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Coming Out Through Reading
I came out to myself the summer in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school and began coming out to my friends and family the following fall. Before that, however, I felt lost and confused. I did not really find myself attracted to anybody of any sex, but I knew that I was not like the other guys I was encountering in my classes and in the halls. During my freshman year, I remember reading The Epic of Gilgamesh and Siddhartha — both books that are largely centered on male friendships. These relationships fascinated me, and I could not help but to see them as queer — even before I…
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The First Time I Taught A Queer Text
I spent the last semester of my undergrad student teaching. I was assigned to teach two classes of juniors. For most of the semester, we worked on The Great Gatsby. It was a fairly traditional unit in which we talked about themes like the American Dream, the 1920s, and gender roles. While teaching the novel, I could not help but to think back to my own experience as a junior reading The Great Gatsby. As I discuss in another blog post, I became fixated on the idea that Nick has romantic feelings for Gatsby. I kept this in the back of my mind over the course of the unit. On what was…