In a time of backlash, this guide to queer writing is invaluable

Author and international queer book club host Layla McCay has read a vast number of books and wants us to share her enthusiasms. The Queer Bookshelf aims to cover the whole range of creative writing that could be called queer (a term she carefully unpacks in her introduction): from ancient epics to Heartstopper.

A London-based psychiatrist who founded the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, McCay is clearly a remarkable person. She has held academic health policy roles in the United Kingdom, United States, Japan and Hong Kong. She hosts book clubs and events in London, Washington and Tokyo. And she has written a book on urban design.

Review: The Queer Bookshelf – Layla McCay (Scribe)

The Queer Bookshelf is both a personal account of her ongoing discovery of queer writing and a broad overview of the field, ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates to around 2000BC in Mesopotamia, to contemporary graphic novels like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.

At times, the book becomes a frantic attempt to list every title that could be considered queer. But McCay comes across as smart, generous and extraordinarily well read.

Queer politics and book banning

It is somewhat surprising to read an entire book about changing perceptions of queer identities without a single mention of either Freud or Kinsey. But McCay is very aware of shifting norms around gender and sexuality, and the constant battles for recognition of diversity.

Although she rarely references historical or sociological texts, McCay’s book is very historically aware. The first half follows the emergence of homosexuality, then transgender, as the bases for identity, and the ensuing growth of what we now call the LGBTQIA+ community.

First, she gallops through several millennia, touching on writings as varied as the Kama Sutra and Shakespeare’s sonnets. Then she recognises an important turning point, with the coining of the word “homosexual” by journalist, translator and human rights campaigner Karl Maria Kertbeny, and the emergence of sexology – the science of human sexual behaviour and sexuality – in the late 19th century.

One surprising omission is Tom Crewe’s The New Life, a fictional account of the complicated lives of two pioneers of sexology, John Symonds and Havelock Ellis.

The first few chapters are a survey of queer literature in the 20th century and how it reflected changing mores and legal restrictions. Most of what McCay terms “classics” were known to me, but one of the delights of her book is the discovery of new titles.

If I were to pick the most surprising addition to the canon, it might be Lucian of Samosata, a second-century Syrian author who wrote what McCay terms “the first queer space opera”. This is apparently a satire of Homer, including gender fluid aliens and space wars.

In the second half of the book, there are chapters on LGBTQIA+ literature for children and young adults. She also surveys various genres, including science fiction, horror and crime. Sadly she does not mention Rachel Reid, whose Game Changers series became the basis for the television mega-hit, Heated Rivalry.

As she nears the present, McCay becomes very sensitive to contemporary politics and acknowledges — though does not endorse — calls for only queer authors to write queer stories.

More significant is her discussion of growing moves in some countries to ban queer books. It addresses the reality that Putin’s Russia – where in April, police raided the nation’s top publishing house on suspicion of disseminating “homosexual propaganda” – has much in common with the vigilantes who have removed books from libraries across the United States and rallied against drag storytime in libraries, including in Australia.

Gaps, ignorance and delight

I was swept along by McCay’s unfailing enthusiasm for finding books and her ability to combine analysis with her own discovery of how important telling queer stories has been in her life. She begins her introduction by recounting how she came across Lisa Alther’s Five Minutes in Heaven when she was 15 and trying to make sense of her developing sexuality.

While the book is centred on Anglo-American writing, McCay makes some effort to discuss books in languages other than English. However, I felt there were some clear gaps here, particularly an ignorance of the rich queer literature of Latin America.

Unsurprisingly, the book highlights the best known Anglo–American authors: Jeanette Winterson, Edmund White, James Baldwin, Ursula Le Guin, Armistead Maupin. But she is across the full range of genres, and her discussion of the rather different underlying possibilities of science fiction and fantasy is particularly intriguing.

Many queer readers have delighted in the freedom to reimagine sexuality and gender central to books by writers like Ursula Le Guin and Samuel Delaney.

I was delighted that she pointed to the boyishness of Enid Blyton’s George in the Famous Five series, if disappointed she ignored the much stronger queer references in Agatha Christie’s novels.

Few Australian writers are discussed, though she points to Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap, Tim Conigrave’s Holding the Man and Dylin Hardcastle’s A Language of Limbs.

She devotes a paragraph to Patrick White, mentioning only The Twyborn Affair, but there is more to be said about queerness (or homosexual desire) in White’s work. Because of her zeal to include everything, she inevitably says far less about most of the writers she discusses than an assiduous reader might want.

Of course, there are many titles one might wish were included, and a couple of odd comments. Third wave feminism was not emerging in the 80s and 90s, as she suggests.

And I would have expected some acknowledgement of Kate Millett, who introduced the term “sexual politics” in 1970, and poet and activist Robin Morgan, whose 1970 anthology, Sisterhood Is Powerful, was an important text of second wave feminism. Both pioneered queer writing and analysis in the early 1970s.

And the claim that queer “crime and mystery as a genre began in the 1950s” ignores the frequent queer references in much earlier crime writing.

Odd, too, is the assertion that E. Lynn Harris’s 1991 book Invisible Life is “the first book by an African-American queer man”, given that she devotes three pages to discussing the works of James Baldwin – who may not have used the term “queer”, but hardly hid his sexuality.

An invaluable guide

But to search for gaps is to miss the achievements of The Queer Bookshelf. At a time when bookshops are struggling and fewer people seem to be reading for pleasure, McCay reminds us novels and memoir have a unique ability to capture our imagination – and suggest ways of making sense of our lives.

Particularly useful is a 13-page appendix, which lists every variety of queer books, ranging from the standard lesbian and gay novels to categories such as “queer horror” and “queer books to make you laugh”.

I might disagree with some of her choices, but this is an invaluable guide to help readers find books for most occasions, including “books for your Book of the Film reading club”.

I particularly hope librarians read this book: it would provide an excellent starting guide for books that should be on their shelves, at a time when queers are increasingly under attack from populist right-wing politicians

Dennis Altman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.