
White, Arisa, Jeffra Miah and Monique Mero-Williams, editors. “Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart”, Foglifter Press, 2021.
Negotiating Feelings About Home
Amos Lassen
“Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart” is a new anthology from Foglifter Press thatlooks at how “queer writers negotiate their feelings of home when their nation has further precluded them from a place of comfort?” It includes poetry, prose, hybrid and concrete works as it introduces us to a diverse group of authors from queer and trans life. Edited by Miah Jeffra, Monique Mero-Williams, and Arisa White, the anthology is organized around the four cardinal directions, north, south, east and west.
Many LGBTQ+ people, leave home to find a world where they fit in. They search for “family” because their own biological families and the places where they lived do not recognize, accept, and protect them. Liberation movements have changed the course of LGBTQ history but life continues to evolve with changing economies, environment, and technologies. With the passage of time, what was more equitable then is somewhat less today. Queer writers must “negotiate their feelings of home when their nation has further precluded them from a place of comfort.” Our communities today are filled with memoirs of journeys and arrivals and these have found their sources in “radical acts “ of “queer homemaking.” Yet there are still places in this country where opportunities are limited or do not exist at all. Home becomes not where you are from but where you are at. It is up to us, the queer individual and community to change the present so that we can achieve a sense of “home”. We must deal with the status quo of the times that affect the way we find or create a home an d how we write about it. We face complicated questions about what is “home” as we work at a new definition of the concept. It is from the need and the desire to find or create chosen families even as we face the issues of gentrification and displacement. This is a look at something that is quite needed and eye-opening.
Included in the anthology are selections by Andrea Abi-Karam, Sam Ace, Anastacia-Renee Jubi Arriola-Headley, Daniel Barnum, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Carson Beker, Britt Billmeyer-Finn, Luke Dani Blue, Cooper Lee Bombardier, Sionnain Buckley, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, KJ Cerankowski, Dorothy Chan, K-Ming Chang, Erica Charis-Molling, Jason B. Crawford, J DeLeon, Robin Reid Drake, C.W. Emerson, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, t’ai freedom ford, Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Suzanne Highland, Luther Hughes, Kenan Ince, Stacy Nathaniel Jackson, Marlin M. Jenkins, Laura Jones, Michal MJ Jones, Bettina Judd, Donika Kelly, Jahan Khajavi, Benjamin Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Afieya Kipp, Keegan Lawler, Juli Delgado Lopera, Joey Mancinelli, Maya Marshall, Airea D. Matthews, Clara McLean, Kate Arden McMullen, Gabriel Juan Membreno, Rajiv Mohabir, Tomas Moniz, Michael Montlack, Alicia Mountain, Gala Mukomolova, Mel Nigro, Romeo Oriogun, Holly Painter, Shelagh Patterson, James Penha, Baruch Porras Hernandez, Joy Priest, Claudia Rodriguez, sam sax, Maureen Seaton, J.G. Siminski, Kevin Simmonds, Benny Sisson, Christopher Soto, Travis Tate, Michael Todd, Milo Todd, Jason Villemez and Yanyi.