jonthewallflower:

Three months, two ice storms and one set of roommates later and I finally got my copy of Coming & Crying!

yeuxcouverts:

(To be a good writer you have to read. I don’t care what anyone says. But this list is probably partial and really for this moment because the list changes a lot.)

1. Coming and Crying Edited by Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell

I take it everywhere I go, and when I read it on the train people look at me funny. It’s an amazing compilation of stories, go get the book. And it’s about a lot more than sex.

miraclesandmermaids:

Look at the surprise I got in the mail today!

Back in November I sent Melissa and Meaghano a letter as per their suggestion because they said:

Dear Internet,

Back in—gulp—FEBRUARY we were in the middle of Kickstartering and raising money and had little to no idea of the realities of the post office, or, to be fair, the realities of how wonderful making a book and talking to you would be. But back in February as we were asking you for money we felt a little weird about it, when we thought about it too much. What we wanted was for people who wanted the book to have the book. We may have said “needed” as in, “we need this book,” because when making something from nothing, telling yourself, “this needs to exist,” is often the only reassurance that offers real consolation.

This evening I got home, peeled off all of my winter layers and slowly unwrapped my package, hoping it was a copy of Coming & Crying. All I did was mail them a letter and they sent this to me for free! There is even a handwritten note inside that put the biggest smile on my face. I am too excited to even read the book right now, just hold it and marvel that it is in my hands.

(via justineful-deactivated20111008)

allisonweiss:

Coming & Crying

I don’t think I ever blogged about how much I fucking love this book.

I’m only halfway through, but it’s not because I’m not obsessed with it. It’s just so perfect that I have to be in a specific mood to sit down and read it. I’ve got to be ready to have my heart ripped out in the most awesome way possible. I started it back in August when I got it in the mail. I would wake up every day for a week and open my blinds and put on a record and read one of the stories, getting completely lost in it all and wanting to live a more adventurous life of love and lust and heartbreak, etc. I just want to make it last as long as I can, so I’ll leave it next to my bed and wait for the right moment to finish it.

heysean:

“I wanted to join Julian at the bar. I wanted to see him drink a beer, I wanted to know how he held the glass neck with his fingers and I wanted to see him with his friends. I wanted to be with him in every situation and every circumstance. My curiosity made me frantic. After only ten minutes together, Julian’s mere existence and sown necessary chaos in my world.”

— Charlotte Shane, Julian, Coming and Crying

Everytime I read this one I find something else that’s perfect.

electronicalrattlebag:

Look what came on Xmas Eve!!!

Thanks Santa Melissa and Meaghan!

x

x

How happy am I?

Very.

“so so happy, look what my best friend gave me for christmas” (via marthadear)

note-a-bear:

…I am almost done with Coming and Crying and I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out and then delicately replaced. The mark of a small printer is all over this book, occasional typos, pages that are not perfectly smooth—some are wrinkled—and look as if there are strands of hair locked between the pages. I feel as if I’ve been reading this with someone, or having it read to me. I can see us being distracted by some of the more triumphant stories and sharing our own, I can see us recovering over some of the more forlorn moments. The point is, this book, like all books, is magic. The difference here being that this is a magic on a scale I have not reacted to in ages. There is a visceral pull to this book that I don’t think I’ve felt since I read Stone Butch Blues as a wee new-trans kid in high school. I have teared up, I have felt enraged, I have felt vindicated. More than anything, though, I have felt inspired.

The thing about personal essays is that it is incredibly hard to write them well. It is easy to make the story resonate, but it is hard to have the stories—especially within an anthology—uniformly reach into you and stir you. In the end, an essayist is writing for strangers. They are reaching out and sharing with people they never know and, in stories about sex, lust, loving, or the absence of those things, they are often literally baring something of themselves. Now, I can’t speak to how much of themselves these authors have shared, though I would suspect it is a kernel of something that not every stranger gets to enjoy. I feel incredibly privileged having read this book and I can only hope that everyone I share it with feels the same.

I brought the book to Bangkok with me and once finished, I shall leave
it in one of those backpacker book exchanges. It should blow some
minds. Great stuff. Did Gram read it?

My cousin Matt sent me this. He’s the cool cousin. And no, Gram did not read it, YET.