Review - From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium

Today's Review is  From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium by Justin Elizabeth Sayre

Life experiences are hard to compile. I'm living my life so my influences, my history, my inspirations all can be different from someone miles away from me, in a different state, or a different country. From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium to me is like an adult version of the atlas books I read as a kid about history and science. Instead of teaching me what NASA was or who George Washington is, the Queer Compendium does it's best to cover a general scope of queer topics. Whether it's artists, writers, politicians, entertainers, or just terminology, the Queer Compendium provides facts with wit.

This book can tell you the difference between Fortune Feimster and Ross Matthews. Now you'll know the difference between your Chelsea Handlers from your Chelsea Mannings. For me, I learned some random facts like how Annie Proulx wrote the original short story of Brokeback Mountain. Or that former porn star turned mainstream actor Brent Corrigan is pretty much the same age as me (I'm a month older and look what I've got to show in my life... *sigh*...).

The book is a cute read, one of those types where you can flip through pages, read one topic, and go, "oh yeah, that's so and so." Then you could put the book down and go back to it in a few days. There are moments where this book's author Justin Elizabeth Sayre shines with some classic gay wit and sass. Generally they succeed. Once in a while they fall flat. One example I have is there is a entry for "black girls" and it says that it's the originator of gay culture. I'm pretty sure that gay men were the originator of gay culture. I imagine gay Romans or Egyptians being weirdly gay. Or that rumor that Da Vinci was gay and I doubt black girls had anything to do with them. The "Black Girl" entry is just one of the points where the jokes miss.

My challenge with this book is two-fold. The first challenge is: when do you stop writing about a person? I understand succinct, but then when is short too short. Is that a gay stereotype of bigger is better? For example, I think Anderson Cooper is an amazing guy. The book mentions that he hosted the reality show The Mole, but then decides not to mention that he's been a contributor for 60 minutes. Remember that time Anderson asked Lady Gaga if she had a penis?  How is his time on 60 minutes not iconic enough to be mentioned.

The second challenge is that there are still a lot of topics missing. Everyone growing up has different things influencing and inspiring them and what people think are important topics and what are not. Personally, one of the biggest blaring omissions is that author Augusten Burroughs is not mentioned. I read Running with Scissors and watched the film adaptation and that novel should be part of the LGBT Library of Congress. I mean, my favorite Young Adult book of all time Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan gets a shout out, why isn't Scissors?

Here are two other omissions:

Daniel Franzese is mentioned but not Jonathan Bennett. Jonathan Bennett was also in Mean Girls in a bigger role, has prominently hosted baking competitions and married a gay Chippendale that competed on the Amazing Race.

Tim Gunn is mentioned but not Christian Siriano. Probably the most successful designer to come out of Project Runway and he became the new Tim Gunn when Tim and Heidi moved to Amazon.

Don't worry, I have at least eight or nine other topics or people that I thought could also have made the book and I'll mention them in the podcast review.

Again, this book is a good overview, but I think it's more of a starting point than an "end all, be all" book of Queerness. I thought there would be a page with a chart of what the Hanky Code was, but there wasn't. That's so gay, with coding for safety. There was a chart of successful RuPaul's Drag Race Contestants. One other phrase I'm surprised wasn't here was "friend of Dorothy." I could have sworn that made it in. I'm thinking more of Queer terminology (I can only think of gay terms as a gay man) could have helped bolster the helpfulness of the book.

I applaud Justin Elizabeth Sayre for making the attempt and Justin notes in his introduction that trying to get every little bit of information of Queer culture would be impossible. It's just impossible to get everything in one book without it becoming the size of a house. Justin is a humorist and some of the jokes land, some don't. Some of the history lands, and some do not.

Grade: C+

(Full audio review will be coming out on Episode 19.)

From Gay to Z will release on May 10th and is available on Amazon.