Happy Here – 10 Stories from Black Authors & Illustrators

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I got this collection out of the library because one of the authors is Dean Atta, and their contribution Asher Is A Rockstar! is an great motivational story.

As a collection it is an interesting mix, some like Dean Atta’s and Kereen Getten’s (Where is Home) tell ‘ordinary’ tales of finding yourself and your identity, others like Joseph Coelho’s Amelia St Clair and the Long-Armed Killer are more pyschdelic with its vengeful octopus, and Patrice Lawrence’s The After Ever After Bureau providing aftercare to fairy-tale characters whose “happy ever after” has run out of steam. But it is delightful in that.

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore

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After reading The Retreat I check out if the Library had any of Alison’s other novels, of which The Lighthouse is her debut.

The blurb on the back of The Retreat referred to “Moore’s trademark compelling unease” and it is evident in spades here – there is an intertwining of plots, with Futh and Ester being the central characters, who are barely acquaintances and yet their fates crash together.

There is a lot of unhappiness, none of the people we encounter are living their best life – but it is mostly the ordinary mundane unhappiness, of divorce, of loveless marriage, of loneliness, and it is perhaps that ordinariness that is the skill and the power – to build tension without anything “dramatic” happening – and then to leave the final scene unwritten yet vivid in our minds it lingers longer in our minds.

Novena by Jacques J. Rancourt

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Another collection that captures feelings so sharply.

It opens with Hello My Name is Also Jacques Rancourt which explores inherited identities and includes the line “… cannot pronounce | our own names properly.” which touched me with my own poor pronunciation of Gwilym.

From the sequence Novena

9.

Our Lady with Dreadlocks, I watch from behind

curtains as you sit before your mirror,

a twelve-blub crown, and slide the wig off your scalp.

Your upturned cups resting on the cosmetic table,

stubble returning to you like spring grass.

When you discover me in the reflection,

you tell me to come closer. Mother, into your lap

I submit my face, and we hold each other like men.

Stroke my hair now and at the hour of my death.

The Forward Book of Poetry 1995

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I put tabs on the following poems

Fountain by Kathleen Jamie

Missing by Alan Jenkins

The Fall by Fergus Allen

Condensation on a Windowpane by Dannie Abse, especially for the lines…

But pure water | is H₂O | and that’s complicated | like steam, like ice, like clouds.

Almost Like Joe Meek’s Blues by Edward Mackinnon, especially for the line…

Poor Joe was queer, no gay. The swingin sixties never came.

The Ailing Aunts by Nicky Rice

My Achilles by Stanley Iyanu

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With its framing of Greek Myths held lightly (or maybe I just don’t know them well enough to get the references?) the is a tender collection of poems rich in love.

weird + wonderful

you are not the boy you once were

gone are the thin legs, high ankle socks

and church clothes that no longer fit

braces have removed your gaps

so you no longer hide your smile

you are not the boy you once were

gone is the shyness, that small waist

the need for a father’s love -

but thankfully so is the fear

in being who you really are

you are not the boy you once were

your innocence is a thing of the past

but your heart remains the same

that boy so gentle and tender

is a man now, weird + wonderful

The Fights that make Us by Sarah Hagger-Holt

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I probably sound like a broken record in praise of Sarah’s writing – this is another book that captured my heart.

I read it on the way to and from Pilgrim Cross – where Northern Leg is relaxed in its inclusion of Trans, Non-Binary, and LGB + pilgrims, it is a delight to be in a space where you are included by default – we have travelled far since the moment when I nervously came out to my Northern Leg friends in the Jesus Arms at Greenbelt the best part of twenty years ago. But enough about me…

This book is about two stories, Jesse’s story today and Lisa story of 1988, it is a bit of a history lesson but a necessary one – so much queer history is forgotten we need people to tell our stories – to remind the increasingly toxic society we live in that we have always been here.

My relationship with Section 28 is complex – I was seven when it came into force and 22 when it was repealed – my engagement in the campaign to get rid of it in Scotland was one of the first expressions of me coming out to myself – but it is only in recent years that I have understood the shadow it cast over my sense of self - “pretended families” is a phrase that has settled deep in a well of shame that I carry with me everywhere.

Sarah writes books of hope but this one feels more 50/50 – we have no explicit happy ever after for Lisa, for Jesse there is a ‘Stand up, Stand out’ affirmation, we wish them well as we send them off into the storm clouds...