Welcome to Litsy!

I walked out of a childhood friend‘s funeral and into the bookstore and stared at the shelves with no makeup left and the feeling that I existed adjacent to the rest of the world, looking for a distraction. I saw Icarus on the shelf, recognized the cover and bought it without looking much further than the paragraph on the back. Then I devoured it in many different sittings, carrying it around with me for a month and a half like a security blanket.

Activist and advocate Alecia Weigel shares about her experiences as an intersex woman and talks extensively about the inequities intersex people face, especially in medical practice. A thoughtful read, and a good place to start if you are not familiar with the issues intersex folks face. Content warnings for medical mispractice, sexual assault, and gaslighting. #LGBTQIA #Intersex #Memoir

Pagonis shares how they came to discover during college that they were intersex and reflects on the difficulties growing up, knowing they were different but not understanding why. They also recount their move into activism and advocacy work, eventually helping to stop unnecessary surgeries on intersex children at the very hospital where multiple procedures were performed on them throughout childhood. Very eye opening.

This year for #PrideMonth I wanted to challenge myself to read all of the letters in the Pride spectrum (well the most common at least - LGBTQAI)

I found that Intersex, Asexual, and Queer were the most difficult books to find.

Q- while queer is often used as a catchall category I was really looking for authors who specifically called themselves Queer, and it turned out harder then I had first thought.

These are the books I read.

A lyrical YA story about a boy trained as an art their and the boy he falls in love with that changes everything. Very Greek with Icarus and Helio as our main guys! I thought there were a few unusual and interesting ideas in this story, and I overall enjoyed the writing, even if some of the elements were a bit too fantastic.

#weeklyforecast

I have the tagged as my audiobook this week. Need to finish up Well of Loneliness, then will tackle Little Rot and Just By Looking at Him. Will start the chunky Hollinghurst with no hope to finish by EOM.

I cannot believe we are on the last full week of #Pride month!

*Sigh* My second bail of the month. I'm sure this may be interesting to some people, but the first handful of "life lessons" discuss how they decide to wear their hair, what kind of glasses to buy, and what gender to select on their health monitoring app. Not exactly riveting reading for me. I guess it provides insight into the decision making of an intersex person, but that is not what I'm in the mood for now.

This was a solid installment in the Wayward Children series. I enjoyed the world in this story, I just felt that it rushed through the ending. I will still continue to read these lovely little novellas. 4⭐️

This is a brilliant book, I really enjoyed it. A collection of essays by nineteen trans, non-binary, agender, gender-fluid and intersex writers, describing the multi-faceted ways they find joy in simply being themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, on the anniversary of Foucault's death, the garden of his family home was open to the public, as was his office, & 2 short plays, including the premiere of the 1 based on the tagged book, were given for free. I was there, but as photos were not allowed, there's no proof 😊. I enjoyed the play, and am now reading the book. It contains Herculine's own account of her life as an intersex person in the 19th century.