Weekend Pick for January 26, 2024
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Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
For the picks from 2023 click here
For the picks from 2022 click here
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
Two of my students, Maria Ortiz (left) and Zada Cologne (right) chose the same young adult novel to read. They were very surprised to show up for class presentations with the exactly same book. This tells me, I have to check out their choice. You may find it an interesting read as well.
 Malinda Lo and her book | Malinda Lo is a Chinese American author with a focus on LGBT themes in her works. Last Night at the Telegraph Club dons the perspective of Lily, an American-born Chinese teenager living in the 1950’s who comes to understand her sexuality and navigates the queer fringe of San Francisco, where she, Kath, and many others like her are only allowed to love in the shadows. Lily and Kath’s story is one of stigma and marginalization in an America of compulsive heterosexuality. |
Why is Last Night an important YA novel?
Last Night provides a historical context for uniquely queer oppression and the reason for why events such as pride are crucial. It is because for the vast majority of American history (and history in general), queer people were stigmatized, ostracized, and marginalized into only being able to live their full lives in shadows away from the law. It provides an important perspective of what the path of discovery was like for queer people before institutionalized oppression was lifted.
In some places, these oppressions still exist, and in places where they don’t, people are trying to resurrect them. Some people do not understand that queer rights had to be protected, and there is a continuous fight for these rights. Last Night is a tragedy because of heteronormative oppression, and it is a cautionary tale of why we should not return to the past.
Last Night provides a historical context for uniquely queer oppression and the reason for why events such as pride are crucial. It is because for the vast majority of American history (and history in general), queer people were stigmatized, ostracized, and marginalized into only being able to live their full lives in shadows away from the law. It provides an important perspective of what the path of discovery was like for queer people before institutionalized oppression was lifted.
In some places, these oppressions still exist, and in places where they don’t, people are trying to resurrect them. Some people do not understand that queer rights had to be protected, and there is a continuous fight for these rights. Last Night is a tragedy because of heteronormative oppression, and it is a cautionary tale of why we should not return to the past.
Till next Friday,
Leilya
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