What do you think?
Rate this book
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History
Through exclusive interviews with protagonists like Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, John Waters, and many more, alongside a treasure trove of never-before-seen photographs and reprinted zines, Queercore traces the history of a scene originally "fabricated" in the bedrooms and coffee shops of Toronto and San Francisco by a few young, queer punks to its emergence as a relevant and real revolution. Queercore gets a down-to-details firsthand account of the movement explored through the people that lived it—from punk's early queer elements, to the moments Toronto kids decided they needed to create a scene that didn't exist, to the infiltration of the mainstream by Pansy Division, and the emergence of riot grrrl as a sister movement—as well as the clothes, zines, art, film, and music that made this movement an exciting, in-your-face middle finger to complacent gay and straight society. Queercore will stand as both a testament to radically gay politics and culture and an important reference for those who wish to better understand this explosive movement.
209 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 13, 2021
64 people are currently reading
1820 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
June 27, 2021
Queercore is an essential oral history about an influential subculture at the margins of queer and punk experiences.
Queercore is a dynamic movement, birthed alongside the Stonewall riots, that operates as a foil to main stream gayness. And as the gay liberation movement transformed into the more conservative, assimilationist gay rights movement we have today, the queercore movement became even more essential. And so this book, which is a compilation of interviews with queercore participants, informs us of why this radical, fringe subculture is so important. Filmmakers like Bruce LaBruce, John Waters, and Johnny Noxzema tell stories of creating movies that were censored and boundary pushing. Musicians from Riot Grrrl, Tribe 8, and Pansy Division talk about the tensions between being mainstream and also queer.
Oral histories are one of my favorite ways to read about history and the editors of Queercore do not disappoint. While I wish the book were a bit more in-depth and detailed, the stories of queer and punk history that come out are important and eye-opening. I fully recommend this book and all its historical musings.
Queercore is a dynamic movement, birthed alongside the Stonewall riots, that operates as a foil to main stream gayness. And as the gay liberation movement transformed into the more conservative, assimilationist gay rights movement we have today, the queercore movement became even more essential. And so this book, which is a compilation of interviews with queercore participants, informs us of why this radical, fringe subculture is so important. Filmmakers like Bruce LaBruce, John Waters, and Johnny Noxzema tell stories of creating movies that were censored and boundary pushing. Musicians from Riot Grrrl, Tribe 8, and Pansy Division talk about the tensions between being mainstream and also queer.
Oral histories are one of my favorite ways to read about history and the editors of Queercore do not disappoint. While I wish the book were a bit more in-depth and detailed, the stories of queer and punk history that come out are important and eye-opening. I fully recommend this book and all its historical musings.
July 11, 2023
Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution was a fascinating oral history of a time not so very long ago, but of a bygone world that has been forever transformed by modern technology. It was a time when people met in person, found each other through common interests, waited in lines to buy records, when zines were the big thing in the music scene for disseminating information and ideas, when being queer (and being punk) meant something similar to but also very different from what it means today.
While I was familiar with a few of the bigger artists highlighted in this work (Jayne County, Bruce LaBruce, Pansy Division), there were many others with which I was unfamiliar; and the same for the participants in this oral history (Penny Arcade, Kim Gordon, John Waters; many of the others entirely new to me).
Overall, it is a fascinating story of a specific scene mixed with a lot of great discussion on queer and punk culture, even if the music is not entirely to my liking (with the exception of select songs and albums). As an oral history, it reads very much like a documentary - not at all coincidental as in this case a 2017 documentary (which I plan to watch soon) preceded the release of the book.
While I was familiar with a few of the bigger artists highlighted in this work (Jayne County, Bruce LaBruce, Pansy Division), there were many others with which I was unfamiliar; and the same for the participants in this oral history (Penny Arcade, Kim Gordon, John Waters; many of the others entirely new to me).
Overall, it is a fascinating story of a specific scene mixed with a lot of great discussion on queer and punk culture, even if the music is not entirely to my liking (with the exception of select songs and albums). As an oral history, it reads very much like a documentary - not at all coincidental as in this case a 2017 documentary (which I plan to watch soon) preceded the release of the book.
July 19, 2021
The editors did an excellent job organizing the materials here. Most of the statements are focused and relatively short, grouped into tight thematic chapters.
I'm a gnarly old guy who had been lucky to spend time with a number of the queercore crew. Of course us old-timers could all grumble "there should be more of X" or "less of Y", but this is a pretty fair overview of the goings-on. I particularly appreciated the expanded coverage of Johnny Noxzema's contributions and the split in the Toronto scene, both barely mentioned in Yony Leyser's documentary.
I'm a gnarly old guy who had been lucky to spend time with a number of the queercore crew. Of course us old-timers could all grumble "there should be more of X" or "less of Y", but this is a pretty fair overview of the goings-on. I particularly appreciated the expanded coverage of Johnny Noxzema's contributions and the split in the Toronto scene, both barely mentioned in Yony Leyser's documentary.
November 26, 2024
Didn’t put a ton of thought into the rating, it was a good book I enjoyed, so don’t look too much into that. But now onto my thoughts on it! When Trump was elected again, I finally took this book off my bookshelf, and I’m glad I did. It’s a reminder that what is happening today has happened before, what we feel today has been felt before, and even when it wasn’t easy, queer people were there. It’s a very reassuring book to read. And I feel like I learned a lot. I won’t get too much into it here but it’s both very comforting and a book that made me think. It was very very special to hear these people that came before me, and to respect them so deeply (even if I didn’t always agree, which is also so special). I feel like it put into words a lot of thoughts and opinions I have but haven’t been very good at expressing. I don’t know I’m still not good at expressing my thoughts sometimes but I throughly enjoyed this book, and it’s very meaningful to me. I’ll be coming back to it.
OH ALSO I FORGOT. My bookmark was a tarot card I got in a vending machine in Colorado. That’s all
OH ALSO I FORGOT. My bookmark was a tarot card I got in a vending machine in Colorado. That’s all
July 1, 2023
I was really prepared to love this book, but I came out of it having mixed emotions. There were parts of this that I really enjoyed but other parts that I didn't care for.
I had some issues with the way it was framed. I went in with some knowledge of certain groups and a lot of queer history, but still found myself lost in sections. While I appreciate how it was set up by topic, I think that not including a little bit of background before some of them was a mistake, especially since we weren't seeing people tell their parts of the story to fully understand their perspective in these moments.
Over all, I did get a lot out of this book, but I think it could have been stronger.
I had some issues with the way it was framed. I went in with some knowledge of certain groups and a lot of queer history, but still found myself lost in sections. While I appreciate how it was set up by topic, I think that not including a little bit of background before some of them was a mistake, especially since we weren't seeing people tell their parts of the story to fully understand their perspective in these moments.
Over all, I did get a lot out of this book, but I think it could have been stronger.
July 5, 2023
i love queer shit and i’m pretty drawn to punk, so i had to read this, and i was not disappointed. i am here for the energy and attitude. i mean, for example, “i dropped out of high school to be a lesbian.” is said in this book. incredible.
content/trigger warnings; ableism, aids, f slur, suicide, sex, queerphobia, police brutality, antisemitism, coming out, racism, misogyny, sexism, drugs, violence, physical assault, murder, fatphobia, transphobia, lesbian separatism,
one thing that was really interesting to read was about the change in language/expression. you always see people saying the younger generations are more carefree and explorative with their sexuality and gender than the older generations because they lack the baggage the older generations have, yet in this book the older generations discuss how they’ve been seeing their ways of expression become less and less common, and in some cases viewed as problematic or outdated, in favor of more strict categories and language.
some quotes:
“a few people can be a scene. a few people is more than me, one kid alone in my bedroom drawing pictures of gay guys. to me, writing to those people in toronto, they had a scene that they were making, and even if it was just a few people it was more than just me alone. and then suddenly it exploded into this huge global thing—and thank god it did. but when i was alone, that was a big deal—that there were a handful of queer punks hanging out together, having parties. that was a big deal to me.”
“when you realize that you’re queer and you look back at the way that you’ve been treated, the way you’re supposed to think about yourself in relationship to society—you’re perverse or you’re evil, any of these pejorative terms that have been thrown at you—when you realize that’s fundamentally wrong, and that you know innately that you’re connecting with something that’s not only correct but natural, there’s a process that you go through where you start to analyze all the other systems you’re involved in. what else have i been told that’s not true? what else have i been convinced of that’s actually false? what else is supported and sustained by society that may be articial? so i think the alignment of queer and punk was really natural. punk has always questioned the status quo, and of course queers should too.”
“i’m not one of those people who say, ‘no, you have to be nice; you have to do it the right way’. you really have to make a noise. you have to cause some trouble. you have to get attention. if you don’t yell and scream, no one’s going to listen to you they’ll just overlook you and move on to the next thing. you have to say, ‘hold on, wait a fucking minute’—and it gets people’s attention.”
“without that cultural visibility, without these visions of ourselves and sounds of ourselves, we don’t even know that we exist, much less that we deserve rights and political representation. i mean, no one starts by saying, i wish there were a gay senator; they’re just like, i want to make out with a girl. are there other girls that do that? what will i be like when i’m forty? what will i be like when i’m seventy? is there anyone else out there? what do people do? what can i do? possibilities, y’know. you want to see the possibilities. you have to know you have a reason to live before you can care whether you can get married.”
“it can only be valuable if it’s inclusionary.”
“we had read everything that they’d written, we had their books on our shelves, we studied very carefully everything that they had said and done. and then we went on to build on that, to say that isn’t working anymore and this isn’t working anymore. we’re going to take these things and create the next level.”
“the gay movement used to be thoroughly radicalized by intense sexual expression, it was kind of the motor that drove the gay movement. and that doesn’t seem to be the case so much anymore. the gay conservative movement has distanced itself from a lot of the extreme sexuality in the scene.”
“prior to aids, the culture pretended that queer people didn’t exist. suddenly they could never again claim that we didn’t exist. suddenly everybody knew somebody who was gay; suddenly everyone knew they had someone gay in their family. so their whole sense of their supremacy had to shift; they had to reinvent their supremacy. and they reinvented it as this idea that the more you resemble us the more we’ll accept you—on our terms. and that’s a consequence of the aids crisis. if there had not been an aids crisis, the sexual revolution would have continued.”
“repressive tolerance—when you’re tolerated, which keeps you in a position of subservience and inferiority at the will and whim of the dominant group.”
“i was going to my first gay rights marches and seeing all these people wearing, like, leather jackets and having shaved heads and bondage gear. i was like, all these mainstream gay people, wearing all this leather, they think they’re so punk but they don’t really know what punk is. i didn’t understand the history, which is actually that punk style came from gay bdsm culture, motorcycle culture—the leather, studs, and all of that.”
“if it still matters to someone, it still exists.”
some notes:
early on in the book (it might’ve been the introduction, i don’t remember) queer is described as having been a slur before it became an identity reclaimed in the 1980s, which is not true. men self-identified as queer decades before the ’80s.
one person said there’s “very little need” for underground cultures created in response to oppression anymore, because “you don’t have to hide the fact that you’re gay” and “if you tell your middle-class family that you’re gay, they’re going to embrace it” and then says “sodomy is no longer against the law”. which. things being better *in some aspects* and *in some places* than they once were does not mean homophobia, on individual or systemic levels, doesn’t exist anymore. and sodomy laws very much still exist in a lot of places. making sweeping generalizations about how “homophobia is basically over now” is a very, very narrow and inaccurate viewpoint.
one person in this book defended william burroughs, who murdered his wife, and dismissed the murder as “that thing with his wife” and a “personal flaw” and “individuals’ critique” that should be overlooked because he was a good writer. another person defended him by saying people “believed he murdered his wife”. another person dismissed women criticizing him being beloved by gay men as them being “contrarian” and “tearing down sacred homo icons”, the latter seemingly implying homophobia. burroughs was literally put on the cover of the first issue of homocore (which was co-created by the first person i mentioned, shocker!), and not just any image of him, but him holding a gun. that’s a very deliberate photo choice. but sure. silly women, getting all worked up over people idolizing a man who shot his wife in the head in front of their child, amiright? /s. what the actual fuck.
content/trigger warnings; ableism, aids, f slur, suicide, sex, queerphobia, police brutality, antisemitism, coming out, racism, misogyny, sexism, drugs, violence, physical assault, murder, fatphobia, transphobia, lesbian separatism,
one thing that was really interesting to read was about the change in language/expression. you always see people saying the younger generations are more carefree and explorative with their sexuality and gender than the older generations because they lack the baggage the older generations have, yet in this book the older generations discuss how they’ve been seeing their ways of expression become less and less common, and in some cases viewed as problematic or outdated, in favor of more strict categories and language.
some quotes:
“a few people can be a scene. a few people is more than me, one kid alone in my bedroom drawing pictures of gay guys. to me, writing to those people in toronto, they had a scene that they were making, and even if it was just a few people it was more than just me alone. and then suddenly it exploded into this huge global thing—and thank god it did. but when i was alone, that was a big deal—that there were a handful of queer punks hanging out together, having parties. that was a big deal to me.”
“when you realize that you’re queer and you look back at the way that you’ve been treated, the way you’re supposed to think about yourself in relationship to society—you’re perverse or you’re evil, any of these pejorative terms that have been thrown at you—when you realize that’s fundamentally wrong, and that you know innately that you’re connecting with something that’s not only correct but natural, there’s a process that you go through where you start to analyze all the other systems you’re involved in. what else have i been told that’s not true? what else have i been convinced of that’s actually false? what else is supported and sustained by society that may be articial? so i think the alignment of queer and punk was really natural. punk has always questioned the status quo, and of course queers should too.”
“i’m not one of those people who say, ‘no, you have to be nice; you have to do it the right way’. you really have to make a noise. you have to cause some trouble. you have to get attention. if you don’t yell and scream, no one’s going to listen to you they’ll just overlook you and move on to the next thing. you have to say, ‘hold on, wait a fucking minute’—and it gets people’s attention.”
“without that cultural visibility, without these visions of ourselves and sounds of ourselves, we don’t even know that we exist, much less that we deserve rights and political representation. i mean, no one starts by saying, i wish there were a gay senator; they’re just like, i want to make out with a girl. are there other girls that do that? what will i be like when i’m forty? what will i be like when i’m seventy? is there anyone else out there? what do people do? what can i do? possibilities, y’know. you want to see the possibilities. you have to know you have a reason to live before you can care whether you can get married.”
“it can only be valuable if it’s inclusionary.”
“we had read everything that they’d written, we had their books on our shelves, we studied very carefully everything that they had said and done. and then we went on to build on that, to say that isn’t working anymore and this isn’t working anymore. we’re going to take these things and create the next level.”
“the gay movement used to be thoroughly radicalized by intense sexual expression, it was kind of the motor that drove the gay movement. and that doesn’t seem to be the case so much anymore. the gay conservative movement has distanced itself from a lot of the extreme sexuality in the scene.”
“prior to aids, the culture pretended that queer people didn’t exist. suddenly they could never again claim that we didn’t exist. suddenly everybody knew somebody who was gay; suddenly everyone knew they had someone gay in their family. so their whole sense of their supremacy had to shift; they had to reinvent their supremacy. and they reinvented it as this idea that the more you resemble us the more we’ll accept you—on our terms. and that’s a consequence of the aids crisis. if there had not been an aids crisis, the sexual revolution would have continued.”
“repressive tolerance—when you’re tolerated, which keeps you in a position of subservience and inferiority at the will and whim of the dominant group.”
“i was going to my first gay rights marches and seeing all these people wearing, like, leather jackets and having shaved heads and bondage gear. i was like, all these mainstream gay people, wearing all this leather, they think they’re so punk but they don’t really know what punk is. i didn’t understand the history, which is actually that punk style came from gay bdsm culture, motorcycle culture—the leather, studs, and all of that.”
“if it still matters to someone, it still exists.”
some notes:
early on in the book (it might’ve been the introduction, i don’t remember) queer is described as having been a slur before it became an identity reclaimed in the 1980s, which is not true. men self-identified as queer decades before the ’80s.
one person said there’s “very little need” for underground cultures created in response to oppression anymore, because “you don’t have to hide the fact that you’re gay” and “if you tell your middle-class family that you’re gay, they’re going to embrace it” and then says “sodomy is no longer against the law”. which. things being better *in some aspects* and *in some places* than they once were does not mean homophobia, on individual or systemic levels, doesn’t exist anymore. and sodomy laws very much still exist in a lot of places. making sweeping generalizations about how “homophobia is basically over now” is a very, very narrow and inaccurate viewpoint.
one person in this book defended william burroughs, who murdered his wife, and dismissed the murder as “that thing with his wife” and a “personal flaw” and “individuals’ critique” that should be overlooked because he was a good writer. another person defended him by saying people “believed he murdered his wife”. another person dismissed women criticizing him being beloved by gay men as them being “contrarian” and “tearing down sacred homo icons”, the latter seemingly implying homophobia. burroughs was literally put on the cover of the first issue of homocore (which was co-created by the first person i mentioned, shocker!), and not just any image of him, but him holding a gun. that’s a very deliberate photo choice. but sure. silly women, getting all worked up over people idolizing a man who shot his wife in the head in front of their child, amiright? /s. what the actual fuck.
February 19, 2023
pretty good! i hope someone has made a big spotify playlist of everyone mentioned in here. also though i kinda got the vibe that the editors were like.. defanging/deradicalizing queercore just a bit in their meta commentary which was kinda weird.
April 21, 2024
Highly engaging and strong reminder of the importance of an alternative queer scene to exist for all the misfits, weirdos, and freaks. Even being on the fringe of a fringe can be a wonderful thing and the book is a great celebration of that.
June 16, 2021
This was un-put-downable for me. Every story and every voice said something that hit me very deeply. I just loved it from start to finish.
January 25, 2023
This was interesting! For context, i don’t really no much about punk subcultures in general so i do want to do read a bit more to understand the context of these oral histories a bit more. there were some times when there were some rhetorics that i did question a bit, given that, like i just mentioned, i don’t fully know the context of everything. as an introduction though, this was a really interesting read. maybe i’ll revisit it once i do some more reading and see if i still have the same thoughts.
November 10, 2021
This relatively slender book chronicles the amazing queercore/homocore revolution of the 80's & 90s through the oral histories of some of the most notable folks involved. For me it's quite a good, stimulating read—though I see it as a solid contribution to the still-scant literature and definitely not the last word on the subject. For those interested, in 2013 & 2014, AA Bronson and Philip Aarons published Queer Zines Vols 1 & 2 respectively, with Printer Matter (dot org). Both books attempt a much more exhaustive, comprehensive overview of hundreds of different titles—apparently vol 2 includes much more recent zines—proving that the scene never dies, it only evolves. I hope the chronicling will continue on and on.
March 26, 2022
It has the common oral history issue of frequently blurring the lines between history and hagiography, and many people interviewed are a little too in love with their own outrageousness, but it's a very interesting portrait of the movement anyway.
April 30, 2024
Libro que me enseña música nueva? +1
Libro que me mueve más hacia el activismo político? +1
Libro que tiene fotos chulas y la portada más chulesca de la historia? +1(?)
Libro que me he comprado de viaje sin pretenderlo? +1
Libro? +1
Libro que me mueve más hacia el activismo político? +1
Libro que tiene fotos chulas y la portada más chulesca de la historia? +1(?)
Libro que me he comprado de viaje sin pretenderlo? +1
Libro? +1
October 11, 2021
Finished this on National Coming Out Day. How apropos! Loved the history of queercore, current political analysis, and of course all the queer gossip.
February 28, 2024
This is SUCH an interesting book! Absolutely a required reading for anyone even remotely interested in queer and punk history and culture in any way.
Read
July 26, 2025„But we were like, Yeah we’re queer; you hate us, right? Yeah we’re that. We’re that thing you hate. And people… I guess it’s the same reason you pay money to go on a rollercoaster, because it’s scary-we pay to be scared.“ (Lynn Breedlove)
So many new perspectives on queer life and queer history. All the stories told in this were so full of life and passion that you feel rightly inspired to live as vibrant and aggressively as you can, while actively pushing against politics, norms and society!
Very inspirational!
So many new perspectives on queer life and queer history. All the stories told in this were so full of life and passion that you feel rightly inspired to live as vibrant and aggressively as you can, while actively pushing against politics, norms and society!
Very inspirational!
May 4, 2025
Limited in scope (and in its structure as an oral history), but necessary as a companion to other narratives of 20th century punk. Helpful as a perspective on the life cycles of art movements and as a gateway/reference guide to Queer music and film outside the mainstream.
December 17, 2025
Spoiler Alert: Vital and important, if a little wild.
June 26, 2021
I love a history with an oral option. Different voices and different perspectives jump off the page and open your eyes to this movement within a movement. I loved hearing how Queercore was self-actualised from fantasy to reality and seeing the different ways in which important space was claimed for LGBTQ+ people within a scene that, for all its radicalism, still carried so much heteronormative baggage in its DNA.
June 11, 2021
I backed this book on Kickstarter as it felt like it needed to be made. I had no real intention to read it, but PM Press is a good organization. But, with Pride month starting up, I decided to pick up one from my pile. I'm glad I did
I don't know a whole lot about LGBT history and I know even less about Punk, but this book really helped me on both accounts. The oral history format makes for a fast, enjoyable read about this wild and mundane period of a subset of a genre and a culture.
Seriously,
I've definitely went though my local library and beyond to get some of these albums. I'm a fan of Against Me!, so we'll see how many more get added to my collection.
I don't know a whole lot about LGBT history and I know even less about Punk, but this book really helped me on both accounts. The oral history format makes for a fast, enjoyable read about this wild and mundane period of a subset of a genre and a culture.
Seriously,
I've definitely went though my local library and beyond to get some of these albums. I'm a fan of Against Me!, so we'll see how many more get added to my collection.
January 8, 2024
As a young queer person who has enjoyed listening to a lot of queercore, I adored this. What a journey!
The book’s style of oral history makes it as if I am reading a documentary- really insightful, and there’s none of that typical non fiction dry descriptive style which I despise. More photos would always be amazing personally , I must go online and check out some zines and posters myself on online archives!
This books shows a rough patchy but rich movement , highly recognised by famous queers from past generations, and is highly indicative of where we are today. It’s interesting to dive into such a pivotal time in queer culture in the West, a ‘moment’ of an everlasting movement, with the privilege of its figureheads dissecting much of its phenomena, and their meaning of queerness - how they ‘queered’, really.
This book is a great reminder on how to navigate queer radicalism and do it right in the 21st century- many wonderful ideas and histories are grappled with here that have been squished and forgotten by time; overlooked. Particularly, the forgotten undercurrents of queercore such as the physical vitality of the queer radical experience - writing zines, travelling the country, makeshift bands and having so many people interconnected in dynamic, creative queer spaces - it is starkly different to much of queer culture today.
Queercore may be seemingly spread out and diluted nowadays, but such insight on it and wide variety of opinions of its main figureheads are important to press up against in modern conversations. This book saunters aroujd the grey area of the meanings of radicalism in the name of ‘punk’ and ‘queer’ - and asks, what next? What in the futurality? What now and how is now? Utilising histories and the rise of 90s queercore gives us a chance to take a brief look back and think - what ideals and means of acquisition of a queer utopia have we forgotten, especially in a new age of more queer assimilation and more rampant transphobia?
To further on it, I would have loved to hear more about their thoughts on the capitalisation of both queerness and punk which is especially prevalent in the modern hyper-capitalist digital age, I’d very much prefer the ‘manufacturing of queer’ and ‘queercore agenda’ chapter to be a lot longer!
The book’s style of oral history makes it as if I am reading a documentary- really insightful, and there’s none of that typical non fiction dry descriptive style which I despise. More photos would always be amazing personally , I must go online and check out some zines and posters myself on online archives!
This books shows a rough patchy but rich movement , highly recognised by famous queers from past generations, and is highly indicative of where we are today. It’s interesting to dive into such a pivotal time in queer culture in the West, a ‘moment’ of an everlasting movement, with the privilege of its figureheads dissecting much of its phenomena, and their meaning of queerness - how they ‘queered’, really.
This book is a great reminder on how to navigate queer radicalism and do it right in the 21st century- many wonderful ideas and histories are grappled with here that have been squished and forgotten by time; overlooked. Particularly, the forgotten undercurrents of queercore such as the physical vitality of the queer radical experience - writing zines, travelling the country, makeshift bands and having so many people interconnected in dynamic, creative queer spaces - it is starkly different to much of queer culture today.
Queercore may be seemingly spread out and diluted nowadays, but such insight on it and wide variety of opinions of its main figureheads are important to press up against in modern conversations. This book saunters aroujd the grey area of the meanings of radicalism in the name of ‘punk’ and ‘queer’ - and asks, what next? What in the futurality? What now and how is now? Utilising histories and the rise of 90s queercore gives us a chance to take a brief look back and think - what ideals and means of acquisition of a queer utopia have we forgotten, especially in a new age of more queer assimilation and more rampant transphobia?
To further on it, I would have loved to hear more about their thoughts on the capitalisation of both queerness and punk which is especially prevalent in the modern hyper-capitalist digital age, I’d very much prefer the ‘manufacturing of queer’ and ‘queercore agenda’ chapter to be a lot longer!
April 19, 2023
Queercore went above and beyond my expectations. I’ve always wanted to understand the LGBTQ+ movement more and quite frankly, the cover caught my eye.
Just going off of aesthetics I was leery. There’s so much garbage that goes around claiming to be true queer history. It had a cool name and a cool cover. It was almost TOO cool. But this book was more than just history- it was real life experiences from people who led the movement.
Instead of being told through the grapevine, I got to witness the identities of the movers, the shakers, the doers. Reading this book not only opened the doors to the interpersonal lives of the people who paved the way to acceptance, it opened my eyes to the connection between punk and the LGBTQ+ movement; two movements I have always felt pulled towards yet never fully felt part of.
I didn’t pick this book up to study it but as time went on, I realized I had to. The stories and experiences that lay within the binding deserved great attention. They also debunked many theories, curiosities, and rumors. The interviews also revealed the backlash of these movements which came as a surprise to me.
But most importantly, this book reminded me of all the voices that were silenced too soon or misconstrued. It reminded me that there are millions of stories that need to be told. There are many voices that are still shouting. That they too deserve to be heard.
Just going off of aesthetics I was leery. There’s so much garbage that goes around claiming to be true queer history. It had a cool name and a cool cover. It was almost TOO cool. But this book was more than just history- it was real life experiences from people who led the movement.
Instead of being told through the grapevine, I got to witness the identities of the movers, the shakers, the doers. Reading this book not only opened the doors to the interpersonal lives of the people who paved the way to acceptance, it opened my eyes to the connection between punk and the LGBTQ+ movement; two movements I have always felt pulled towards yet never fully felt part of.
I didn’t pick this book up to study it but as time went on, I realized I had to. The stories and experiences that lay within the binding deserved great attention. They also debunked many theories, curiosities, and rumors. The interviews also revealed the backlash of these movements which came as a surprise to me.
But most importantly, this book reminded me of all the voices that were silenced too soon or misconstrued. It reminded me that there are millions of stories that need to be told. There are many voices that are still shouting. That they too deserve to be heard.
August 17, 2022
It's so hard to describe how home I felt reading this book. As a young queer person myself it's so indescribably beautiful to how about my queer ancestors, the people that paved the way to the world of today, that I have the privilege of living in. As a citizen of Germany I am a member of the queer community that has a lot of privileges and still there is so much work to be done! And I love seeing that energy and how it always existed and isn't dying down.
Viewing the world through a queer lense has been eye opening for me. I finally feel like I could actually be free. This book is one of the tools I had, also including talking to queer people a lot more and surrounding myself with my community, that made me feel like I'm opening my eyes for the first time again!
Thank you for all the people that did such a beautiful job capturing this eventful time and emphasizing that this moment is still very much alive.
Viewing the world through a queer lense has been eye opening for me. I finally feel like I could actually be free. This book is one of the tools I had, also including talking to queer people a lot more and surrounding myself with my community, that made me feel like I'm opening my eyes for the first time again!
Thank you for all the people that did such a beautiful job capturing this eventful time and emphasizing that this moment is still very much alive.
March 28, 2023
You demand the right to serve in the military and you're going to end up dropping phosphorous bombs on Afghani kids. And really, is that liberation? Is that freedom? Is having a seat at the table of empire really liberation? If you get to run Abu Ghraib and you get to sexually torture and humiliate people, does that mean you're equal? Because now any American kid can join the army and go make butt pyramids in Iraq. We felt like at its strongest, queer culture represented a standing critique of the entire society and its illnesses and what need to be overthrown -- a much more revolutionary take on the potential of queer liberation.
The most refreshing, most "queer as in fuck you," least respectability politics bullshit queer and punk history book I've had the pleasure to read in a long while; great reminder of why punk rock and why queer.
October 15, 2023
Got this book at SF Zine Fest 2023. Really exciting to read about queer punks, especially SF Bay Area queer punks. Favorite part was learning about the Toronto zine JDs, which invented the fictional homocore/queercore subculture in Toronto. Then the fiction became reality! That’s how bad queer punks wanted it to be real, they just made up the scene and then inhabited it! That’s the power of queer desire and what we do to create the community we need to survive. Also, awesome to read the words of Lynne Breedlove, whom I’ve seen perform live multiple times as frontman for the Homobiles, a local queercore band. I love his identity as both a trans man and a dyke. I think that is transgressive and cool. Labels are something that I think about a lot.
January 13, 2023
I have a big ol' soft spot for this format of book. The punchy, I-was-there, interview snippets pasted together style. Especially when it's about punk. ESPECIALLY when it's about QUEER punk. This was a breath of fresh air, and super enjoyable considering my book choices so far this year have been... kind of a downer. Like, they've been good, but just, a downer. It was just one of those books that makes me excited to do stuff, collaborate, get involved, start a band, be more extra, be more overtly out-there queer. I bent over a lot of page corners. Brb, gonna get a microphone to yell into and a beat-up Strat.
January 19, 2024
3.5
Reading this book felt like being an introvert at a party, listening in on a bunch of strangers reminiscing with very little context. As an Eastern-European zillenial I was hoping to gain a more thorough understanding of this movement, but it falls short as an introduction - partially because of the editing. Including a brief overview of the zines,clubs, people before the chapters would have been helpful for when I cba to check the back . Overall, I get what the oral part of the title refers to here. It’s not a history book, the stories and events are obviously skewed by the perspective of time and bias. Nonetheless, it was an inspiring read that made me reconsider my relationship with the direction of the contemporary LGBTQ movement.
Reading this book felt like being an introvert at a party, listening in on a bunch of strangers reminiscing with very little context. As an Eastern-European zillenial I was hoping to gain a more thorough understanding of this movement, but it falls short as an introduction - partially because of the editing. Including a brief overview of the zines,clubs, people before the chapters would have been helpful for when I cba to check the back . Overall, I get what the oral part of the title refers to here. It’s not a history book, the stories and events are obviously skewed by the perspective of time and bias. Nonetheless, it was an inspiring read that made me reconsider my relationship with the direction of the contemporary LGBTQ movement.
Read
June 24, 2024Takes a while to get used to the oral history format of this book. There is literally no text written by the authors. Everything is transcribed from interviews, including the book's introduction.
But once you get past that, Queercore is a treasure trove of queer and punk history. Have already lent it to a friend and I plan on lending it to many more. Anyone who enjoys punk, especially queercore/homocore/riot grrrl will find something here! I particularly enjoyed learning about the Toronto scene, which I truly did not know existed. How cool is that! Queers making music way up in Canada.
But once you get past that, Queercore is a treasure trove of queer and punk history. Have already lent it to a friend and I plan on lending it to many more. Anyone who enjoys punk, especially queercore/homocore/riot grrrl will find something here! I particularly enjoyed learning about the Toronto scene, which I truly did not know existed. How cool is that! Queers making music way up in Canada.
August 14, 2022
The book contents is exactly what the title says. I'm not the target audience but I did remember the scene back in the 90's and it was small. The book does not contradict that and the pictures included seems to back it up. Most oral history are just people reminiscing the past and what makes it great. But this book could have really added more texture to the reminiscing about the rise of hip hop and dance music. Basically some polite push back. Instead it stayed true to this one movement. Pretty cool stories though
June 15, 2022
This oral history has really encapsulated my pride experience this year. Over and over again the folks in this book repeat how they felt they didn't belong to the existing gay scenes and punk scenes, so that led to the creation of a subculture within a subculture. I love punk, I love being gay, and I love that so many figures in this history come from a radical background and tried to maintain that authenticity. I've definitely been looking into archival scans of some of the zines mentioned.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews