This month, co-editor Helena shares some of her favourite books, music, films, TV, LGBTQ+ moments, and more for our 'Read The Room Recommends' feature...
Movies:
It turns out a lot of media centers around a dad dying. Who knew! I didn’t, and then my dad died. And now I find dying dads everywhere in the books, movies, and TV shows I come across. Consuming media has been weird to say the least, and sometimes it feels like I’m playing grief roulette with every entertainment choice I make. (I still haven’t seen All of Us Strangers, even though literally everything else about it is my kind of film.) But sometimes, I end up with a good result. One of my favourites of those is The Queen of My Dreams by Fawzia Mirza.
I saw it thanks to the NewFest Pride film festival in early June this year, and while yes, this is an August recommendation list, Mirza's work has followed me out of the cinema and stayed with me since. I'm still thinking about it constantly. It's a stunning piece of storytelling about a queer woman and womanhood. It's one of my new favourites and I’m so grateful that I saw it. And despite the inciting incident hitting very close to home for me, the rest of the film is filled with so much life, curiosity, and joy.
The Queen Of My Dreams is vibrant and beautiful, and though said inciting incident is the main character’s dad dying, the film is so full of life - even while depicting mourning. We meet Azra (The Sex Lives of College Girls’ Amrit Kaur) almost immediately, a first generation Pakistani-Canadian grad student living in Toronto with her girlfriend in the late ‘90s. The terse phone call she has with her devout Muslim mother Miriam - who seems to equally disapprove of Azra’s topic of study and choice of partner - at the beginning plants the seeds for the main emotional journey of the movie, which kicks off when Azra’s dad dies suddenly soon after he and her mom arrive in Karachi to visit family in the city where they met.
Azra is immediately on a plane to Pakistan, a homeland she has never been to, in order to be with her family and bury her father. She and Miriam are forced to spend time together, an exhausted and grief-stricken Miriam pleading with her daughter to just accept the strictly enforced gender roles of the mourning process and an angry and equally grief-stricken Azra, resentful of her mother’s refusal to accept her for who she is. But as Azra spends more time in Karachi, she discovers that she and her mom might not be as different from each other as she thought, which Mirza tells via flashbacks to Miriam in 1969 Karachi and by having the women jump in and out of a Bollywood movie, a genre that both mother and daughter share an obsession for.
In short, The Queen Of My Dreams is a coming-of-age story like no other. It’s a breathtaking and invigorating exploration of intergenerational trauma, navigating cultural and personal expectations, and what “home” means. It's expertly executed, visually stunning, and truly is a work of art. It made me cry. I saw bits of my own experience with grief reflected in Azra's and I cried both for her dad and for mine. Yet watching the women on screen grieve left me feeling more human and alive than anything else. And when the film finished, I wasn't crying from sadness. I was crying from the beauty of it, and the joy of being alive.
Books:
One of the many perks of working at an indie bookstore is that I see dozens of books I otherwise never would have picked up let alone known about. Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt by Brontez Purnell is one of those. A Black gay man from the American South, Purnell tells the story of his life to date in beautiful, brutal, and witty verse. It’s intimate and moving, and I finished the book feeling like I unlocked a part of the human experience I hadn’t yet been privy to. There’s nothing like it. I’ve carried it in my heart since I’ve read it and I will definitely be revisiting it. Purnell paints far too vivid of a world to do anything but.
Another perk is getting to read advanced copies of books, and this month that included Lifeform by Jenny Slate, set to be published in October of this year. I absolutely adored her first book Little Weirds, so this was exciting to say the least. Slate writes the way my brain thinks, connecting pieces of life and humanity that I’ve always felt belonged together but could never articulate. In Lifeform, she talks about her pregnancy and early motherhood, and it’s just as weirdly profound and profoundly weird as I had hoped it would be. Even if babies and motherhood aren’t themes you gravitate towards, I urge you to give this a shot anyway. It’s so much more than what you think.
My third recommendation is the graphic novel Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith.
Five short intertwined short stories look at the lives of four young Black women - Kim, Tanisha, Davene, and Cookie - in the Bronx. It explores queerness, mental health, friendship, and Black womanhood in gorgeous color with engaging dialogue and an unexpected but effective structure. Besides the illustration style (which I’m in love with), one of the things that made me instantly appreciate Wash Day Diaries was the four pages’ worth of panels showing Kim, well, washing her hair. Reading it, I realized that it was the first time I had ever seen what a wash day actually entailed. And if that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. The book is beautiful both literally and otherwise, and I finished it feeling both like I knew these four women and that I was so lucky to get to.
TV:
If you haven’t started watching Deadloch, stop reading this and go do that. The Australian black comedy/crime drama is the best show I’ve seen this year and is like if Broadchurch and Brooklyn 99 had a baby and that baby was an Australian lesbian named Deadloch. And though I’ve just compared it to two existing shows, it’s really like no other. It manages to simultaneously be an intriguing, eerie detective thriller and a cackle-worthy comedy while also being so sapphic. Like, there are so many queer women. So many. It’s glorious. There are jokes that are so specific to lesbian culture that I honestly sometimes can’t believe they’re real. They’re so clearly self-referential, so thank you to creators Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan for giving us jokes about queer women that feel freeing and fun to laugh at. It’s also a brilliant commentary on gender and patriarchy. And Madeleine Sami’s performance as Eddie Redcliffe is inspired.
Deadloch is just another Australian show that has become an instant favourite of mine. They know how to make damn good TV down there.
Music:
I generally listen to a relatively broad range of genres, but not this summer! It's been all about the pop girlies, and who can blame me? We’re really getting treat after treat.
Two perfect pop albums that I’ve had on repeat lately are The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappell Roan (ever heard of her?) and What A Devastating Turn of Events by Rachel Chinouriri. Midwest Princess is fun, glittery and full of lesbian sexual self-assuredness; Chinouriri’s album narrates a rich and sometimes devastating (ha!) inner emotional life. That’s not to say that Turn of Events is lacking upbeat, poppy fun or that Roan’s work is lacking depth. They both cover a range of emotions and experiences and they feel equally as authentic and human as each other; they're both about belonging, love, and heartache. They’re different vibes, but both vibes are excellent. I can’t pick between them and I shant!
There’s of course also Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe,” which I think I’m actually physically incapable of listening to less than twice a day. (I fulfilled my daily quota while writing this, don’t worry). The vocals, the peak lesbian energy, the fact that a song about comphet is now in the Billboard Top 10 are all delicious and are proof that the gay agenda is alive, well, and sounds good. For actual leaked footage of me listening to the song, click here.
Next is the soft rock group Infinity Song. It’s comprised of four siblings, so you know those harmonies are blended. Their most recent album Metamorphosis has been floating through my ears for a few months now, but it’s the titular song “Metamorphosis” that has really stuck with me. I heard it again for the first time in a while at quite a pivotal moment in my life, and now listening to it carries an extra layer of meaning. I’m grateful to connect with it how I do. It reminds me that good things have - and will - come.
LGBTQ+ Moment
The Olympics. Specifically, the women. More specifically, women’s football. Most specifically, queer women playing football. Need I say more? Sorry to the UK readers as team GB didn’t make it into the Olympics this year, but this USWNT fan is cautiously optimistic about how the tournament has gone so far. (This is being written before our semifinal match against Germany, so ask me how I feel tomorrow**.) Despite this new roster saying goodbye to the “10 lesbians and Alex Morgan” lineup of 2019 Women’s World Cup fame and now consisting of only one out queer person (shout out to Tierna Davidson, #12 and defender extraordinaire), the sport is still incredibly gay. Just look at the Australian team, who also have sadly been eliminated from the tourney but are the queerest team in the international football arena at the moment.
A photo that perfectly encapsulates the queer joy that women’s footy brings me was brought to us all on Instagram by defender Katie McCabe (Ireland; Arsenal) and midfielder Daniëlle van de Donk (The Netherlands; Lyon) who are in Paris as “adopted aussies for the week” to support their respective Australian footballer partners, Caitlin Foord (AUS; Arsenal) and Ellie Carpenter (AUS; Lyon). As van de Donk said in the comments of this post, they’re “Proud wags”. And we love to see it.
It seems like it goes without saying, but there would be many more out players if queerphobia and anti-gay and -trans rhetoric weren’t running as rampant as they are. Because it’s almost certain that all athletes across the world - even in countries that already have openly queer players - would feel more comfortable living as their most authentic selves if it were safer to do so.
**Edit: We're onto the finals! I feel great! Brazil vs USA, baby!
Words: Helena Emmanuel (she/they)
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