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Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ + Culture
by
Queer Intentions provides the ultimate exploration of the joys and pains of being LGBTQ+ in the West at a time when queer culture has never been so mainstream.
Today, the options and freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West are greater than ever before. But is same-sex marriage, improved media visibility and corporate endorsement all it’s cracked up to be?
...moreGet A Copy
Kindle Edition, 336 pages
Published
May 30th 2019
by Picador
(first published May 28th 2019)
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I feel like we don't hear the voices of lesbian women often enough (or maybe that's just me?), so 'Queer Intentions' was a really refreshing look into LGBTQ+ culture from a different perspective.
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It's not very often that a Western author handles my corner of the world (in this book it's Serbia and Turkey) with dignity and a sincere desire to understand instead of patronizing, dramaticizing, instagramming, and then running away. That's why, initially, I was overwhelmingly skeptical of Amelia Abraham's capacity to live up to the tall order of the book's blurb.
Boy, am I glad how spectacularly wrong she proved me. This is an astounding piece of non-fiction. It's absolutely riveting and reads ...more
Boy, am I glad how spectacularly wrong she proved me. This is an astounding piece of non-fiction. It's absolutely riveting and reads ...more
Queer Intentions is the author’s personal journey through the LGBTQI+ culture; it documents the her travel through various countries and her conversations with LGBTQ+ people from all walks of life about politics, religion, spirituality, capitalism, education and exploitation.
I love the way all this heart-to-heart is documented, the author lets the people talk, share their experiences and gives us a lot of different point of views, she lets them educate the reader, leaving us to form our own opin ...more
I love the way all this heart-to-heart is documented, the author lets the people talk, share their experiences and gives us a lot of different point of views, she lets them educate the reader, leaving us to form our own opin ...more
God, I love being queer.
Read this book please thanks
Beautifully written. As a LGBTQ+ person myself it was really nice reading this. And I think every queer person should read this sentence: “LGBTQ+ people before me had been fighting for our right to be the same as everyone else, or to be different”.
Amelia Abrahams shares her —personal— journey through LGBTIQ+ culture, exploring topics such as relationships and marriage, the colourful and complex world of drag, LGTBIQ+ spaces and their evolution over the last few decades, pride or representation.
I believe one of the strong points of this book is the diversity of experiences that includes. Abrahams shares her own journey and thoughts about the topics that are explored, however, in the books she includes what she's learned from the conversat ...more
I believe one of the strong points of this book is the diversity of experiences that includes. Abrahams shares her own journey and thoughts about the topics that are explored, however, in the books she includes what she's learned from the conversat ...more
At times awesome, and at times... rather flat, this is a sort of memoir but also not, of a journalist interviewing herself around the world, while also dealing with break ups and her own life as a queer woman.
My favourite parts were probably when she talked to two gay men in Turkey, a non-binary drag queen in LA, and a trans woman who was working for the Anti-Violence Project in NYC. The parts dealing with coming out and family constellations are less my thing, and I found my attention drifting ...more
My favourite parts were probably when she talked to two gay men in Turkey, a non-binary drag queen in LA, and a trans woman who was working for the Anti-Violence Project in NYC. The parts dealing with coming out and family constellations are less my thing, and I found my attention drifting ...more
Oct 24, 2020
Briayna Cuffie
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
audiobooks,
lbtqia
I came across this book randomly on Libby/Overdrive. It’s clearly organic, and a more unpolished (not in a bad way) narrative than what I would expect of a trained journalist. The author didn’t center themselves and their own journey, which I think still surprises me, given the title and how the narrative is; the bits of real-time and hindsight reflections that were included were tactfully placed.
I loved the variety of people, places, sexual orientations and genders; each person and their approa ...more
I loved the variety of people, places, sexual orientations and genders; each person and their approa ...more
Really good! A must read for any LGBTQIA person or ally. So many varying points from within the community on a range of topics. It wasn't biased towards one opinion, Abraham actively sought out people from all walks of life across the globe and noted their views and how it changed her opinions on queer-related topics. It definitely did the same for me.
4.5/5 ...more
4.5/5 ...more
I happened to find this book on a vacation to Australia. It's not out in the US yet, but I really hope it gets an American publication because it was one of the most empowering, vital, nuanced, well-researched, and thoughtful queer nonfiction books out today. This book is simultaneously a very personal look at what evolving queer identities looks like to the cis-gendered white lesbian author of it and also a thoroughly reported understanding of shifting queer spaces and culture internationally.
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There's something about this book that just clicked with me; between the personable writing style and the breadth of people and experiences captured, Abraham articulates the different facets of the queer experience better than anyone else I have come across. It's so clear even from the first chapter that she is not only delving into her own experiences (as the title suggests) but also diligently creating space for others to tell their own stories about living as LGBTQ+. The empathy with which sh
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This was my first foray into queer/LGBT+ literature and I was really thrown by how much my own experiences and subconscious prejudices were examined in this book, as a member of the LGBT+ community.
The author blends her personal experiences with those of the people she meets and interviews across different parts of the world, and ultimately ends up with an intimate exploration of the trials and tribulations of queer people from different cultures and social spheres.
The key point of this for me ...more
The author blends her personal experiences with those of the people she meets and interviews across different parts of the world, and ultimately ends up with an intimate exploration of the trials and tribulations of queer people from different cultures and social spheres.
The key point of this for me ...more
Queer Intentions is a valuable and informative analysis of the current state of the LGBT+ community across the world and offers a wide range of voices on a variety of important topics, such as the commodification of queer culture, cultural appropriation, the role Black and trans people play in the drag community, and the debate surrounding corporations and pride. I highly recommend this book if you're looking to widen your perspective on the queer community from the very Western-centric view we
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This was a pretty good read, an investigation into whether the LGBTQ+ community are losing something of their culture and identity with assimilation into mainstream, heteronormative society, or whether advances like marriage equality and the emergence of shows such as Drag Race are to be celebrated as the result of a long-fought fight for acceptance. Spoiler alert: it’s a bit of both, but the author argues each point well and the people she interviews are super interesting.
A series of travels & essays spent interviewing people from the queer community, with an eye on political, financial, and personal aspects of LGBT pride (aka, LGBT life). It’s refreshing to read from a queer woman's perspective, one who wants to brush up against varied facets of a given topic while showing some needed bias (favoring drag queens who don't caricature or mock women, examining the commercialization of pride, etc).
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The book is a compilation of several interviews done based on certain topics such as: gay marriage, drag business, brief history of gay bars to its decline, what it means to be LGBTQ+, LGBT social media, coming out and gay pride. The author traveled around some parts of USA, Europe and Turkey to conduct the research. There's a lot of insights and discussion around the topics, I find it a very educational book.
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Absolutely brilliant and enlightening. As a young queer person, this book serves as a stepping stone into what it means to be LGBTQ+ in a modern world. Highly recommended.
Audiobooked and read for reading rush 2019
Audiobooked and read for reading rush 2019
Enlightening, empowering and thought-provoking. This book covers a wide variety of facets of queer culture, based on the author's extensive travels and interviews with a number of inspiring people willing to share a wide range of experiences. The world needs more books like this.
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Expansive and mind-expanding
An interesting and insightful read.
This was really nicely done - well structured, intelligently narrated and deeply respectful. As others have pointed out, it's rare to see a person from Western Europe to do justice to the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the East so that it's devoid of clichés and with some degree of accuracy, and Abraham manages to handle interviews in both Serbia and Turkey with remarkable tact and sense for nuance. However, while I fully understand that this is a 'personal journey', I still would have liked an ackno
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Very interesting, can recommend
really interesting delve into LGBT+ culture from a personal perspective
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this, as the title is kind of vague. There are so many books out there called the culture of..’ etc. This was incredible though. It’s impressively positive considering it’s talking about the way people within the LGBTQ culture are treated. She has a habit of saying ‘this is really bad, however this and this is happening to overcome it’ - which i think is really rare in books about feminism, queer culture, racism, the environment etc. I found the bits about trans
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Brilliantly written, insightful, interesting, kind, personal.
I'm mad at myself for keeping this on my bookshelf for the last 5 months without reading it but I also read it at the perfect time. Highly recommend! ...more
I'm mad at myself for keeping this on my bookshelf for the last 5 months without reading it but I also read it at the perfect time. Highly recommend! ...more
As a young gay man who is trying to learn more about queer culture and queer history I found this book really interesting. It wasn’t too heavy and the author is really relatable! Would recommend.
Sep 24, 2019
Chase
added it
Amelia Abraham's (2019) book Queer Intentions sets out to explore contemporary, global experiences of gay, lesbian, trans, gender-queer, intersex and queer communities. Speaking to a diverse cast of famous and lesser-known queer folk, Abraham dances through Berlin pride festivals, visits DragCon in Los Angeles, learns about trans activism and ball culture(s) in New York, and immerses herself in local queer life in Istanbul. Her narratives ranges from soporific personal anecdotes to nuanced refle
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That reading was extremely edifying and thought-provoking on so many levels! I urge you all to read it! Thank you Amelia Abraham for such a cogent essay that widened my views on my own community. Inspirational !
I have mixed feelings about this book. I was so excited about it, so ready to love it, but when I started reading it, we got off on the wrong foot and it took me over 100 pages to really get into it. With that said, once I did get into it, I really did appreciate what it was doing, so I'm not sure where that leaves me.
I'll start with the positive.
The book highlights a lot of interesting questions about where queer culture stands today and what that might mean for the future. Those topics inclu ...more
I'll start with the positive.
The book highlights a lot of interesting questions about where queer culture stands today and what that might mean for the future. Those topics inclu ...more
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