Village Book Club

Part fairy-tale, part manifesto, part sex-driven fantasy, part survival guide for the moral and mental uplift of radical queers, the book offers a critique of capitalism, assimilation, and patriarchy still deeply relevant today. The novel is drawn from Mitchell’s experience of living in Lavender Hill, a queer commune in Ithaca, New York in the 1970s. The story takes place in a dystopian empire in decline called Ramrod, and introduces us to the faggots and their friends (women, queens, queer men, and women who love women) who are surviving the fierce weapons and elaborate violence of men. Fashion-wise, “the rich men without colour” only wear grey but that’s OK, because the faggots can wear all the other colours. And they say: “There is more to be learned from wearing a dress for a day, than there is from wearing a suit for a lifetime”.