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Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Home Home by Lisa Allen-Agostini

5 reviews

cartermon4's review

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challenging emotional funny informative lighthearted reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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isotobel's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

3.0

I enjoyed this book, but there were some faults that I couldn't ignore. It was a nice story and I was rooting for the main character, but it felt like it was trying to skim over too many important topics and therefore kind of dropped the ball in a few ways. To properly explore mental illness, race and racism as an immigrant, and LGBTQ+ acceptance, the story would probably have to be longer, but even at this length there were several parts that could have easily been changed, which were offensive or showed the author's ignorance on a subject. The portrayal of mental illness was very much focused on the external behaviours of the character, so even though we had a first person perspective, we didn't really get any insight into the character's experience beyond "things are overwhelming", "I feel an empty pit inside me", and other such cliches.

This still could have been a book I'd recommend to others if not for the author's blatant ignorance on LGBTQ+ issues. The main character is from a country without much LGBTQ+ acceptance, and then has to adjust to living in Canada with her lesbian aunts, which could have made for an interesting story of the main character processing and eventually accepting gay people. There were moments that had this potential, but they were never really resolved. The character expresses some vaguely homophobic and some repulsively transphobic thoughts, and then these are never revisited to show that she has changed. The fact that these thoughts are never challenged kind of undercuts the book's themes of accepting people for who they are.

Also, the lesbians in this book are in a really stereotypical butch-femme relationship where the femme does all the housework and the butch apparently won't change her baby's nappy. It's a shame because there seem to be good intentions behind the author including queer stuff, but she clearly didn't have a single queer person check her work.

Content Warnings