An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Series Q)

great book

Before I ordered this book for my Queers and Theory class various folks told me, "It changed my life." Academic books don't usually elicit such comments.Yet it is not a "self-help" book, far from it. It is a thoughtful and graceful mix of cultural criticism, media engagements, insightful and workable theory, participant analysis, histories and interpretations of lgbt lives, and steadfastly original work on trauma across all these sites of meaning and scholarship.It is also a rather compulsive read. It feels remarkably personal, reaching out to the reader's person too. And the personal here is crafted so sparingly, practically zen. It's deep without being intrusive, empathetic without being sentimental. I marvel at this poetic distillation.Everyone in my class loved this book. It drew us together, even though everyone cared most about quite different chapters. People thought our discussions about it were the best of the semester.When I told my therapist about it, she went immediately to her computer to order it.Cvetkovich's approach is lean, quiet and profound. And it is a big book. It starts you out on a range of threads of connection: to great music, conscious film-making, archives and histories, activisms and contemplation. I'm so glad I wanted to read it.