Queer Intentions
A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
'A landmark exploration into what it means to be queer today' – DAZED
Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize
In this immersive, accessible and thought-provoking book, journalist Amelia Abraham goes on a fascinating global journey to better understand the challenges and realities facing LGBTQ+ people today.
The freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West appear greater than ever before. But, even as we move forwards, queer people are facing new challenges. And some are being left behind, particularly in parts of the world with different attitudes to LGBTQ+ rights.
In Queer Intentions, Amelia Abraham explores what’s happening in cities around the globe. From losing herself in the world’s biggest drag convention in L.A., marching at Pride parades across Europe, meeting genderless families in Stockholm, visiting trans model agencies and Anti-Violence protests in New York, underground parties in Turkey and gay weddings in Britain, Abraham searches for an answer to the question: what is it really like to be queer today?
Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, Queer Intentions is a provocative exploration of the kaleidoscope of twenty-first-century queer life.
‘Eloquent, empathetic and passionate . . . will not just resonate with a new generation of queer people, but with all those who seek to be their allies. A brilliant book’ – Owen Jones, author of This Land: The Story of a Movement
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Abraham debuts with an astute and freewheeling survey of LGBTQ communities in Europe and America. Forced by a painful breakup to contend with the choice between "queerer ways of living" and conformist "heteronormativity" in her own life, Abraham set out to better understand "what the LGBTQ+ people before me had been fighting for: our right to be the same as everyone else, or to be different." Her profile subjects include a drag queen in L.A. who bemoans the commercialization of drag; a 50-something DJ in London's gay club scene; a Serbian trans-rights activist; and a "queer, genderless, three-parent commune" in Sweden. Abraham's conversations touch on same-sex marriage, pride parades, the disappearance of gay bars, YouTube vloggers ("one of the places where young people were going to learn to be gay"), and the phenomenon of RuPaul's Drag Race. An excellent interviewer, Abraham gives her subjects the space to reveal themselves, then mines their discursive conversations for astute insights, such as the importance of gay bars in providing "a place to actually do gay rather than simply be gay." The result is a stimulating and authentic account of queer life today.
