Naming Ourselves
An Invitation to Queer Literary Study
I hope you all had a restful winter break. The solstice-based holidays that many of us celebrate can come with a lot of emotions, but honoring our bodies’ need for rest during the winter (I know there are a few of you enjoying summer right now, so I hope you remember these words in a few months!) is sometimes the most radically feminist thing we can do. In a global culture that demands constant productivity at any cost, self-care can save us and the planet.
I could pontificate for a while here, and I may just do that in the live lecture on January 14 at 7:45 PM, but for here, I want to jump into what you can expect over the next 16 weeks.
All Boys Aren’t Blue
This semester will be more of a guided reading with two texts. The first is All Boys Aren’t Blue, a Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson. From the description of the book itself:
Most central to Johnson’s journey is how to reconcile his Blackness and his queerness - identities that are sometimes at odds in his story.
Similar to our discussions in the Fall 2025 semester, I believe it is critical to center marginalized experiences to help us all understand how intersectionality impacts us all. Johnson does a truly exceptional job of talking about his life experience and how gender and racial expectations impacted his life.
All Boys Aren’t Blue is a memoir geared toward young adults, and while it is an excellent read, I also think it’s appropriate to provide a content warning because the book contains some sexually explicit content. Very specifically, chapters 11 and 15 - so if you’re reading this with a young person in your life, I would recommend reading those chapters on your own first to make sure you’re prepared for any conversations that could come up.
Zami: A New Spelling of my Name
The second text we’ll be reading together this semester is Zami: A New Spelling of my Name, a biobythography by Audre Lorde. It’s my own sincerely held belief that no course in this discipline, if Audre Lorde doesn’t show up at least once (she visited twice in Fall 2025 - here and here). This is a book that is new to me - and full disclosure, I’m still about halfway through at the time of typing this module - but it explores critically important themes, including choosing your own identity and the role of family in creating your own identity.
A New York Times review of this book states:
Among the elements that make the books so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness, charateristics that shine through the writing bespeaking the evoluition of a strong and remarkable character.
Through my own reading, I haven’t found any content that I think merits a content warning, and I’m personally familiar enough with Lorde’s writings to hold onto the belief that one won’t be necessary. I guess we’ll see together if I’m right!
Journal Articles
While this semester is going to be a guided reading, we will still be discussing theory through the lens of journal articles related to the topics in All Boys Aren’t Blue and Zami: A New Spelling of my Name. While it’s important to me that there’s a lack of pretentiousness, I also want you to be able to have resources available to you that will help you talk about the queer experience through a personal and academic lens. Having the knowledge and ability to code-switch your conversations about feminism (because yes, this is feminism too) will be helpful to you as you talk about these topics with different people.
Just a few closing things for this week:
✔️You can purchase both books from the link in my Linktree. It doesn’t increase the cost to you, but I do get a small commission if you purchase that way.
💭Is there anything you’re hoping to talk about related to this topic between now and May 4, 2026?
❓ Make sure to mark Wednesday evenings at 7:45 PM CST to join me live on Substack!
✨If you want access to the recording and to have space to discuss this week’s module in a private chat, please upgrade to a paid subscription.
I’m ready let’s go