
Rainbow Rainbow
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Narrated by:
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Julia Weldon
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By:
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Lydia Conklin
About this listen
A fearless collection of stories that celebrate the humor, darkness, and depth of emotion of the queer and trans experience that's not typically represented: liminal or uncertain identities, queer conception, and queer joy
In this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heartrending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment.
A nonbinary writer on the eve of top surgery enters into a risky affair during the height of COVID. A lesbian couple enlists a close friend as a sperm donor, plying him with a potent rainbow-colored cocktail. A lonely office worker struggling with their gender identity chaperones their nephew to a trans YouTube convention. And in the depths of a Midwestern winter, a sex-addicted librarian relies on her pet ferrets to help resist a relapse at a wild college fair.
Capturing both the dark and lovable sides of the human experience, Rainbow Rainbow establishes debut author Lydia Conklin as a fearless new voice for their generation.
©2022 Lydia Conklin (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Recitatif
- A Story
- By: Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith - Introduction
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this 1983 short story - the only short story Morrison ever wrote - we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
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Read the introduction last
- By Robert C Purnell on 02-01-22
By: Toni Morrison, and others
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Monk & Robot, Book 1
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Em Grosland
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 07-15-21
By: Becky Chambers
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Looking for Alaska
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
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I am concussed dot-dot-dot
- By Bren McKenna on 10-01-19
By: John Green
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Foster
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.
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A story that will stay with me a long time
- By CTKG on 11-01-22
By: Claire Keegan
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Kindred
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Kim Staunton
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning White boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes she's been given a challenge.
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The Past of Slavery Still Moves and Wounds Us
- By Jefferson on 12-05-10
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Pageboy
- A Memoir
- By: Elliot Page
- Narrated by: Elliot Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
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Ah, I wish this were better. I'm disappointed.
- By Jackson Theofore Keys on 06-07-23
By: Elliot Page
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Recitatif
- A Story
- By: Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith - Introduction
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1983 short story - the only short story Morrison ever wrote - we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
-
-
Read the introduction last
- By Robert C Purnell on 02-01-22
By: Toni Morrison, and others
-
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Monk & Robot, Book 1
- By: Becky Chambers
- Narrated by: Em Grosland
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
-
-
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
- By Daniel Cascaddan on 07-15-21
By: Becky Chambers
-
Looking for Alaska
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps”. Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
-
-
I am concussed dot-dot-dot
- By Bren McKenna on 10-01-19
By: John Green
-
Foster
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.
-
-
A story that will stay with me a long time
- By CTKG on 11-01-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
Kindred
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Kim Staunton
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning White boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes she's been given a challenge.
-
-
The Past of Slavery Still Moves and Wounds Us
- By Jefferson on 12-05-10
-
Pageboy
- A Memoir
- By: Elliot Page
- Narrated by: Elliot Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
-
-
Ah, I wish this were better. I'm disappointed.
- By Jackson Theofore Keys on 06-07-23
By: Elliot Page
-
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
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Beautifully written, but painful.
- By NB on 06-10-19
By: Ocean Vuong
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The Rachel Incident
- A Novel
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Tara Flynn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
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Best narration
- By LG on 01-12-24
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Yours Cruelly, Elvira
- Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark
- By: Cassandra Peterson
- Narrated by: Cassandra Peterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells - and told by the bombshell herself.
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Chapter 14 cut off
- By Wildgreenthumb on 09-24-21
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The Great Believers
- By: Rebecca Makkai
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
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A story for all time
- By Carla jo Thompson on 08-06-18
By: Rebecca Makkai
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Dark Places
- A Novel
- By: Gillian Flynn
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas". As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived, and famously testified that her 15-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who've long forgotten her.
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Riveting but brutal
- By Gray on 12-09-12
By: Gillian Flynn
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Luckiest Girl Alive
- A Novel
- By: Jessica Knoll
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve. But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.
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Strange, unnerving, confusing.
- By Candice on 12-06-15
By: Jessica Knoll
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The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- A Novel
- By: Lindsey Lee Johnson
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school. Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor, every feeling, is potentially postable, shareable, viral.
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Don’t waste your time
- By Candice Dorn on 08-22-21
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Night of the Living Rez
- By: Morgan Talty
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
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Powerful and Candid Story
- By M on 07-15-22
By: Morgan Talty
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Light from Uncommon Stars
- By: Ryka Aoki
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: To escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four.
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Awesome with a few hitches.
- By Levi Fay on 10-01-21
By: Ryka Aoki
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Young Mungo
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Chris Reilly
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.
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Suffering Sappho!
- By Richard Stewart on 04-12-22
By: Douglas Stuart
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The Man I Love
- By: Suanne Laqueur
- Narrated by: Vanessa DeSilvio
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
College freshman Erik Fiskare loves the theater, but he's more intrigued by the wizardry behind the red curtain than the spectacle center stage. That is until Daisy Bianco steps into the spotlight. The moment Erik lays eyes on this ballerina, his atoms rearrange, and the young stagehand will never be the same.
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Erik and Daisy's story is EVERYTHING.
- By Christy Baldwin BBU on 06-03-19
By: Suanne Laqueur
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Our Wives Under the Sea
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Annabel Baldwin, Robyn Holdaway
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
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Has stayed with me…
- By Maryanne T. on 10-05-22
By: Julia Armfield
What listeners say about Rainbow Rainbow
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Andre
- 12-04-22
An Excellent Collection of Trans and Queer Stories
I was so pleasantly surprised by this stunning debut collection of trans and queer short stories by Lydia Conklin that I listened to "Rainbow Rainbow" a second time, relishing their craft and deepening my appreciation of their writing. While I am a cisgender Black gay male, I nevertheless found that these stories resonated with me as diverse characters seek love, respect, and self-actualization. While the characters' experiences with being trans, nonbinary, lesbian, and pansexual differ vastly from mine, I identified with their longing.
I first encountered Conklin's writing when One Story published their story "Sunny Talks," which is included in this collection. I also read a glowing book review in the San Francisco Chronicle. They sounded like a writer to watch. Never before have I read a collection of trans and queer short stories by one author. My favorite story is the laugh-out-loud "Pioneer," in which a budding trans kid endures a grammar school reenactment of the Oregon Trail and learns something about themselves for the first time.
I look forward to reading more of their work. I highly recommend them.
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