Books
Queer author Carmen Maria Machado draws raves for ‘Her Body’ short story collection
Writer says family storytelling tradition, collegiate experiences inform her fiction
Author Carmen Maria Machado says her love of reading and the storytelling tradition of her family deeply inform her work. (Photo courtesy Tom Storm Photography)
All fiction writers need imagination. Carmen Maria Machado’s is so vivid, she sometimes passes it on to her characters.
“Sometimes I sat on the porch and gave imaginary interviews to NPR personalities,” says the narrator of “The Resident,” a short story in Machado’s debut collection “Her Body and Other Parties.” “”When I write, I feel like I’m being hypnotized,’ I told Terry Gross. ‘It was at that moment I knew everything was going to change,’ I told Ira Glass.’”
For most writers, such daydreams remain mere fantasies. Few authors become literary superstars or suddenly find themselves under the spotlight on NPR. Yet this is what happened to Machado, a 31-year-old queer writer.
Her short story collection “Her Body and Other Parties” (Graywolf Press), released in October, has received the attention usually bestowed on the work of literary giants such as Toni Morrison or Michael Cunningham. “Parties” was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. It won the Bard Fiction Prize. It’s her first full-length work though she has had many of her stories published in various outlets.
“Parties” is unlike any previous short story collection. Women’s bodies, queerness and feminism pulsate through the tales in “Parties” from “Inventory” to “Difficult at Parties.” Yet the book isn’t didactic or the least bit doctrinaire. Like the horror movie “Get Out,” the stories pop with horror and comedy.
Women have joyous sex, even as people die worldwide from a virus spread by physical contact. A sexual assault survivor hears the inner thoughts of characters in porn. A novella “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order: SVU,” is a piercing, but hilarious send up of “Law & Order: SVU” and its fascination with sexually traumatized women.
“The collection is that hallowed thing: an example of almost preposterous talent,” the Los Angeles Times said of “Her Body and Other Parties,” “that also encapsulates something vital but previously diffuse about the moment.”
Storytelling, Machado says during a Blade phone interview, is part of her family tradition. Her paternal grandfather came to the U.S. from Cuba; his wife was from Austria. They met as immigrants in New York. Her mother’s family is white.
“Storytelling, especially on the Cuban side of the family, is important,” Machado, an Allentown, Pa., native who now lives with her wife Val in Philadelphia, says. “My grandfather has dementia, but we can still recite stories back to him and he remembers.”
She incorporates that oral storytelling tradition in her work. Her love of reading and writing, as one might imagine, has deep roots.
As a child, Machado read voraciously. She went to the library and devoured books like candy, reading at breakneck speed, she says.
“All kids write stories. I wrote them and typed them out. I always loved the idea of being a writer.”
Machado sent her stories to publishers and authors. Her letters yielded no publishing offers, but, “my wife who works in publishing says that some delighted interns at the publishing houses must have loved my letters.”
To her surprise and delight, Machado heard back from Livia Bitton-Jackson, a Holocaust survivor and author of the memoir “I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust.”
“In the book, Bitton-Jackson talked about how the poems she wrote were left behind when she was taken by the Nazis,” she says. “I wrote to her and asked what happened to her poems. One day, my mom, who was confused by it, said, ‘There’s a letter for you from Israel.’”
Bitton-Jackson told Machado that she didn’t get her poems back, but that she’d kept on writing.
“She asked me about myself,” she says. “It felt magical that a real person — a writer — wrote back to me.”
When she was young in the 1990s, Machado didn’t understand that she was queer.
“I had crushes on girls, but I didn’t think of it in that way. I didn’t have any framework,” she says. “I didn’t know anyone who was out and queer until I went to college.”
Machado graduated from American University in 2008 with a degree in visual media. During her years in Washington, she read the Blade as she was coming out.
“I thought, ‘Oh this is who I am,’” she says. “My parents were pretty chill, though they were a bit confused because I was lesbian/bi. They didn’t quite understand why I would date a guy, but they were great about it.”
Attitudes about being queer were different for some of Machado’s extended family.
“Some of them were very religious,” she says, “but I didn’t have to deal with a lot of that kind of nonsense. I feel extremely lucky.”
Machado went to college to study journalism, but quickly realized that wasn’t what she wanted to do, so she switched to literature and photography.
“I wanted to get loose with my sentences,” Machado says. “I didn’t have the blood thirst, the nose for news, to be a reporter.”
After graduating, Machado moved to Berkeley, Calif., working random jobs during the recession and enduring a bad break-up, which she says made her miserable. But she didn’t stop writing. A creative writing teacher, whom she calls “a lovely human being,” encouraged her to keep writing stories.
Her stint at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 2010-2012, where she earned a master’s degree, changed everything professionally for her.
“Suddenly, I was getting paid to be in grad school and write,” she says. “I didn’t have to worry about finding jobs. I had good health insurance. I could go to therapy and figure out my aesthetic.”
And, of course, her success with “Her Body” has helped fuel ongoing efforts. “House in Indiana,” a memoir about same-sex domestic violence is due in 2019.
“Same-sex violence isn’t talked about,” Machado says. “I wanted to talk about it.”
Kathi Wolfe, a writer and a poet, is a regular contributor to the Blade.
Books
I’m a lesbian and LGBTQ books would have changed my life
Misguided parents pushing Montgomery County court case
As a child born in Maryland in the 80’s, I had very few LGBTQ+ role models other than Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres. In high school, I went through the motions of going out on Friday nights with boyfriends and dancing with them at prom, but I felt nothing. I desperately wanted to fit in, and it took me until my senior year of high school to finally admit to myself that I was different – and that it hurt too much to hide it anymore.
When I think back on those years, I feel the heartache and pain all over again. I used to lay awake at night begging God not to make me gay. When a boy on my Cross Country team accused me and my friends of being lesbians, I scoffed and said, “You wish.” I hid my true self in cheap wine coolers while my hate for myself festered.
I found healing in books, my creative writing class, and my school’s literary magazine. Writing allowed me to hold up a mirror to myself and see that I could be many things: a loving daughter and sister, a supportive friend, a dedicated member of the Cross Country team, and also a girl who wanted a girlfriend. In my love poems, I evolved from ambiguous pronouns to distinctly feminine ones. When I felt ready to tell my best friend, I showed her one of my poems. To my surprise, the world did not end. She smiled and said, “It’s a good poem. Are you ready to go to the mall?”
I’m one of the lucky ones. When I finally did come out to my parents, they told me they would always love me and want me to be happy. That’s not the case for more than 40% of LGBTQ+ youth, who are kicked out of their homes after they find the courage to tell their family who they truly are. We are facing a mental health epidemic among LGBTQ+ youth, with 41% seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, the vast majority living in homes that aren’t accepting.
Some of the dissenting parents in Mahmoud vs. Taylor argue that inclusive books aren’t appropriate for elementary school kids. To clarify, these books are simply available in schools – they aren’t required reading for anyone. There is nothing sexual or provocative about stories like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” or “Jacob’s Room to Choose” that send a very simple, non-political message: We all are different, and we all deserve to be treated with respect. Opting out of books that show diversity, out of fear that it might “make kids gay” fails to recognize a fundamental truth: art, pop culture, even vegan food cannot make someone gay. I was born this way. There were times I wished that I wasn’t, and that was because I didn’t have books like these telling me it was OK to be who I am.
I wonder how many parents opting out of these books will end up having a LGBTQ+ child. It is both horrible and true that these parents have two choices: love and accept your LGBTQ+ child, or risk losing them. Now that I’m a parent myself, I feel more than ever that our one aim in parenthood is to love our kids for exactly who they are, not who we want them to be.
For several years, a grocery store in Silver Spring, Md., displayed a poem I wrote for my mother in my school’s literary magazine. I wrote about how she taught me that red and blue popples can play together, and that Barbie doesn’t need Ken to be happy. I imagine that maybe, a girl passing through the store read that poem and saw a glimpse of herself inside. That spark of recognition – of I’m not the only one – is all I wanted as a child. I was able to find my happiness and my community, and I want every LGBTQ+ child to be able to do the same.
Joanna Hoffman was born and raised in Silver Spring, Md. She is the author of the poetry collection ‘Running for Trap Doors’ (Sibling Rivalry Press) and is the communications director for LPAC, the nation’s only organization dedicated to advancing the political representation of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary candidates.
Books
A boy-meets-boy, family-mess story with heat
New book offers a stunning, satisfying love story
‘When the Harvest Comes’
By Denne Michele Norris
c.2025, Random House
$28/304 pages
Happy is the bride the sun shines on.
Of all the clichés that exist about weddings, that’s the one that seems to make you smile the most. Just invoking good weather and bright sunshine feels like a cosmic blessing on the newlyweds and their future. It’s a happy omen for bride and groom or, as in the new book “When the Harvest Comes” by Denne Michele Norris, for groom and groom.
Davis Freeman never thought he could love or be loved like this.
He was wildly, wholeheartedly, mind-and-soul smitten with Everett Caldwell, and life was everything that Davis ever wanted. He was a successful symphony musician in New York. They had an apartment they enjoyed and friends they cherished. Now it was their wedding day, a day Davis had planned with the man he adored, the details almost down to the stitches in their attire. He’d even purchased a gorgeous wedding gown that he’d never risk wearing.
He knew that Everett’s family loved him a lot, but Davis didn’t dare tickle the fates with a white dress on their big day. Everett’s dad, just like Davis’s own father, had considerable reservations about his son marrying another man – although Everett’s father seemed to have come to terms with his son’s bisexuality. Davis’s father, whom Davis called the Reverend, never would. Years ago, father and son had a falling-out that destroyed any chance of peace between Davis and his dad; in fact, the door slammed shut to any reconciliation.
But Davis tried not to think about that. Not on his wedding day. Not, unbeknownst to him, as the Reverend was rushing toward the wedding venue, uninvited but not unrepentant. Not when there was an accident and the Reverend was killed, miles away and during the nuptials.
Davis didn’t know that, of course, as he was marrying the love of his life. Neither did Everett, who had familial problems of his own, including homophobic family members who tried (but failed) to pretend otherwise.
Happy is the groom the sun shines on. But when the storm comes, it can be impossible to remain sunny.
What can be said about “When the Harvest Comes?” It’s a romance with a bit of ghost-pepper-like heat that’s not there for the mere sake of titillation. It’s filled with drama, intrigue, hate, characters you want to just slap, and some in bad need of a hug.
In short, this book is quite stunning.
Author Denne Michele Norris offers a love story that’s everything you want in this genre, including partners you genuinely want to get to know, in situations that are real. This is done by putting readers inside the characters’ minds, letting Davis and Everett themselves explain why they acted as they did, mistakes and all. Don’t be surprised if you have to read the last few pages twice to best enjoy how things end. You won’t be sorry.
If you want a complicated, boy-meets-boy, family-mess kind of book with occasional heat, “When the Harvest Comes” is your book. Truly, this novel shines.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice
‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages
You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.
Progress does not come without problems.
While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”
Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.
Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”
D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.
Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”
Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”
Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.
The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.
You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.
Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
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