditionally masculine spaces, in carpentry, in welding, in construction, and as a college campus security guard. I enjoyed the nonlinear organization of the pieces in this book, and I highlighted several lines which I know I will be thinking about for a long time.