“Queer Reader” is a book club at Epilogue that aims to provide an affirming and accessible space for LGBTQIA+ readers to come together to discuss queer literature. Each month, we’ll pick a queer book by a queer author to read and discuss together as a community.
One of the goals of this book club is to create a community where LGBTQIA+ folks can gather to, yes, discuss books, but also to forge connections in a low-pressure, laid-back environment with other queer people in their area.
About your host: Gaby (she/her) is Epilogue’s events coordinator and resident lesbian bookseller. She reads a lot of queer romance novels, literary fiction about complicated families, memoirs, and portraits of a place. When she’s not working, she’s usually listening to The Killers, riding her bike, or cooking big meals.
Upcoming Meetings:
Tuesday, January 24th at 7pm, in person
For the January meeting, they will be reading Memorial by Bryan Washington.
Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a Black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years—good years—but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. There’s the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.
But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike’s immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.
Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known. And just maybe they’ll all be okay in the end.