Queer Intentions
A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture
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- 5,99 €
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- 5,99 €
Publisher Description
This immersive, accessible and thought-provoking book takes the reader on a journey to explore the pros and cons, the myths and realities of life for LGBTQ+ people today.
Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2020
‘Eloquent, empathetic and passionate, this book 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 The Establishment
Today, the options and freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West are greater than ever before. But is same-sex marriage, improved media visibility and corporate endorsement all it’s cracked up to be? At what cost does this acceptance come? And who is getting left behind, particularly in parts of the world where LGBTQ+ rights aren’t so advanced?
Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, in Queer Intentions, Amelia Abraham searches for the answers to these urgent challenges, as well as the broader question of what it means to be queer right now. With curiosity, good humour and disarming openness, Amelia takes the reader on a thought-provoking and entertaining journey.
Join her as she cries at the first same-sex marriage in Britain, loses herself in the world’s biggest drag convention in L.A., marches at Pride parades across Europe, visits both a transgender model agency and the Anti-Violence Project in New York to understand the extremes of trans life today, parties in the clubs of Turkey’s underground LGBTQ+ scene, and meets a genderless family in progressive Stockholm.
'A landmark exploration into what it means to be queer today' – DAZED
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.
