UBC Special Collections: A Queer Century (Part 1)

It all started with a question: “gay people existed back then?” It sounds like a simple question, but this exhibit at UBC Library’s Rare Books & Special Collections highlights writings by, for, and about queer people over the past 150 years to help show that many of the issues we talk about now around sex, sexuality, and gender are nothing new.

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Review: Patron Saints of Nothing

I’m not sure where to start with this because there’s so much about Patron Saints of Nothing to love: do I mention how authentically-but-not-tropely teenager-like Jay, the protagonist, feels? Should I talk about how the book makes a real-world event, happening right now, become meaningful and accessible to readers across the ocean in ways that journalism can’t? What about the fact that every person in this story (it feels weird for me to call them characters at this point) gets an opportunity to live and tell a story that is as much their own as it is the story of millions of people? Selfishly, the queer in me wants to talk about the representation, but I think it might be best to start somewhere else.

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