 | A WRITER'S WIT |  F. Dannay [E. Queen] |
MY BOOK WORLD
Johnson, George M. All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. New York: Farrar, 2020.
All I can say is I wish this young adult book had been around when I was in high school—back in the middle of the last century. Yet it is odd that this man, thirty-eight years my junior, goes through many of the traumas I do in my youth: trying to maintain two psyches, one private and one public; two lives, one inner and one outer. I most love the details of Johnson’s college life, in which he joins a fraternity (of long-distinguished African-American lineage), half of whom are also gay, and the other half are OK with his orientation. He limns a very sensitive picture of his first time with another guy, one experience as a top and one as a bottom. The descriptions are real, even erotic, but not in themselves titillating. We also are privileged to read of his loving middle-class family life in New Jersey. This book should be available by way of multiple copies in every high school in America. Sadly, we live in a time when public libraries are being besieged by book burners, I mean, book banners, who serve to remove such tomes from our students’ shelves. I plan to buy copies and make sure they’re available in my city’s public libraries—or perhaps the little free libraries that pop up in towns. Maybe we all can do our part.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Moss Hart
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Clinton
FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night
All I can say is I wish this young adult book had been around when I was in high school—back in the middle of the last century. Yet it is odd that this man, thirty-eight years my junior, goes through many of the traumas I do in my youth: trying to maintain two psyches, one private and one public; two lives, one inner and one outer. I most love the details of Johnson’s college life, in which he joins a fraternity (of long-distinguished African-American lineage), half of whom are also gay, and the other half are OK with his orientation. He limns a very sensitive picture of his first time with another guy, one experience as a top and one as a bottom. The descriptions are real, even erotic, but not in themselves titillating. We also are privileged to read of his loving middle-class family life in New Jersey. This book should be available by way of multiple copies in every high school in America. Sadly, we live in a time when public libraries are being besieged by book burners, I mean, book banners, who serve to remove such tomes from our students’ shelves. I plan to buy copies and make sure they’re available in my city’s public libraries—or perhaps the little free libraries that pop up in towns. Maybe we all can do our part.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Moss Hart
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Tyler
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Hillary Clinton
FRI: My Book World | Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night
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