The Sophie Horowitz Story by Sarah Schulman

She’s sharp and detailed and no-holds-barred in her observations, which makes her really fun to read. Also, Audre Lorde never gets enough credit, I think, for being funny. This book is 20th century New York dyke history it’s the story of being raised by Black Caribbean immigrants, it’s the story of someone who needs to discover and name social structures in order to grow into a self, and who needs to create a myth of a magical Caribbean homeland in order to be who she wants to be. “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography,” Audre LordeĪn instance of needing to tell your queer story to yourself, but no suitable genre existing. And a completely incredible story about the ways two girls together can find a way out of capitalist horror. It’s part sci dystopia, part fairy tale, part historical fiction. The corporate dystopia makes part-carp girl clones as factory workers, and one of these clones tears out her tracking device and escapes to the forest with our former mermaid.

Without these books, my own first book, the newly released linked story collection “Sarahland,” would not be remotely possible.Īn 18th-century mermaid from China transforms into a durian seed and is then reborn in a futuristic corporate dystopia where she’s still a little fishy. They are books that reconfigure gender with wit and camp and play, they are books that feature obsessive queer love and hot queer sex, they are books that get slutty with genre. They’ve given me language with which to articulate a self, enabled me both to understand history in a way that makes sense to me, and to find the queer community with whom I am always rearticulating the world.

The Sophie Horowitz Story by Sarah Schulman