here's the thing. i was thrilled by the title of this book. i was genuinely so hype to get into it. and then from the jump i was thrown by the voice of the author. it wasn't a tone or timbre i resonated with - the voice felt very deeply out-of-touch with the modern touchstone of queer culture. honestly, it didn't feel to me like it was written for a queer audience. this felt like a palatable book to give your work mom who is an #ally and she'd get woke points for reading it. burton spoke often about how judged she felt as a femme within the community, but then every single description of another person in the book was immediately a judgement, some of which she had to immediately walk back (thinking specifically of her assuming a random white person at a lesbian bar in the south was going to say the n word). it felt to me like she wanted to write a memoir, but her agent didn't want it, so she tried to do something else and wedged her own story into it - even if it didn't quite fit. she said a few times that she was hoping to do some sort of journalistic study of these lesbian bars, and yet more time was spent on the fact that she was logistically challenged with dates, times, organization, and maxed out credit cards. i want to acknowledge that this was a difficult journey to plan logistically but good grief i felt like i know more about her relationship than Any of the lesbian bars. which is not what i expected going into the book. i felt a little let down by the premise, and it definitely impacted my reading of the book.