My Story Book Club discussion

Who is your favorite fictional character?

Noooooo! Can’t pick! Won’t pick! (buries head in sand).

If stranded on an island with one book, what would it be?

This is an impossible question, so I’ll give an impossible answer. The complete works of James Baldwin. It would be a pretty big book, but if that’s all I had to carry around the island, I could manage.

A book you think all lgbt youth should read?

It’s hard to suggest a book for ALL lgbt youth, but Oranges Aren’t the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson) and Zami (Audre Lorde) were really important to me when I was young--and they still are.

Which character of your own do you admire most?

Probably J. I feel the closest to him, and I understand his pain and admire his courage. It takes courage to face down family and friends—especially when you can’t really even articulate your needs yet.

What person in history would you like to have been?

Maybe Jacques Cousteau. Minus the car accident, his time in the navy and the estrangement from his son. Everybody has a complicated life once you start really looking. But I’d love the diving and inventing and exploring and that scientific mind (which, unfortunately, I have none of…).