Books
A campus novel filled with the complex realities of our time
‘The Late Americans’ explores racism, sexism, capitalism, classism
‘The Late Americans’
By Brandon Taylor
c.2023, Riverbed
$28/320 pages
You likely wouldn’t want to hang out with cranky characters who obsess about money, bemoan the art they make and live in a place where the winter is brutal and even the elm trees are diseased.
Yet, in “The Late Americans,” acclaimed Black, queer author Brandon Taylor, makes you care about a group of often unlikable, isolated, unhappy people. These characters smoke too much, cheat on their lovers and are so freaking hard on themselves, their friends and their art.
“The Late Americans” is set in Iowa. Most of the characters are graduate students at the University of Iowa along with some “townies” (people who aren’t students and live in the town). Most of the grad students are poets, fiction writers, dancers, and musicians working toward master’s degrees. Others are studying finance or math. The “townies” work on farms, factories, and stores.
“The Late Americans” is a campus novel. But don’t be fooled. You won’t find students canoodling, savoring the bright blue sky, engaging in congenial dorm bull sessions or writing poems about blue herons.
Taylor, whose first novel “Real Life,” was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, has given us a campus novel filled with the complex realities of our time: racism, sexism, 21st century capitalism and classism. Many of its characters have experienced the impact of the 2008 recession. Donald Trump is referenced.
It’s usually ill-advised to believe that fiction is closely linked to the lives of authors. Narrators can be unreliable and writers create imaginary worlds. “The Late Americans” isn’t auto fiction. But its setting seems to be modeled on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where Taylor got an M.F.A. degree. This doesn’t make “The Late Americans” an autobiography or detract from Taylor’s work. It adds authenticity to the bleak, but, captivating universe Taylor has imagined.
While writing “The Late Americans,” Taylor told The Guardian he was inspired by Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Anton Chekhov and other 19th century writers. Taylor said he was “deeply reading” 19th century novels with their “broad casts of characters from all kinds of classes,” the paper reported.
“The Late Americans” works well as a novel but is structured like a group of linked short stories. Each chapter is focused on a different character. But the characters intersect throughout the novel. Most of them know each other to some extent. They’re lovers, co-workers, friends, and classmates.
Taylor has said that writing short stories is his sweet spot. His second book “Filthy Animals” is a superb collection of linked short stories.
It’s hard to pull off a novel that wants to be linked short stories but Brandon nails it in “The Late Americans.”
The novel opens with a chapter devoted to Seamus, a white working class poet who works in a hospice kitchen to pay for his graduate work. He’s ashamed of being gay, has furtive sex and deplores what he thinks of as the veneration of victimhood along with the ridiculousness of elitist poets and artists. “Miserable despite the praise,” Taylor writes of the poets in a poetry seminar, “when praise seemed so much the point of the poems they wrote.”
“Curiouser and curiouser, thought Seamus,” Taylor writes, “that a person, presented with what they wanted most, could seem so miserable about it.”
You’d need a seating chart worthy of a White House state dinner to follow all of the goings-on of these characters. But don’t let that worry you. As you read, you’ll find yourself going along with the flow.
There’s Frydor who’s Black and works in a meatpacking plant. His vegetarian boyfriend Timo, who’s from a Black middle-class background, endorses the death penalty. Gordon, a rich musician, is coupled with Ivan. Ivan, to Gordon’s embarrassment, makes sex tapes to support himself.
“Money is like an animal,” thinks Fatima, a Black woman who works as a barista so she can study dance, “changeful and anxious, ready to flee or bite.”
Despite barriers of race, class and economic hardship, the characters in “The Late Americans” bond in friendship and their love of art, and find glimmers of hope for their future.
You can’t ask for more from a novel.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
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.
Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis
D.C. Black Pride 2025: Events, parties, and empowerment
Cuban lawmakers to consider simplifying process for trans people to change IDs
Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on
