This pride month was full of queer, often BIPOC stories and narratives. I caught up on Master of None’s season 3, a clean departure from its old Ansari-centered plot, likely due to his #metoo near-cancellation. The new season, dubbed Moments in Love, explores the same-sex relationship between two Black women: seasons’ 1 and 2 regular Denise (Lena Waithe) and her wife (Naomi Ackle, who I saw and loved in McQueen’s Small Axe earlier this year). Interesting attention is paid to the idea of success and ‘making it’ as a queer woman of color as well as motherhood at those intersections. If you don’t want to go through the entire season - which, to be honest, was a little tedious and lacklustre in all of its art-house-wannabe-glory - episode 4 is its best and can be enjoyed as a standalone piece. Here’s the story it was based on.
I also rapidly read my way through the delicious, luxurious, most delightful Detransition, Baby, one of my most anticipated and now favorite reads of the year. I found myself knee-deep in an incredibly immersive universe, privy to intricate insight into the protagonists’ gender and sexual identity fluctuations. If you haven’t read it you need to get on it stat. It also has like the most beautiful book cover ever.
In white news, I saw Happiest Season (because Kristen Stewart is hot and Dan Levy is Canadian and a riot) as well as Feel Good’s seasons 1 and 2 (because Mae Martin is a hot Canadian riot). Although I’m finding it harder and harder to identify with non-BIPOC narratives, I’m happy to be seeing more variety in the white LGBTQIA mainstream.
Happiest Season didn’t strike much of chord really but Feel Good’s second season did a particularly stellar job exploring gender fluidity, relationships and trauma. So often are we told that we ought to have worked through our shit before seeking companionship, that we must have cultivated a strong sense of self and independence before roping another person into our lives but how realistic is that really? It was refreshing to see a show depict gender exploration and healing within a relationship without working towards any tropey moral conclusion.
To close pride month off, I dived into this essential piece of Can Lit, which I enjoyed and learned from a good deal more than I expected to.
Set in Toronto, Crosshairs is a dystopian examination of Canadian society through the intersectional lenses of race, gender, religion, ableism and anything that makes you an “Other”. After floods ravage the city, and put many in precarious living situations, the local government runs an experiment called the “Renovation” in which “Others” are forced into labor camps under the guise of guaranteed employment. Amidst the new fascist rule, a group of allies (a drag queen, a transmasculine refugee, an Iranian social worker and a rogue army officer) band together and join the Resistance.
It’s an awfully timely read, in the wake of the legions of unmarked graves being uncovered in Canadian residential schools this year. It serves as a cautionary tale, reminding us what Canada as a nation is built on and capable of. That we have all sorts of colonial, fascist, nationalist sparks ready to be set afire. That waves of white supremacy down south always ripple through the fabric of our society. That we have waves of our own. As a Canadian living in the rapidly autocratizing nation of Mauritius, this hit close to two homes.
In a particularly unnerving passage, Hernandez reminds us that the reason her novel feels so palpable though it exaggerates the status quo is that we are much closer to veering into genocidal hell than we think.
“That shit’s been happening already with the Indigenous people here for hundreds of years. It still is happening. Why would we be surprised? The homos, the Trans folks, the freaks, the Brown people, the Black people, the Disabled, the old folks. They’re picking us up and shipping us out, one by one.”
“That can’t happen.”
“And why the hell not? It’s happened so many times in history. Why not now? Why not here?”
Catherine Hernandez delivers a masterclass on what it means to be an ally and on a fleeting hopeful note, tells us change is possible. She highlights the roles allies should have, that we’re never meant to take centre stage, but uplift and self-efface. That no one owes us the labor of explaining their trauma to us. That we need to do the work. And perhaps most importantly, that we are stronger together. Crosshairs effectively shakes up Canada's contrived image as a do-gooder and serves as an umpteenth wake-up call; it’s time our country and its governmental bodies took accountability.