FROM GAY TO Z: A QUEER COMPENDIUM
JUSTIN ELIZABETH SAYRE, illustrations by FREDY RALDA
© 2022 Chronicle Books
$24.95
312 pages

For most of your life, you've been fed a steady diet of history, but what do you know about Gay history, pop culture, and standout activists? Everything you don't know about your GayBCs is in tiny entries in this new book by Justin Elizabeth Sayre, illustrated by Fredy Ralda.

For instance, check out the entry for drag, or a method of performance that Sayre thinks "queer people have always participated in." Drag is performance, but it's also campy theatre, "empowerment," and "a chance to... get to be the person you always wanted to be."

Also included are places to meet, dance, play, or vacation, and a lot of New York and San Francisco hot spots, both current and otherwise. "So much of New York is gone," says Sayre, but some are immortalized here.

And by the way, do you speak Polari?

Inside this humorous collection, you'll read about trailblazers like Christine Jorgensen, sources of controversy like Robert Mapplethorpe and Chelsea Manning, activists like Marsha P. Johnson, and the male We'wha of the Zuni tribe, who lived as "female-bodied people."

You'll also find notable performers from then and now. For instance, do you know who Wayland Flowers was, and his sidekick Madame? If so, you'll enjoy the entry for Liberace, too — and if not, then read about Lil Nas X, Billy Porter, Brandi Carlisle, Freddie Mercury, and dozens of LGBTQ allies and "icons."

You'll also find entries about notable LGBTQ-owned newspapers, as well as authors, playwrights, movies and moviemakers.

In the introduction for From Gay to Z, Sayre says that there was no way "of boiling down the entirety of queer culture into one book." It's true: just page through and you'll likely enumerate AWOL entries almost immediately (What? No Danica Roem? No Bettie Page?).

No worries, though: you'll also instantly see something else that Sayre promises: lighthearted humor.

There's so much goodness packed between the covers of From Gay to Z that you almost don't know where to start. Be conventional, and begin with "A" — or take a chance and flip open the book at random. There's something interesting either way.

Sayre goes pretty far back into Gay history for the entries chosen, but there's plenty for a modern reader, or for someone who's recently out, or who badly needs a brush-up on history. Each entry is quick to read, too, so no great commitment is required.

Even so, this book is like a bag of potato chips: you can't help but dip into it until it's gone.