I wanna know if love is wild; I wanna know if love is real. Can you show me?
Yes, I'm queer, and, yes, I'm a Springsteen fan. Deal with it. You will find the occasional Bruce lyric in these blog posts. I regret nothing.
Before coming out, I bought into the lie that love is only for the normals. I chased love, telling myself I didn't deserve it. I held love, undermining it with ever-torqueing anxiety until love abandoned me.
Jamal Jordan's beautiful collection of photographs and mini-bios proves that love is real. Real people, real lives, real challenges. When shared, this constitutes real love.
Jordan introduces us to queer couples of color from South Africa, Canada, and across the US. We see people from every demographic. We see queer bodies: trans, cis, curvy, angular. We meet couples at the onset of their shared journey and relationships that have weathered decades. We see retirees, families with young children, every glorious shade of skin imaginable.
This book belongs in both public libraries and high school libraries. In addition to its affirming spirit, it also visits queer heritage: civil rights, feminism, the intersectionality of race, sex, and gender. For anyone afflicted by the misperception that queer is a monolith, this book is the perfect vaccine.
I enjoyed meeting these people. I enjoyed Jordan's photography. But I knew I was holding something much more profound when I read these words:
This was my connection to everyone else in this project, to the global community of queer people of color. We all seemed to be on the same journey, of unlearning the the ways we had been conditioned to devalue ourselves.
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