New Book Bannings A couple of months ago, during Banned Books Week, I wrote that banning books is really about protecting fragile adults, not children. Since then, it seems like there’s been an explosion of efforts to restrict access to books, especially books about queer topics. My own school district in Florida has dealt with…
Tag: lgbtq+
London Letters #6: A Tale of Two Pianos
Playing piano is one of the main reasons I am surviving the pandemic. If we recognize (and if you don’t, I have some news for you) that the mind is part of the body, and so emotional health is physical health, then it shouldn’t be surprising that within a few weeks of the lockdown (so……
Writer’s Block: Bad Days are Easier
By Erika Grumet I’ve been staring at blank pages for days, deadlines lurking right around the corner on my calendar… wandering between in a funk because I can’t think of what to write about and Kermit-arm-flailing panic that the words are never going to come back. I don’t exactly think of it as “writer’s block”…
I’m Queer. Please Pass the Peas?
By Erika Grumet A few weeks ago, a thirteen year old I know showed up at my house wearing a t-shirt that read:“Bisexual Trash Panda.” Even before I was a parent, I knew adolescent sexuality pretty well–years of teaching about HIV and STIs, contraception and LGBTQ101 gave me a lens into that topic long…
Wrong Tent: A Story of the Boy Scouts
It was a weekend camping trip with the Boy Scouts. Yes, I was a Boy Scout for a couple of years. The autumn leaves were fresh and crisp—mostly oak with some maple and ash and some other shapes besides. Sitting on the ground, we were all staring intently at some curious bit of nature while…
What it Means to Ban a Book
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” The only book my parents ever took away from me was Catcher in the Rye. There are a lot of reasons someone might want to take that book away from a child. But none of those were the reasons my parents confiscated it from me. My…
The View from the Wheelchair
In college, one of my friends used to say “dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.” We would go dancing at least once a week, almost every Saturday night was reserved for going to Tracks, a big gay dance club in Washington DC. Some weeks, when money was tighter, we’d go early, when…
Erika’s Big Think #3
“I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.“ I don’t usually think of myself as a teacher. I love teaching, but I also knew there was no way I could handle classroom politics, and so, in spite of encouragement from my parents to consider teaching as a career,…
Finding Myself on the Shelf: Uncovering My Own Identity through Queer Literature
“We dance around in a ring and suppose But the Secret sits in the middle and knows” -Robert Frost Fear of being Found Out No one knows what you’re thinking when you’re wandering the library shelves. For me, they were a safe space when I had the kind of questions that no one could answer…
Concluding Reflections on Stonewall
By Erika Grumet One Sunday in June, I was folding laundry with my mother. The television was on, tuned into evening news, which was reporting on “gay pride festivities” in New York City. I was a teenager, and as teenagers often do, I held opinions about many things that conflicted with my parents. I…