Cigarettes & Wine

by J.E. Sumerau

Imagine the terror and exhilaration of a first sexual experience in a church where you could be caught at any moment. In Cigarettes & Wine , this is where we meet an unnamed teenage narrator in a small southern town trying to make sense of their own bisexuality, gender variance, and emerging adulthood. When our narrator leaves the church, we watch their teen years unfold alongside one first love wrestling with his own sexuality and his desire for a relationship with God, and another first love seeking to find herself as she moves away from town. Through the narrator’s eyes, we also encounter a newly arrived neighbor who appears to be an all American boy, but has secrets and pain hidden behind his charming smile and athletic ability, and their oldest friend who is on the verge of romantic, artistic, and sexual transformations of her own. Along the way, these friends confront questions about gender and sexuality, violence and substance abuse, and the intricacies of love and selfhood in the shadow of churches, families, and a small southern town in the 1990’s. Alongside academic and media portrayals that generally only acknowledge binary sexual and gender options, Cigarettes & Wine offers an illustration of non-binary sexual and gender experience, and provides a first person view of the ways the people, places, and narratives we encounter shape who we become. While fictional, Cigarettes & Wine is loosely grounded in hundreds of formal and informal interviews with LGBTQ people in the south as well as years of research into intersections of sexualities, gender, religion, and health. Cigarettes & Wine can be read purely for pleasure or used as supplemental reading in a variety of courses in sexualities, gender, relationships, families, religion, the life course, narratives, the American south, identities, culture, intersectionality, and arts-based research.

Genres: Queer, Fiction

250 pages, Hardcover

Published January 19, 2017

About the author

JE Sumerau is a novelist, scholar, and teacher writing about culture, relationships, & the southeastern U.S. in a wide variety of ways -> Follow on Instagram & Reels @jesumerau and Facebook @jesumerau & Twitter @jsumerau for updates.

Reviews

[A.M. Leibowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: This book does not have a happy ending. I was more than a little bothered by yet another "kill your gays" storyline. I still feel this has literary value, but it definitely requires that warning. I found the death to be senseless and tragic.

This is the fourth or fifth book I’ve read in less than a year set in the 1990s, and I still have two more ahead. A lot of late Gen X-ers are writing about our own coming of age years, perhaps feeling the pull of our age and the need to tell our stories, to connect our parents’ generation with our children’s. These were the books I needed as an introverted, confused adolescent struggling to see myself in mainstream fiction. The characters are the people I longed to know but was afraid to find. Although this book, and others like it, are written for teens and new adults, they are also written for us. They are for the youths we were, growing up just after the awakening of Gay Liberation but being raised under the looming presence of the Religious Right.

In Cigarettes and Wine, the main character is never named. The novel has a memoir-like feel to it, and we’re treated not only to the narrative of their young adult years but also their philosophical musings about the experiences. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, it is an absorbing read and an eye-opening look at small-town Southern life during that era.

This is not a romance, but there are many kinds of love contained in the story. The narrator has more than one romantic love, but they also have strong bonds with many friends. On page, many people come in and out of their life. Some remain to become lifelong friends; others drift away. There is a brief part where the narrator ponders how incorrect we can sometimes be about the importance of someone we meet. I think this is almost the overall tone of the whole story, discovering who the important people are.

There were many things that I found myself nodding along to, experiences the narrator details which match my own. But emotionally, I actually related most to their years-long boyfriend, Jordan. Although first-person narration leans toward the unreliable, I found the main character to be refreshingly honest about their feelings toward the other characters. Whether these were close friends, lovers, or people they disliked, all were drawn as fully human, whole people rather than the narrator’s caricatures of them.

One thing which surprised me was not to see any mention of HIV/AIDS at all. I’m not sure if this is a function of the narrator’s relatively sheltered upbringing, and it isn’t something to be criticized. It’s only notable because there are other key events of the 1990s which do come up, including Matthew Shepard’s death. In all other ways, so much of that era will resonate for anyone who lived it, and it will be interesting to see how young adults coming of age now perceive the climate of twenty years ago.

In true literary fashion, there is a lot of foreshadowing for the last quarter of the book. I had a feeling I knew where the story was going from fairly early on, but that did not detract from my enjoyment. Instead, it helped me both to see the rich history of my near-age-peers and to view the story as metaphor. This is a classic example of the shattering of innocence and the often painful slide into adulthood, especially for those of us who were not fully accepted or integrated within our churches, schools, or communities.

While I am now at a stage where I prefer happy or hopeful endings to ambiguous or tragic ones, I still found so much to enjoy and appreciate here. This is a highly skillful story which I hope is widely read. Ideally, adults who lived through this era would have the chance to read and talk about it with today’s young people. Even now, many lgbtq+ youth are almost forced to raise themselves with far less guidance than straight kids. A book like this, and the stories contained in it, could bridge the age gap and help us to understand one another.

For a solid story, a book full of wise words, and characters who stick with you beyond the end, this gets 5 stars.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are only a few books, or literary series, that I have reread over and over throughout my life. They are the stories that take me away to places both comfortably familiar and wildly alien and whose characters become my friends and find a place in my heart forever. Even though I know how it all turns out, even though I know the characters better than some of my friends, they never grow stale and, periodically, I feel a strong need to reacquaint myself with them - like catching up with a dear old friend I haven't seen in many years.

I have recently been introduced to such a book, and to a beautiful group of new friends, in J. E. Sumerau's touching and exquisitely crafted, Cigarettes and Wine. I have only recently finished reading it, yet I already know I will return to this story again and again and I look forward (somewhat impatiently, I must admit) to the next book in the series coming out so I can continue to share the joys and sorrows, loves and losses, of my newfound friends.

If you cherish a good story well told, if you love characters who become your friends and take up residence in your thoughts and day dreams, do yourself a favor and get this book!

[Lain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I am literally always wondering where the bisexual characters are in all stories, but particularly 'LGBT' fiction and Sumerau has breathtakingly brought them into existence. The characters in Cigarettes & Wine are raw, honest, and complex. The dialogue between them is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. Sumerau gracefully captures life in the south as a bisexual genderqueer kid in the 1990s in a way that makes it impossible for you to not get sucked into this story, no matter who you are.

[Michael Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those of us who lived in the 90's, for those of us who came from smaller towns, for those of us that felt constricted with the need to hide our 'strangeness' from others, Cigarettes & Wine puts you right back there, ready or not. Our unnamed protagonist navigates their teen years dealing with love, friendship, sex, and growing up.
Nothing about adolescence is cut and dried, despite what we might think at the time. It's like stepping on eggshells in a minefield. Adding in issues of gender and identity only make it more difficult. Our narrator is unapologitic for who he is, which I think is putting a positive example out there for any youths reading this book. There is no sugar coating here: drinking, smoking, and sex happen; also heartbreak, elation, fear, and happiness. These are all things that happen, and I think it's an excellent thing to see portrayed honestly, and not demonized or glorified. It's also good to see the topic of poly relationships pop up.
The storytelling is solid and the narrative flows well. It definitely kept me interested. The fact that it is also a part of the Social Fictions Series, crafted from interviews and research, back it with authenticity. I appreciated the fact that it also had topics of discussion and assignments for a classroom setting. It's not just dealing with 'LGBTQ+ subjects' it's dealing with people in all their various forms in different ways that can be gleaned from this story and its characters. Overall, Cigarettes & Wine is an enjoyable and thought provoking story that I highly recommend.

[ELVIA P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cigarettes & Wine is a fearless and beautifully written novel that captures the confusion, longing, and vulnerability of growing into oneself within a world full of contradictions. J.E. Sumerau offers an intimate portrait of adolescence in the American South, where faith, desire, friendship, and identity intersect in complex and often painful ways. The unnamed narrator’s voice feels honest and immediate, pulling the reader into moments of fear, tenderness, and discovery with striking emotional clarity.

What makes this book exceptional is its emotional authenticity and nuance. The exploration of bisexuality, gender variance, love, and belief unfolds with sensitivity and depth, never reducing characters to labels or easy answers. The relationships feel lived in, the setting feels real, and the questions raised about selfhood and belonging linger long after the final page. This is a powerful, thoughtful novel that resonates on both a personal and cultural level.

[Nik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cigarettes & Wine invites the reader to dig deeper into the lives of a charismatic group of close friends. You will become emotionally invested in each character, as they overcome their own unique set of challenges as LGBTQ adolescents. While remaining an insightful resource in gender fluidity, sexualities, and religion, this narrative has also been an indulgence of pleasure. Cigarettes & Wine is charming, witty, and touching, while capturing the intersectional experiences of sexual and gender minorities. As a prospective graduate student, it gives me great satisfaction to read a fiction novel with such accuracy in LGBTQ scholarship. Cigarettes & Wine is a queer narrative to remember!

[April Callis · Rating 2 out of 5]

What just happened?

I appreciate the idea of bringing together social science research and fiction. And as someone who grew up bisexual in the Carolinas in the 90s, much of what was described in this book rang true to my own experiences.

That said, I struggled with the inconsistent tense use through the book, and the narrator sometimes (but not always) seeming to speak from the future. I don't know that there was a plot, so much as there were a series of characters and situations. And the ending did not seem to match the book at all - I had the feeling that something was going to happen with that particular story line but did NOT expect that.

[Camila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. It would have been useful to read this as a teenager to learn about how to treat people especially those having a difficult time, the buddy system at parties, how not be ashamed of ones sexuality and many other lessons that pop up in the plot. I think that this book would have been better if it would have had stronger vocabulary especially in the dialogue and perhaps adding more details about when characters are upset or acting irrationally. Sometimes the characters seemed so incredibly positive that it felt unrealistic.

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It had a great storyline and it really had me in my emotions. I would recommend this a thousand times

[Annelyn Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderfully written book. Being able to follow the characters as they figure out who they are and find terms that describe how the feel was great and relatable. The story really shows how various people can affect one's life. The reader can get real glimspe of what it's like to be LGBT growing up in a place that doesn't accept you and trying to find your way in the world. This stories hits upon many issues people face growing up and how these issues change who we become over the years. A truly captivating story.