Be Gay, Do Crime
Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos
Welcome to Queerthology! We’re an online book club dedicated to exploring anthologies, short story collections, poetry, nonfiction, and graphic novels by QTBIPOC creators. Each month, we spotlight a new book delivered straight to your inbox. To wrap up the month, we have a final post (sometimes written by us, sometimes by guest writers from our community) reflecting on the book and sparking conversation. Take a moment to read their thoughts, celebrate their perspective, and join in by adding your own reflections in the comments!
You must say yes to the mess - a review
It started as a phrase. A brilliant one, spray-painted audaciously on a concrete wall in Marseille, France in 2016. Then, a t-shirt slogan by non-binary artist Io Asunder and then, well, a significant part of the queer lexicon. Likely because for many gay and queer folks now, the latter is incredibly simple depending on where you are.
“Be gay, do crime.” Easy! Watch this: *blinks.*
There’s something quite freeing about the phrase. It’s like an anti-capitalist directive to live boldly, despite what much of society tells us about our gayness, queerness, and how that manifests. No wonder clever editors Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley created an entire anthology inspired by the iconic phrase called Be Gay, Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos. It’s a fiction book featuring 16 different queer authors’ takes on the prompt, and it is nothing if not messy.
It starts out with a lesbian couple stealing a baby in an alley, and ends with a fed-up lot of 40-something Latine queers who—in a last-ditch effort to save their communal Los Angeles home from gentrification—venture on a small town bank-robbing tour. The latter is endearing at times as far as crime stories go as this shroom-loving crew clearly love each other. And it even features a fantastical beach scene in which these characters go full creature mode in the sea. But it’s also impossible not to compare such this tale to film classics like Set it Off with not nearly as happy endings. Because the lightheartedness of this final story, called “Operation Hyacinth,” is somewhat a theme throughout the book.
Many of its “crimes” are minor or moreso internal failings that toe the moral line. Like one lesbian who enters children’s coloring contests and eventually wins a vacation to a theme park. Characters are often forced to question their albeit questionable behavior, and we spend a lot of time inside their minds as they figure it out, like one woman whose favorite pastime is spying on her lesbian neighbors. There’s a lot of seedy behavior like this, and we’re challenged to sit with the mess with these characters who vary from funny, to downright unacceptable (see: one person who creepily raids her bosses house).
Now, if you’re looking for more intense criminal activity, this isn’t your book. There are no thrilling murders or even intense heists, and so you won’t be met with challenging societal questions that sort of subject matter entertains. Instead, you kind of have to say yes to the mess and embrace all its ugliness to truly enjoy this one. So if you’re interested in sixteen often sapphic stories that playfully question what it means to be bad and queer at the same time, you might enjoy this read.
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Jasper “Jaz” Joyner is a Memphis-based author, poet, and editor. Their work has been featured in the Killens Review, The Offing, Oldster Mag, Huffington Post, the anthology book OUTSIDE THE XY, and many others. Their larger works include chapbook, A Flamboyance with Bottlecap Press, fantasy YA novel, Juniper Leaves, and zine anthology, Worth the Wage. Their latest, Pansy: A Black American Memoir, was a finalist for the Quill Prose Award and winner at the 3rd annual Richard Wright Literary Awards. jasperjoyner.com
We have featured Jaz’s memoir on Queerthology Book Club last year! Check out the discussion post here:
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One More Thing!
A quick reminder that we are going on a break for the summer to rest and recharge, and come back in the fall with some more amazing anthologies and collections. As usual, we encourage you to take some time to rest and recharge, catch up on past book club picks or any other books you’ve been meaning to get around to. Explore and discover new things, kick back and relax with the familiar.
We’ll still be giving recommendations for the Nonfiction Reading Challenge so keep an eye out for that and for a few cool things we have up our sleeves. See you later!
