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Across the Page: Bisexual Literature

The three books featured this month represent bisexuality in different ways: Galaxy Craze’s new book Tiger, Tiger is a coming of age story about a bisexual teenager who moves to an ashram with her family; Slavenka Drakuli?’s new novel, Frida’s Bed, imagines the last days of bisexual artist Frida Kahlo’s life; and bisexual poet Sapphire covers a range of issues in her new poetry collection Black Wings & Black Angels.

Tiger, Tiger by Galaxy Craze (Black Cat)

In Tiger, Tiger, the follow-up to her critically acclaimed novel By the Shore, Galaxy Graze returns to the family of Lucy, Eden and May. It is not necessary, though, to have read the first book to enjoy this absolutely beautiful novel about a family that is struggling to stay together.

Tiger, Tiger follows May as her mother Lucy leaves her father once again, this time taking May and her young brother Eden from England to California. Though May imagines returning to school after this summer holiday with tanned skin and stories of swimming in the ocean to impress all of the girls in her school who don’t seem to know that she exists, Lucy has decidedly other plans.

Instead of a relaxed beach vacation, the three end up at an ashram in the middle of the desert. Lucy believes the sect’s leader, Parvati, will help heal her wounds and offer a place where she can find peace.

May’s skepticism and homesickness soon vanish when she meets the beautiful and impressive Sati. The two quickly develop an intimate relationship, one that captures all of the lust, fear and excitement of first love. Craze never tries to define or qualify May’s fluid sexuality, though her interest in boys is abstract compared to her very real and powerful relationship with Sati:

“I felt her tongue in my mouth. I had kissed boys before, but still I was not sure how or if I kissed well. I remember feeling swallowed by them, but Sati’s lips were the same as mine and this kiss felt gentle, tingling.”

Before long the summer has ended and May realizes that her mother has no plans to return to England anytime soon. At about the same time Sati sets her eyes on a new conquest, her mother gives birth to another baby girl who she offers as a gift to the childless Parvati. Sati’s mother had planned to do this all along, but once she sees the child her initial altruism is called into question.

Though Parvati tries to separate the mother and daughter, the infant’s refusal to take a bottle rather than breastfeed complicates her efforts. When May’s mother secretly steps in to help, the family’s position at the ashram is put into jeopardy as is May and Sati’s relationship.

Craze’s writing is smooth and lyrical, offering an intimate look at a unique girl from a unique family in a truly unique setting. Yet May is also highly relatable in her search to reclaim power despite her age and the burden of both familial and romantic love. Tiger, Tiger is intensely engaging, a must read.

Frida’s Bed by Slavenka Drakuli? (Penguin Books)

Slavenka Drakuli?’s new novel, Frida’s Bed, is the harrowing account of the bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s last days. The book begins with Frida in her bed, reminiscing about her life.

At this moment, her body is finally failing her after a lifetime of pain caused by a childhood case of polio and a horrendous accident where she was struck by a streetcar as a young adult. Both experiences left Frida feeling like a prisoner in her own body and having to endure over thirty operations.

Drakuli? deftly and meticulously analyzes how a “deformed body” can determine one’s fate from Frida’s perspective-a perspective that shifts throughout the novel from the first to the third person point of view, and often speaks directly to another character.

Frida’s pain filters into and affects nearly every aspect of her life: her relationship with her parents, who were financially and emotionally drained by their daughter’s two misfortunes; her art, which she began to produce as a way to distract herself from the pain; and her complicated marriage to the love of her life, fellow artist Diego Rivera, whose inability to be monogamous was one of Frida’s greatest sorrows.

Drakuli?, a celebrated Croatian novelist and journalist who has also suffered from chronic pain, explores the impact of illness from many different perspectives. Some of the more interesting sections of the book include Frida’s descriptions of the experiences or emotions that influenced her paintings.

When Frida finds her beloved sister and caretaker, Kity, having an affair with Diego, she finally divorces her husband. She has affairs with both men and women, and begins to wonder if her intense loyalty and passion for Diego is because she fears no one else in the world could possible love her ailing body.

Frida finally returns to her Diego and Kity because, she now reflects, they are all she has in the world. Though she is fiercely independent as an artist, as a person “she could not cut either Kity or the Maestro [Diego] out of her life, it would be like self-amputation.”

 

Eventually Frida accepts that she will never be able to compete with all of the other women in Diego’s life. Instead she reinvents herself, as she has many times before, and their relationship turns from that of husband and wife to mother and son: “As if love were a liquid that could easily be decanted from one vessel to another, she found a way to funnel the love of a woman into that of a mother.”

But this last transition has a significant impact on not only Frida’s art, but on her sense of self: “It hurt me to deny my femininity. I had acquired a child but lost a man.”

As difficult as it is to read about Frida’s battle with both her mind and body, Drakuli? allows room for redemption. There is a sense that this is perhaps the one story that has not been told about the acclaimed artist. There is also the sense that it is part of the story she would want told if only because of the enormous strength it took to survive this life-an extraordinary life lived in pain but for art and love.

Black Wings & Blind Angels by Sapphire (Vintage)

Bisexual poet Sapphire is known for her provocative and daring voice. Her first collection of poetry, American Dreams, was described by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the “strongest debut collection of the nineties.” Her novel Push, an unflinching account of incest and abuse, was the recipient of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award.

Sapphire’s second collection of poetry, Black Wings & Blind Angels, is no different. The poems here capture a range of stories and voices, from sexual abuse, racism, violence, family and war. The language is direct, raw and gripping.

In the poem “She Asks About My Mother,” Sapphire uses a conversation she has in therapy with the doctor to explain her mother’s abandonment:

The therapist, even the stranger in the airport, asks, “Where was your mother?” It is hard to explain not coming, a mother being through or me holding on to my uterus, swollen with these tumors, to the very last.

Sapphire performs her poetry all over the country and many of the poems demand to be read aloud. In “Villanelle,” which is as far from the actual form as possible, she writes:

At school the workshop focuses on villanelle & sestina-the light at the end for counting knowing, rhyming, European, white I’m interested in the black howl, light candles to invoke it.

Then, several pages later, she write a villanelle, “Leave the Lights On,” about the difficulty of revealing ones flawed body during intimacy:

But still the ugly body is love’s sweet swan. Love doesn’t ask one to be blind or hide. It is an act of courage to leave the lights on.

In some of the more complex poems, Sapphire analyzes the impact of sexual abuse, especially as it relates to adult relationships with men:

Eight years, and then a window opens and the years disappear like that and I am in front your naked body, a child. What to say now to the nice man I am having tea with, clear he is not a perpetrator but still a man.
Sapphire is a perceptive, careful and thoughtful observer. The poems in Black Wings & Blind Angels do more than just break the surface on complex issues and subjects like race and sexuality. They shatter it.

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