By Jewelle Gomez–
I remember my grandparents’ first television set; stations broadcast only during certain hours. When channels went off at the end of the day, a test pattern was broadcast, kind of like a screensaver. Oddly enough, it featured the image of a Native American, about the only one I ever saw except those slaughtered by John Wayne. Now, of course, the device never goes off. But at least there are finally a few real Native Americans on the screen. Reservation Dogs is my favorite.
As a femme lesbian who falls for any woman driving a big rig, I’ll send a shout out to Amber Midthunder (Ft. Peck /Sioux) as the driver of a semi-tractor trailer truck in Ice Road with Liam Neeson. Also streaming is The Harder They Fall (frontier violence alert), a visual feast featuring every Black cowboy/girl you’ve ever heard of. It even ends with a lesbian kiss, providing a small sweet sigh.
Staying in the historical (if not accurate) mood, I streamed episodes of Deadwood so I could watch Robin Weigert bring Calamity Jane to life as the lesbian I always imagined!
But the quiet of lockdown isn’t all TV. Many books kept me engaged and excited. Stephanie Andrea Allen’s speculative fiction collection How to Dispatch a Human: Stories and Suggestions is never predictable. There’s a chilling, futuristic tale of a partner who engages the home security entity to help her steal her lover’s baby. Then the title story told from the perspective of a lesbian’s cat is super real and, at the same time, surrealistic.
Singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile has innumerable Grammy nominations for her “Americana” style (okay, Americana is kind of Country). She is out in the most difficult genre to be a lesbian, next to Hip Hop. The exquisite k.d. lang broke that still bumpy ground twenty years ago. Carlile’s memoir, Broken Horses, examines the class and race issues that shaped her as a person and activist. I have a playlist that alternates Carlile and lang that can keep me ecstatic for hours.
One of the winners of the Saints and Sinners LGBTQ+ poetry contest is Steven Riel. In his new collection, Edgemere, he writes poignantly of the 5th grade despair of an obvious sissy, as well as tender moments like sending a letter to heaven to find a dead brother. His poems speak of life with affection as well as melancholy.
R.B. Lemberg’s speculative fiction novel The Four Profound Weaves is a wondrous story where gender is no fixed little box and weaving holds the history and methods of change upon which Lemberg’s desert world is built. If a page could project colors, Lemberg’s book would be a multi-tiled rainbow spilling off the page.
The Bay Area has been extraordinarily quiet during this pandemic, yet the sound of arts and culture is everywhere.
Jewelle Gomez is a lesbian/feminist activist, novelist, poet, and playwright. She’s written for “The Advocate,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Black Scholar,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” “The New York Times,” and “The Village Voice.” Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @VampyreVamp
Published on January 27, 2022
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