Through a dialogue between an unnamed younger homosexual man and an older, dying man named Juan Gay, National Book Award-winner Blackouts (Macmillan Audio, 7 hours) explores the suppression of queer historical past. Interspersed all through the e-book are poems constructed by blacking out phrases from pages of Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, an precise e-book by queer intercourse researcher Jan Gay. Its manufacturing, and the eventual removing of Gay’s identify from the e-book, kind the idea for a lot of the story.
The audio model reinforces the e-book’s distinctive construction by that includes completely different voice actors for the 2 foremost characters: Torian Brackett because the younger man and Ozzie Rodriguez as Juan Gay. Brackett and Rodriguez are convincing narrators, and the tip of their story is especially shifting. Author Justin Torres himself reads the erasure poems in a quiet and virtually whispery voice, affectingly reminding the listener of the act of redaction that’s on the coronary heart of Blackouts.
Read our starred review of the print version of Blackouts.
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