This Month's Speaker
Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier
A Wisconsin native, Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier attended UW Oshkosh as an undergrad and then completed her MA and Phd in British Literature from Marquette University. She teaches courses in composition, literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Humanities. She is an Associate Professor for English and Women's and Gender Studies, currently serves the institution as the Assessment Coordinator, and is Co-Chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department.
This Month's Topic: Marginalization Within the Queer Community
In this ground-breaking essay "'Quare" Studies, Or "(Almost Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned From My Grandmother," E. Patrick Johnson addresses the reality of the intersectionality and positionality that is often ignored in Queer Studies. So much emphasis has been placed on majority (read white) lesbians and gay men that the subjective experiences of BIPOC members of the LGBQTIA+ community have often been dismissed, ignored, or simply silenced. As such, Johnson reminds us that even within a marginalized group, further marginalization occurs. In this piece, Johnson discusses performativity, identity politics, and the need to listen to the lived experiences of all voices.
As minorities within a minority community, the narratives of BIPOC LGBQTIA+ folx have often ignored or drowned out in the media, in academia, and often, sadly, in basic visibility by their majority LGBQTIA+ peers. However, this ever-increasing and thriving demographic of the LGBQTIA+ community deserves a front-row seat at the table. In this discussion, we will explore the importance of understanding the legacy of BIPOC erasure, why visibility and representation is essential and how to help create pathways for visibility moving forward. This will be an important conversation as we consider the experiences of BIPOC members of the LGBQTIA+ community on our campuses.
Access This Month's Reading
- "'Quare' Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother."From E. Patrick Johnson in Text and Performance Quarterly.
Recommended Further Reading from Valerie
Redefining Realness by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 2014In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged and transgender in America.
Fairest by Call Number: Click title to check availablityPublication Date: 2020A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender. Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Call Number: Click on title to check availabilityPublication Date: 2019Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard...
Zami by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 1983ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.
Giovanni's Room by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 1956Now a classic of gay literature, Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality. Examining the agonizing mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined yet beautifully restrained narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.
Juliet Takes a Breath by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 2019Juliet, a self-identified queer, Bronx-born Puerto Rican-American, comes out to her family to disastrous results the night before flying to Portland to intern with her feminist author icon--whom Juliet soon realizes has a problematic definition of feminism that excludes women of color.
Young Adult
They Both Die at the End by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 2017On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They're going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they're both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There's an app for that. It's called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure--to live a lifetime in a single day.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 2012Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship--the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.
Sister Outsider by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 1984Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.
Borderlands / la Frontera by Call Number: Click title to check availabilityPublication Date: 1987Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity.