Outwords Books Celebrates ‘Christmas in July’ and a Summer Reading List

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Milwaukee’s Outwords Books, Gifts and Coffee (2710 N. Murray St.) is one of a scant dozen surviving LGBTQ-dedicated bookstores in the entire country and it’s about to celebrate its 29th anniversary. Proprietor Carl Szatmary, Cream City’s purveyor of fine LGBTQ literature, queer gifts and rainbow accessoires, recently announced the shop’s “Christmas in July” sale that takes place this month beginning on Thursday, June 8 and continuing to June 10.

On Saturday, June 9, Outwords offers holiday-themed refreshments and entertainment. The event comes as a result of a health crisis Szatmary experienced last December. Homebound due to health issues over the holidays, he relied on volunteers to keep the store running but they were only able to open a few days a week. “We have a lot of product left so we decided to do a fun, Christmas-themed event for our anniversary. It’s a long time to be open and we’ve been through it with a fire, a flood and other issues. People made the effort to keep us open and were really terrific,” Szatmary said.

Something for Everyone

The occasion offers not only an opportunity to celebrate one of Milwaukee’s longest existing LGBTQ businesses but also to stock up on books for your summer reading pleasure. To that end Szatmary gave me a list of current LGBTQ titles covering a something-for-everyone spectrum of genres and subjects to choose from. 

Starting with the perfect escape, Timothy Janovsky’s lighthearted rom-com Never Been Kissed finds protagonist Wren set on experiencing his first kiss before his 21st birthday and determined to make that a reality from his pool of crushes. It’s a perfect read for fans of Casey McQuiston’s Red, White and Royal Blue. Speaking of whom, Szatmary recommends that author’s latest, I Kissed Sarah Wheeler, a lesbian coming of age novel set in a small Alabama town. In another romance, Brian O’Connell’s Just by Looking at Him, protagonist Eliot, who endures cerebral palsy, searches for “the one,” and seemingly finds him in Gus, his indulgent boyfriend. Yet, Eliot can’t stop cheating.

Nghi Vo’s lesbian historical fiction novel Siren Queen tells the story of young aspiring actress Luli Wei, an industry outsider determined to be on the big screen no matter the cost. Andrew Holleran’s Kingdom of Sand (his first novel in 16 years) is an elegy to sex and a candid exploration of loneliness and the insatiable need for human connection.

Liarmouth is the first novel by John Waters (yes, the John Waters). As Szartmary enticingly describes it: “Marsha Sprinkle: Suitcase thief. Scammer. Master of disguise. Dogs and children hate her. Her own family wants her dead. She’s smart, she’s desperate, she’s disturbed, and she’s on the run with a big chip on her shoulder. They call her Liarmouth—until one insane man makes her tell the truth. … a perfectly perverted ‘feel-bad romance,’ and the reader will thrill to hop aboard this delirious road trip of riotous revenge.”

In the realm of introspection, picks include activist, producer, actor, model Nyle DiMarco’s Deaf Utopia, A Memoir—and a Love Letter to a Way of Life, a collection of stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, that reveal the author’s experience as a deaf gay man negotiating a world of the hearing; and Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality by pop-psychologist Julia Shaw, an exploration of the science of sexuality beyond gender and the binary. 

Of course, histories are always compelling food for thought and insight into how we got here. Two are on Szatmary’s list. Jack Parlett’s Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise, describes a utopian and exclusionary queer space on the Long Island coast, investigating its cultural significance over generations with a cast of characters that includes Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, presents LGBTQ history through its villains, failures and baddies from Emperor Hadrian and Lawrence of Arabia to Irish rebel Sir Roger Casement, J. Edgar Hoover and lawyer Roy Cohn.

To those, I’ll add Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by historian, activist and prison abolitionist Hugh Ryan. It presents the remarkable story of gender-queers, lesbians and transgender men incarcerated in a New York City jail. Then there’s a recent Outwords Men’s Book Club selection, Eric Cervini’s The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States. It traces U.S. government repression of gays and lesbians and the connection of gay rights activism to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. (And, by the way, the Men’s Book Club is still going strong.)

For local lore, the just released History of Milwaukee Drag: Seven Generations of Glamor by drag icon BJ Daniels and Michail Takach chronicles Cream City drag from 1884 to the present.

No reading list would be complete without selections from the dusty bookshelf of the gay classics. My own first literary exploration of gayness, decades ago as a high school student, was inspired by Japanese author Yukio Mishima’s novels Temple of the Golden Pavilion and Confessions of a Mask. They should be on any bookworm’s must-reads.