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Review: In Search of Pure Lust by Lise Weil

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Lise Weil quotes Adrienne Rich: “I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence.” This approach to loving seems to be the exact conceit of Weil’s intimate memoir. Frequent references to H.D., Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly–as well as run-ins in with Audre Lorde–work to create a robust, and sometimes surprising, portrait of the second wave feminist movement. Throughout In Search of Pure Lust, Weil is driven by this intellectual, all-in loving. In her many relationships, Weil lusts for woman not only as partners and lovers, but as poets, scholars, and visionaries.

Read the full review at Lambda

“Lesbians Will Always Be Here And Have Always Been Here”: Talking Queer Visibility, Butchness, And Sinister Wisdom With Writer Carina Julig

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I sit down with fellow writer Carina Julig to learn about her time with the journal and what lesbian art means today. Julig is a lesbian journalist whose work touches on the intersections of queerness, capitalism, politics, and trans masculine identities. Featured on Slate, Al-Jazeera, and them., among others, Julig has a keen instinct for the impacts of lesbian culture on the mainstream and vice versa.

Read the full interview at BUST.

Inventing Adulthood: Four Novels Reveal the Magic of Queer Self-Actualization

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What does it mean to come of age as a 20-something queer person with no money, no resources, and no illusions about respectability? Black Wave is one of several recent books—including Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017), Ariel Gore’s We Were Witches (2017) and Chelsey Johnson’s Stray City (2018)—that seek to answer this question, and each author insists that queer self-actualization requires a radically different approach to adulthood.

Read the full article at Bitch Media.

Review: Long Love by Judith Barrington

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Judith Barrington’s Long Love is a collection of new and selected poems celebrating her impressive tenure as a writer. Drawing from Trying to Be an Honest Woman (1985), History and Geography (1989), as well as more recent works like Lost Lands (2008), this latest collection is anchored by Barrington’s stripped-back voice and generous poetic ear.

Read the full review at Lambda

How Queer Comics Are Confronting Rape Culture

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Trauma and triumph have always been source material for queer performers. The difference now is that people with power are starting to pay attention: men, heterosexuals, cisgender people, white people—even the holy trinity of cishet white men. At the cutting edge of this cultural reckoning are comedians Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, and Cameron Esposito. All three are masculine of center (MOC) lesbians, comedians, and survivors of sexual assault and/or abuse.

So why is it that there are not one, but three butchy lesbians talking about rape culture and being taken seriously at the same time? “Cuz you need a good role model, fellas,” quips Gadsby in Nanette.

Read the article in full at Jezebel

Las Vegas’ Lesbian Wedding Commercial And The ‘Tolerance Trap’

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“Now and Then” is shamelessly soap, moving in for every queer person’s soft spot with heat-seeking precision: the homophobic parents, the shame, the emotional release of seeing accepted the little dyke we all root for. It seems like an important step for lesbian visibility in popular culture. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that tolerance is a trap, and the Visit Las Vegas Campaign wants to sell it to you.

Read the article at The Establishment.

Like ‘Dear White People’? Meet ‘Sincerely, the Black Kids’

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Sincerely, the Black Kids explores the real-life consequences facing Black student organizers when they show up, critique, and elicit change in the historically – and presently – white landscape of academia. This independent doc comes during a swell of millennial-driven media centering stories of Blackness as told by the young, talented, and Black.

INTO spoke with producer Shakira Refos and director Miles Iton about the making of Sincerely, the Black Kids.

Read the article at INTO.