Woman wants to open queer book club
It would provide queer people with a place to socialize and share literature
A P.E.I. woman wants queer people to have a space where they can share queer literature and socialize.
Amy Mckie, a software engineer, is organizing a queer book club called P.E.I. Liberation Reads, which will focus on queer and BIPOC literature.
She is planning to have the first book club session in April and as of the beginning fo the month, 40 people already have signed up.
Mckie, who lived in Toronto for a decade before moving back to P.E.I. in 2021, had queer spaces in that city where she could go. However, she did not find such placed here in P.E.I., she said.
She wanted to find a community through books because of her interest in literature, she added.
“I just want a safe space where I can socialize with more queer people and share books,” she said, adding she wants to promote more diverse writers and books through the book club.
She said the world of literature is not diverse enough and even most of the queer literature is written by white writers.
However, that is slowly changing.
“Even five years ago there was not a lot of diversity in queer literature, but now there are a lot of non-whites, Indigenous, queer and trans and authors,” she said.
Kristopher Crocker and Ezra Santana are both happy they found this book club, where they are accepted for who they are and read literature from a queer perspective.
Crocker and Santana both came to P.E.I. for school. Crocker is from Newfoundland and Santana is from Brazil. Crocker said he appreciates queer books because of representation. He said it helps him to understand his own self and get answers.
“You realize other people also feel the same, so you don’t feel alone,” he said.
Santana said growing up, they had no access to the LGBTQ community or any other culture, so they want to be a part of one.
“As someone from Latin America, I wish there were more people who look like me and speak the same language represented more in media,” they said.
They also said it is hard to find queer friends in P.E.I. but also, queer friends who read, too. They want to be a part of a community because there is a deeper level of understanding which they don’t find among straight people, they said.
“We have our own culture, similar interest, taste in music so we feel like we don’t have to explain ourselves to anyone,” they said.
Crocker agrees with Santana.
He said it’s hard to talk to straight people because he does not know what their reaction is going to be.
He also prefers to have a safe space where he can express himself, he said.
Mckie is happy and encouraged that Crocker and Santana are joining the book club. "I hope to meet more people, grow community and read more books."