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A review by livbarry
Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Hunt Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America by Krista Burton
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
“I used to run a blog” ….. yes Lena Dunham incarnate, we could tell.
I don’t even know where to begin. To start with the good: I thought that the passages about the author and her mother were profound and really beautiful. Grief is almost always striking to me, and this was no different. As someone raised Catholic, religious extremism and being LGBTQ+ will never not interest me as a writing topic. However, this was one of the very few compelling moments. I also quite enjoyed the conclusion - lesbian bars are necessary, and are thus spreading - but I think anymore with a brain who undertook this project could’ve come to the same conclusion.
The author almost seemed like a social recluse with how out of touch she was with modern LGBTQ+ audiences, to be honest. She chalks this up to COVID, but that’s not much of an excuse when her prose reads as if she is a terminally online, judgmental millennial who constantly gets into petty discourse. The judgment present took me aback; I didn’t expect this to me a travel book/memoir from its marketing, and none of the memoirs I’ve ever read have had this severe judgment passed against TOTAL STRANGERS present simply because she surrounded herself with people who treated her poorly. I don’t even know where to begin in this regard… every instance became more egregious than the next….assuming a random person in community with the owners of a black establishment would say the n-word… assuming any masculine person would automatically be “femmephobic” (venmo me $15 to know what my real thoughts on that are, because I will not be publishing that for free on the internet)… the TWO PARAGRAPHS dedicated to “pin gays” (??????!?!??). I am astounded how this passed through an editor. Eventually, her assumptions about ’ racism and biphobia eventually just reads as if she is the one who actually believes those things. I won’t go into any real detail about this publicly (I’ll gladly discuss if I actually know you), but her perception of identity is somehow lesphobic, biphobic, and transphobic at the same time.
It is exhausting to read this brand of millennial’s thoughts on anything, let alone when this book is marketed as JOURNALISTIC NONFICTION. As a journalist, there are only so many times I can read about someone lamenting their fear of approaching strangers before I just get intensely BORED. Find some new material. Please. Write a memoir! Keep publishing your blog! For the sake of all journalists - TELL YOUR PUBLISHERS TO STOP ADVERTISING THIS AS INFORMATIONAL!!!!!!
I don’t even know where to begin. To start with the good: I thought that the passages about the author and her mother were profound and really beautiful. Grief is almost always striking to me, and this was no different. As someone raised Catholic, religious extremism and being LGBTQ+ will never not interest me as a writing topic. However, this was one of the very few compelling moments. I also quite enjoyed the conclusion - lesbian bars are necessary, and are thus spreading - but I think anymore with a brain who undertook this project could’ve come to the same conclusion.
The author almost seemed like a social recluse with how out of touch she was with modern LGBTQ+ audiences, to be honest. She chalks this up to COVID, but that’s not much of an excuse when her prose reads as if she is a terminally online, judgmental millennial who constantly gets into petty discourse. The judgment present took me aback; I didn’t expect this to me a travel book/memoir from its marketing, and none of the memoirs I’ve ever read have had this severe judgment passed against TOTAL STRANGERS present simply because she surrounded herself with people who treated her poorly. I don’t even know where to begin in this regard… every instance became more egregious than the next….assuming a random person in community with the owners of a black establishment would say the n-word… assuming any masculine person would automatically be “femmephobic” (venmo me $15 to know what my real thoughts on that are, because I will not be publishing that for free on the internet)… the TWO PARAGRAPHS dedicated to “pin gays” (??????!?!??). I am astounded how this passed through an editor. Eventually, her assumptions about ’ racism and biphobia eventually just reads as if she is the one who actually believes those things. I won’t go into any real detail about this publicly (I’ll gladly discuss if I actually know you), but her perception of identity is somehow lesphobic, biphobic, and transphobic at the same time.
It is exhausting to read this brand of millennial’s thoughts on anything, let alone when this book is marketed as JOURNALISTIC NONFICTION. As a journalist, there are only so many times I can read about someone lamenting their fear of approaching strangers before I just get intensely BORED. Find some new material. Please. Write a memoir! Keep publishing your blog! For the sake of all journalists - TELL YOUR PUBLISHERS TO STOP ADVERTISING THIS AS INFORMATIONAL!!!!!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Biphobia, Transphobia, and Lesbophobia