Gay Love to the Front in A Taste of Honey


In a fantasy world where gods and politicians face off, you might think the main character in A Tasteof Honey has bigger challenges than a romance. The rub in Kai Ashante Wilson’s otherworldly novella is that the love Aqib has for another man is bigger than any other threat.

Jumping in time between the possible present, another possible present, and many points in history, A Taste of Honey spends most of its pages exploring the days Aqib first met and fell in love with a soldier named Lucrio. Aqib is royalty in this world, son of the Beast Master, and goes against expectations when he falls for Lucrio.

While there are dragons in Wilson’s Daluça, there are also familial obligations and love, and those steal focus here. While a fantasy fan might come for the battles, Wilson wants them to stay for the romance. Aqib and Lucrio are reminiscent of many literary couples meant to be kept separate, who can’t help their desire to be together. They make a powerful couple as they physically and mentally work as one to ward off any naysayers, including their own inner-saboteurs.

Wilson has boldly taken a genre not often friendly to LGBT stories and given his characters a place in it. His short glimpse into Aqib and Lucrio’s life is engaging for the uniqueness of Daluça, and familiar for the hostility its heroes face because of their love. It is good to see gay men of color represented in the fantasy space; that it’s an engrossing read is all icing.

Thank you to the Boston Public Library for suggesting A Taste of Honey as part of its summer reading program.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five Books to Escape into while Social Distancing

Maybe one day soon a headline will read, “Out of Netflix Content, More People Turn to Books for Relief.” If you’re already ready for some literary escapism, check out these five books I read and loved in 2019. Hopefully they help you in this difficult time: The Storm King , Brendan Duffy. This book has many things that would make me not choose it as a Top Five: a straight male hero; not many strong female leads; privileged men acting out their privilege. Alas, it sucked me in with a short, strong opening chapter that set the tone and the mystery for the rest of the book. Duffy’s writing is a bit dramatic at times, but that’s also what kept the pages quickly turning. You can check out my review here . The Soul of an Octopus , Sy Montgomery. Montgomery ’s beautiful work in The Soul of an Octopus gives us hope about the connectivity between living creatures. Introducing the reader to several octopuses she met at the New England Aqua
Read more

A Chat with E. Christopher Clark, author of the Stains of Time series

In the first book of his Stains of Time series, E.Christopher Clark pulls in magical realism, a hearty dose of nineties’ nostalgia, and family drama to tell Veronica’s story. Pregnant at sixteen, Veronica marries the baby’s father to appease a father who might never be happy with her, but really won’t be happy with her if she follows her heart and dates women as she wants to. Clark kindly answered About a Book’s questions about The Piano of Death , the series as it stands now, and his plans for its future. About a Book : How/when did you conceive of The Piano of Death ? Clark : The book that people can read today really started to come together in September 2011. I met with my friend, the actor/director Crystal Lisbon…to plan a benefit for the arts organization she was starting. Another friend of Crystal’s, the musician Mary Casiello [joined us for that meeting]. We were trying to put together an evening of theater and music, and I was tasked with writing the scrip
Read more

Almost Too Much Covered in The Tradition

In his third book of poetry, The Tradition , Jericho Brown covers much ground: he grapples with myth, media, racism, his own mortality, and still manages to push past established forms of poetry. It’s impressive in scope, but the breadth can leave the reader forgetting the ground covered because there was too much of it. Brown conveys a disdain for the world around him that embraces and encourages racism and violence, but also exudes a confidence about his own abilities to navigate the terrain. This is a book from a grown, tired man, and is filled with the heartbreak and the fortitude he’s earned. He introduces, too, the “Duplex” form in his poetry, described by Jeannine Hall Gailey in her Barrelhouse review of The Tradition as “a sonnet-like series of couplets that include repetition.” The repetition accomplishes a layering of experiences and voices, making his experiences feel that much more echoed in the lives of others, as though he is not alone. These stories are from a
Read more