The Pink Line

Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers

De: Mark Gevisser

Narrado por: Mark Gevisser, Vikas Adam

Duración: 18 h y 7 m

Resumen del Editor

One of the Financial Times and Guardian Books to Look Forward to in 2020

This program includes a foreword and epilogue read by the author.

A groundbreaking look at how the issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today

More than five years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is a globetrotting exploration of how the human rights frontier around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide - and describe - the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the 21st century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition is celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the world, and he takes listeners to its frontiers.

In between sharp analytical chapters about culture wars, folklore, gender ideology, and geopolitics, Gevisser provides sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he’s encountered on the Pink Line’s frontiers across nine countries. They include a trans Malawian refugee granted asylum in South Africa and a gay Ugandan refugee stuck in Nairobi; a lesbian couple who started a gay café in Cairo after the Arab Spring, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, and a community of kothis - "women’s hearts in men’s bodies" who run a temple in an Indian fishing village.

Eye-opening, moving, and crafted with expert research, compelling narrative, and unprecedented scope, The Pink Line is a monumental - and vital - journey through the border posts of the world’s new LGBTQ+ frontiers.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"Narrator Vikas Adam's assured tone focuses listeners on the people who share their lived experiences in Malawi, Palestine, Mexico, Uganda, the United States, and elsewhere.... Essential explorations of past and present events involving gender identity and sexuality illuminate their struggles for equality and acceptance amid legal and social persecution." (AudioFile magazine)

©2020 Mark Gevisser (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Narrator Vikas Adam's assured tone focuses listeners on the people who share their lived experiences in Malawi, Palestine, Mexico, Uganda, the United States, and elsewhere. Throughout, Adam's somber performance conveys respect for Tiwonge 'Aunty' Chimbalaga, Pasha, Liam, and other central figures. Essential explorations of past and present events involving gender identity and sexuality illuminate their struggles for equality and acceptance amid legal and social persecution." (AudioFile magazine)

A staple for queer History.

A brilliant examination a LGBTQIA+ struggles and triumphs through the lenses of real individuals and experiences juxtaposed with geopolitics and ideological lines.

A Modern Classic

Gevisser's book will remain relevant for decades to come. The quality of the thinking and the quality of the writing will cause readers a century from now to marvel at the timeless quality of this book's revelations. Though quite different, DuBois' Souls of Black Folk comes to mind. So, so different a time, place, person -- but I can't help thinking over and over, "is he writing about me?! How on earth does he know?"

I'll mention my reservations, for whatever that context might be worth. I had never heard of Gevisser, so my praise mustn't be mistaken for a fan's overstatement. Eighteen hours based on qualitative research (as opposed to my bent toward quantitative, positivistic research) made me hesitate: might this just be a lazy cobbling of leftover interview material into a book glued with cliches? Eh, I thought I might yet enjoy finding myself in one or another of the stories in the book. But no, story after story featured people who differed dramatically from me. Not one of these story topics was inherently interesting to me.

But interested I was. Over and over, I found myself fascinated by Gevisser's careful case studies. Intimate, detailed stories so well told that I felt comfortably uncomfortable -- impossible to turn away or turn off, I leaned into these stories and was rewarded. Though he likely disappoints some activists bound to this moment, Gevisser reveals some timeless truths about the human condition. He demonstrates the even-handedness that rises from genuine wisdom (NOT simply hewing toward the golden mean fallacy). His humble, self-aware approach to complex topics helps him avoid answers with an expiration date.

The people featured in this book retain their dignity, in part, because Gevisser does not use them as props. Never reduced to heroes, villains, or victims, they seem to participate -- as though we all, readers included, occupy a space together. Gevisser's Pink Line metaphor is surprisingly rich and helps us make sense of that space.

Maybe I am not smart enough to understand Gevisser's persuasive point, but I don't think he was trying to score a point. In this remarkable book, he operates on a different level. I call this book a modern classic because the author effectively pulls back the blinders for a bit, and we are inspired to wonder more deeply because of what we briefly see.

I look forward to reading/listening again. And years later, again.

dry and errors in research

a real struggle to get through because so dryly written - surprising for someone with a strong interest in gender, queer rights and international culture. also notices many significant research errors in cultures author was unfamiliar with, leading me to question all the research.