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A review by watermelleon
David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music by Darryl W. Bullock
Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.
I listened to the audiobook version of this book.
I decided to stop reading around halfway through, I have had this on my list for a while and was quite aware it is very academic in nature, which can often run a little dry.
I initially found the first part of the book to be quite interesting, as many things were touched upon including the pansy period which I myself had been researching recently. However the first issue I ran into was that people were beginning to be dead named. (x name, born as Y name). Pronouns also got messy when describing their stories.
This is an excellent academic record of queer history, and something that definitely should exist to prevent further loss of queer history, but I think there is probably a question here of "do we need to mention someone's birth name, in order to make sure we can continue to locate them in historical records?"
the beauty of queer history (to me at least) is the verbal stories passed between us, some outrageous tales that become Chinese whispers. Surely it's better to refer someone by the names they chose, and the stories they chose to tell?
On this note, there was a lot of myth busting, and lines like "many people thought x, but this wasn't true". Who has the right to expel queer myths? I feel a focus on the many stories, over the "actual facts" read into a far more interesting look at queer history (and feel way less mansplainy when listened to over audiobook)
After the initial excitement around this book, and pushing back these issues discussed, I began to feel the book itself was not well structured and at times felt very scattered, which was when I decided to dnf. Very sad, but I think the author did not have a relevant enough background to discuss all kinds of people and topics in a way that worked, and this would have worked better as a collaborative effort with other researchers from these backgrounds.
I decided to stop reading around halfway through, I have had this on my list for a while and was quite aware it is very academic in nature, which can often run a little dry.
I initially found the first part of the book to be quite interesting, as many things were touched upon including the pansy period which I myself had been researching recently. However the first issue I ran into was that people were beginning to be dead named. (x name, born as Y name). Pronouns also got messy when describing their stories.
This is an excellent academic record of queer history, and something that definitely should exist to prevent further loss of queer history, but I think there is probably a question here of "do we need to mention someone's birth name, in order to make sure we can continue to locate them in historical records?"
the beauty of queer history (to me at least) is the verbal stories passed between us, some outrageous tales that become Chinese whispers. Surely it's better to refer someone by the names they chose, and the stories they chose to tell?
On this note, there was a lot of myth busting, and lines like "many people thought x, but this wasn't true". Who has the right to expel queer myths? I feel a focus on the many stories, over the "actual facts" read into a far more interesting look at queer history (and feel way less mansplainy when listened to over audiobook)
After the initial excitement around this book, and pushing back these issues discussed, I began to feel the book itself was not well structured and at times felt very scattered, which was when I decided to dnf. Very sad, but I think the author did not have a relevant enough background to discuss all kinds of people and topics in a way that worked, and this would have worked better as a collaborative effort with other researchers from these backgrounds.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deadnaming, Hate crime, Homophobia, and Transphobia