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Care Of, by Ivan Coyote
Oct. 24th, 2021 08:58 pmOne of Ivan Coyote's earlier books, Gender Failure, was the first experience I had of reading a book and recognizing in it someone who is like me, gender-wise. It was an enormously emotional experience!
I saw Coyote perform once too, not so long after I'd read Gender Failure. Again: enormously emotional. I very awkwardly went up to them after their show and told them how meaningful it was, and they seemed glad of it.
It's been a few years since then though (SIX years apparently???), and this is a different kind of book. Care Of is a book of letters: letters Coyote has received over the years, and their responses to them. Letters from a wide variety of people, but all of them either queer or with someone close to them who's queer, who were in some way touched by Coyote's work and felt the need to reach out.
So it's a book about making real human connection between all these people who have something in common, and how important that is: to see and to be seen in return, to know none of us are alone. A lovely sentiment, and with lots of good stuff said, both from Coyote and from the other letter writers!
But I just felt weirdly uncomfortable the whole time I was reading it. It felt voyeuristic to me, looking into the private correspondence of all these real living people, even if they had all consented; and it felt weird to know that Coyote was almost certainly drafting some of these letters with the idea in mind that they might go into a book eventually, a strange blurring of public/private and making it performative.
idk. This is probably a me problem! But it meant I was always at an emotional distance from the book as I made my way through it, due to these weird feelings, and so I wasn't able to get into the right headspace to actually appreciate the things being said. So. A good book for people who are not me, I suppose!
And at the same time: Coyote makes it very clear that they love getting letters, and I kind of want to write one to them now, lol.
I saw Coyote perform once too, not so long after I'd read Gender Failure. Again: enormously emotional. I very awkwardly went up to them after their show and told them how meaningful it was, and they seemed glad of it.
It's been a few years since then though (SIX years apparently???), and this is a different kind of book. Care Of is a book of letters: letters Coyote has received over the years, and their responses to them. Letters from a wide variety of people, but all of them either queer or with someone close to them who's queer, who were in some way touched by Coyote's work and felt the need to reach out.
So it's a book about making real human connection between all these people who have something in common, and how important that is: to see and to be seen in return, to know none of us are alone. A lovely sentiment, and with lots of good stuff said, both from Coyote and from the other letter writers!
But I just felt weirdly uncomfortable the whole time I was reading it. It felt voyeuristic to me, looking into the private correspondence of all these real living people, even if they had all consented; and it felt weird to know that Coyote was almost certainly drafting some of these letters with the idea in mind that they might go into a book eventually, a strange blurring of public/private and making it performative.
idk. This is probably a me problem! But it meant I was always at an emotional distance from the book as I made my way through it, due to these weird feelings, and so I wasn't able to get into the right headspace to actually appreciate the things being said. So. A good book for people who are not me, I suppose!
And at the same time: Coyote makes it very clear that they love getting letters, and I kind of want to write one to them now, lol.
