The publishers of Queer Mythology (Running Press) were kind enough to send me a copy of this lovely book to review. As the title suggests, it contains stories from around the world, retold by Guido A. Sanchez, with each story getting its own, lovely full-color illustration by James Fenner. Incidentally, Fenner also did the cover art for We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures, and John Wiswell’s debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. His work is really stunning, and I highly recommend checking it out.
As Sanchez writes in his introduction, queer people and queer stories have always been part of history, all across the world. This collection is about reclaiming those stories, which have either been lost or erased, drawing on multiple sources and retellings to bring them back to light. While many of the myths do include death, violence, and cruelty – as myths often do – overwhelming, these retellings focus on the positive. These are stories of hope, affirmation, and love, and even when the characters suffer, the stories don’t linger on that suffering, but highlight the positive – as characters learn, grow, and come out stronger on the other side of loss and adversity.
It’s a slim volume, and each story is brief, perfect bite-sized myth that take readers all around the world. Sanchez writes a mini-intro for each story, putting it in context, and sharing a bit of history about the story itself – approximately when it first started to be told, or when it was written down, or the impact the story may have had.
This is the perfect book for anyone who enjoys mythology and/or queer stories. It absolutely brought me back to the books of mythology I read and re-read as a kid. I remember one book in particular – a hefty volume of Greek mythology whose stories and illustrations I returned to over and over again, inspiring a love of mythology in general. I can very much see Queer Mythology by Guido A. Sanchez, with its lovely illustrations by James Fenner, being exactly that kind of book for a young reader today, (or a reader of any age, really) sparking a love for story, and a desire to learn and read more.
