I was never a fan of Pamela Paul when she ran the New York Times Book Review. And since she has been gone, not only has the publication and NYT books coverage in general improved greatly, but Paul revealed herself to be quite anti-queer. This led author Sandy Ernest Allen to organize thirteen Trans and Queer writers to review thirteen essential books by Queer and Trans writers. From the introduction of this project:
“Goodbye, Pamela Paul,” was the headline of Andrea Long Chu’s now-iconic, recently ASME-nominated New York Magazine farewell to the former NY Times Book Revieweditor, when Paul left the paper two years ago. For a little background, Paul was named editor of the NYTBR in 2013 and took over books coverage for the entire paper in 2016, effectively becoming the most powerful editor in literary criticism. In 2022 she moved to the paper’s opinion pages to publish her own ideas about the world, many of which became political lightning rods in a publishing community that had for years been beholden to her editorial decisions.
Particularly infamous was one explicitly anti-trans essay from July, 2022, which was widelycriticized at the time. It also had many people wondering how Paul’s politics might have come into play in her decisions as the most important books editor in the world.
So at some point I began dreaming up an idea: to commission a whole package of reviews of books by trans and queer authors, folks whose projects weren’t covered by the NYT under Paul’s reign. I asked Maris Kreizman to collaborate and to my delight, she agreed. What followed became an exercise in thinking through what is lost—and perhaps can never be regained—when transphobes and their enablers rise to prominence as our most powerful cultural gatekeepers.
So, to the nuts and bolts of this project. First of all, the volume of seemingly great books published by queer and trans authors between 2013 and 2022, and not covered by the NYT,was intimidating. It took Maris and me a while to work through the many great pitches we received and arrive at our final lucky number of 13. (Funnily enough, in actually trying to commission these reviews, I felt surprising sympathy for book review editors like Paul who are no doubt constantly buried in new titles to consider.)
Our effort here offers reviews of a mere sliver of all those titles we might have covered, many of which would be worthy of inclusion if we had limitless time and resources. I’m immensely grateful to all who submitted ideas, especially to all the fellow authors who wrote to tell us about their books (some were even writers I’d call heroes). My to-be-read pile is now, as ever, impossibly tall.
On a personal note, this entire project has made me feel much less alone. I feel more connected to other trans and/or queer writers, who are doing this work despite the shitty odds we face, despite our society’s continued denial of our full humanity, despite the efforts to ban our words and to decimate our entire lives, despite the media and publishing industry’s failure to actually reckon with—let alone correct for—any of this.
What follows is hardly meant to be comprehensive. I hope it inspires others to write their own reviews of whatever books they’d wish might be covered. I’d love teachers to assign this as a group project to writing classes, as I’ve heard of at least one doing already. I hope this project won’t be perceived as anything except the start of a conversation—one I feel everyone with stakes in this must join us in having.
–Sandy Ernest Allen
What follows are 13 standalone reviews of those titles Allen gathered. And it includes a book I gave a starred review to when it first came out--Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
This is a wonderful anti-erasure project. A reclaiming of lost voices by those who are part of the community who shares that voice. It is full of joy. It is powerful as a project, but the kicker is, the books and the reviews are GREAT.
I hope you go through this article and read the reviews and make a notation of the titles. These are titles that stood the test of time even without a NYT review. You should check your collections to see if you have these titles. And if you are a library that needs a review to order something, now you have one. If you are a library that cannot add older titles without new interest (like BookTok), a new edition, or a new review, well again, now you have a reason to add these titles. And it is from a major resource.
If you are a library where you are being told to not add Queer titles for fear of people causing trouble over them...well to you I say, that is a form of censorship. You are no better than those trying to stop others from reading books they disagree with. In fact, in my opinion, not ordering something because you "don't want trouble" is even worse. Why? Because you know better and suppressing access is suppressing access no matter who engages in said suppression. Full Stop.
Sit with that for a moment and then go order these books.
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