The Book Club That Didn't Read Me

Just One of the Girls?

Twenty-five years ago, I was in a fantastic book club. Our deep conversations—fueled by a lot of wine—often turned into heated debates. I quickly learned to defend my ideas.

The group was full of smart, funny, opinionated women. Most of us worked in publishing. I was the lone man. Because I was gay, I was considered "one of the girls.” At the time, I didn’t know there was another way to see myself.

The Joke's on Me

For years I had an old New Yorker cartoon hanging on my fridge. In it, a gay couple is looking at a movie marquee. One of them says, “No more movies about straight people in love. I’m sick of extrapolating.”

I cut that out and hung it where I could see it every day. Yet I still missed what it was trying to tell me. In all the time I was in that book club, not once did I suggest a book by or about a gay person. 

Taking It All in

Like many book clubs, ours eventually broke up for the usual reasons—new jobs, not enough time. Without the group shaping what I was reading, I gravitated toward books centered on gay lives. But the more I read, the more I realized I wasn’t just looking for representation—I was looking for a way to express my own voice. 

From Critic to Champion

That realization is what led me to book criticism. I no longer had to extrapolate from straight narratives or wait for someone else to bring queer stories into the discussion. By learning to do that myself, I made space not just for the conversations I'd been missing, but for the voice that had been missing from them—my own.