May the Invisible be Visible

I want to talk about this book, but also feel like it’s not my story to tell.

I want to talk about how I needed a light read, but this was overdue from the library and my heart sank when I realized it was by the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

I want to talk about my love for Maeve Binchy’s sweeping Irish epics that show not everything in the past should be romanticized and how John Boyne showed another aspect to the complicated moral history of the country.

I want to talk about how I grew up in a small, conservative place and it wasn’t until college I heard about Harvey Milk, Stonewall, Marsha Johnson, how it blows my mind that the LGBTQ+ community still has to fight so much.

But it’s not my story to tell.

It’s Cyril’s. Cyril’s and Bastiaan’s and Harvey’s and Marsha’s and that of every other person who had to, has to, fight for their love. Their equality. Their lives.

It is, and I will try to choose good words here, complete ridiculousness that there are still people who think love isn’t love. Who pick and choose rules from an ancient book and put words in their supposed savior’s mouth. Who think that baking a cake goes against their religion but support serial sexual offenders because at least they don’t believe in abortion.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a reminder that it’s not just the horrors of the recent past we are still working through, it’s those of the present. And that is my story to tell. My story to tell while calling my… difficult… members of congress, while marching for better candidates who actual support my values, and while reminding people that we can’t forget.

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Many thanks to Charlie for getting this book on my TBR list. You can find his review and other booky, Charlieful good stuff here. To know such ugliness and still see beauty… Charlie is light and love even when he doesn’t feel like it, and I’m so glad he exists.