Biographical Pride!

I’m the first to admit I’m terrible at reading a lot of nonfiction. Back when I worked at the bookstore, I used to make sure I tucked in audiobooks of whatever nonfiction titles were leading the charge at the time in various categories so I could speak of them with some education, but when one spends an hour and a half—one way—traveling to work on OC Transpo, you get a lot of audiobook listening done. These days, with both myself and my husband working from home, I get the solo dog-walks to listen to audiobooks (about three-quarters of an hour a day, maybe?), and we listen to audiobooks together if we’re driving anywhere (which is rare).

All that to totally try to note that not only do I only rarely write nonfiction (see, most recently, pieces in Sad Happens and—amusingly—Chicken Soup for the Soul) but I’ve gotten truly terrible at reading it. Luckily, I have some awesome curators out there, especially editors I’ve worked with, who give me nudges when queer nonfiction books come out, and I do my best to listen to those wiser than myself and dive into what they suggest.

I’m going to say that thing I say way too often, so brace yourself: queerlings don’t often get to inherit a continuance of culture. We’re not necessarily born to people like us. Most queers don’t have queer grandparents, queer parents, and queer aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings capable of telling them “this is what it was like when I was a queer your age.”

So our culture is harder to find, harder to learn about, and doesn’t have that built-in continuance that so many cultures have. So finding our stories becomes paramount.

Which is why I’m glad I found two queer biographies I’m going to talk about today.

Queer History, Queer Lives

I am so freaking glad I read Judge Me, Judge Me Not: A Memoir of Sexual Discovery by James Merrick.

On the surface, Jim Merrick’s memoir as a gay man who fought—and won—against academic discrimination in the 90’s is already a worthy story, and I don’t want to downplay the importance of his victory in any way. The longer I read this memoir, however, the more I couldn’t help but feel every other aspect of his life should be given equal weight, for it’s everything else, everything that came before, that resonated so very clearly with me.

Growing up queer, feeling the isolation, the journey to finding language and identity and those incandescent first moments of finding others-like-me are brilliant reminders of where we queer folk came from, as well as where we’re going. Merrick’s memoirs describe these life-changing moments through the people who played central parts, and it’s this lens—alongside the chorus of voices who took up residence in his thought processes—that give this memoir such an indelible charm.

When James was a kid, church folk used the word homosexual with disgust. They crushed the word against their front teeth with the tongue, then spat it out as if bitter bile. It put the fear of God in him.

Judge Me, Judge Me Not is James’s story of religion-induced shame, a hidden journey of sexual discovery, and closeted living as a husband and father that seemed like it might never end. But in October 1998, the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard gave James the courage to act, and he stood proud to face public persecution in a nationally televised legal battle with the education system that sought to silence him and all gay teachers.

In a memoir spanning nearly nine decades, each chapter reveals one of nine essential people inextricably linked to his journey. James’s memoir also features “The Voices,” five discordant, invisible advisors residing in the board room of his mind, who added fuel to the fire of James’s struggle to live authentically.

Judge Me, Judge Me Not is one man’s battle against the world and himself, and it shows us that even in a sea of persecution, it’s never too late to find, and use, your voice.

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There’s a made-up word—a portmanteau, really—I often use when I describe stories I read about childhoods with supportive parents: agnostalgia. I believe such childhoods existed, but I just don’t have a frame of reference of my own, and the best I can often manage is a sort of reserved judgement about how that might have been. So I feel like I need to truly underscore just how much Simon Smalley, in his biography That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At, managed to pen such an incredible glimpse of a life of a young queer boy who grew up almost where I was born, albeit thirteen years earlier, and transported me in so many ways into a family experience I never had but truly felt on a visceral level.

It’s magical. On that basis alone, I could hand this to anyone interested in queer biography, but Smalley’s journey isn’t just his sequinned youth at home. The outside world is decidedly itself in 1970’s England, and Smalley’s armor of Punk, Protest, and Unapologetic Queerness sees plenty of use—and isn’t always up to the immediate challenge. His school life is a misery with little reprieve from those who should have looked out for him, the disdain and hate of others lands hits to his physical and mental health—there is a doctor I should like to punch someday—yet somehow Smalley manages to tell these pieces of his childhood with a never dimming light, verve, and spark that seeps into even the darkest moments of his life.

That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At is about love, loss, adversity, and acceptance. At its core is a child with a wild imagination and a desire for glamour trying to survive being gay and disabled on a Nottingham council estate in the sixties and seventies.

Simon Smalley takes us on a humorous, riotously colourful, and heart-rending journey through cataclysmic bereavement and being raised by an RAF dad who encouraged his boy to be his true self. Simon’s tale of self-expression through music and his battle with his body, self-esteem, and paranoia is also a poignant account of what it takes to live authentically.

From Simon’s disastrous experiment with polystyrene platforms to his unerring love of punk; from his daily battles with school bullies to making peacock-colour eyeshadow with his dad, this memoir will take you on a journey that will leave you breathless, teary-eyed, and desperate to meet Simon and his uniquely brave father.

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How about you—what queer biographies have you read and loved? Drop me a note with a favourite.