Icelandic Lives: The Queer Experience

Rating:
Summary: gay/lesbian Iceland
Review: Scandinavia is known internationally as a gay-friendly place. However, few commentators or academics have discussed gays in Iceland. This book tries to break that ice (pun intended). It consists of narratives of gay men and lesbians of various ages discussing coming out, finding love, and fighting homophobia.

This book is incredibly simplistic. There is no analysis here whatsoever. This is very much meant for lay readers, rather than scholars. The chapters are quite short. What few photos there are are grainy and poorly produced. There are many photos of the contributors as children, yet this was not specifically a gay youth text. While there have been many books on gay Asia written by whites (Peter Jackson's "Dear Uncle Go", Bret Hirsch's "Passions of the Cut Sleeve", and Gary Leupp's "Male Colors" are examples), this is the first time I've seen an Asian person write on gay Europe. The book was narrated in English and linguistic errors were kept. They are cute and do add flavor. But when you read it, in your head, you'll think a gay Arnold Schwartzenegger was doing the narrating.

This is a very slim, quickly consumible text. One reason for that is there is little about which to comment. Iceland has very gay-accepting laws. The editor mentions that gays can't adopt, but there are few children to adopt in Iceland anyway. This island with its small, homogenous population just has no reason to abuse its own, no matter what the sexual identity.

This book ends with a photo of men carrying a bear flag. I think leather and bears are being conflated here, but it's nice seeing the movement be international.