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Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed

There’s an eerie sense of timeliness to this book, which features prose and poetry by the writer and teacher Pamela Sneed and is largely — though not entirely — about mourning Black gay men killed too soon by a deadly virus.

Tall, Black, and queer, Sneed grew up in Boston, the adopted daughter of a physically abusive father and two successively withholding mothers. She moved to New York in her late teens and became close friends with several gay Black men. Within a few years, a number of these friends would die and Sneed would gain a reputation for reading her poetry at their funerals.

Sneed uses clear and devastating language to capture the effect of these losses, the numbing pain, the anger at being so ignored. There has been a decent amount of literature about the devastation of AIDS in the late ’80s and early ’90s among gay men, but most of this literature has been written by and about affluent white men. The poems in this book about Sneed’s friends form a necessary corrective.

While her more overtly political poems can read a bit like sermons addressed to the already converted, her writing about her own complicated personal history is quite compelling. In “Twizzlers,” Sneed writes about never being considered innocent: “I was mistaken constantly for being older than I was.” In “Sidewalk Rage,” Sneed writes about being perceived both as a threat by virtue of her stature and as invisible by virtue of her race.

“I am just beginning to live,” she writes at the end of that poem. Judging from the writing in this book, she’s had quite a full life thus far.Get your copy. —Tomi Obaro

This Week in Virtual Book Events:

Nov. 30–Dec. 6

Monday, Nov. 30

Nalini Singh discusses Archangel's Sun with Sarah J. Maas — hosted by the Strand, 7 p.m. ET. $12.99–$27.99. More info.

Books Are Magic and Avid Bookshop present a fundraiser for Fair Fight Action, featuring Mike Birbiglia, Tayari Jones, Meena Harris, and more. 7 p.m. ET, $0–$50. More info.

Tuesday, Dec. 1

A Night of Fierce and Fabulous Short Story Writers featuring Laura van den Berg (I Hold a Wolf by the Ears), Danielle Evans (The Office of Historical Corrections), and Farah Ali — hosted by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, 7 p.m. ET. More info.

Wednesday, Dec. 2

Wyatt Cenac hosts "New York Stories," a night of readings from essays, short stories, and poetry about the city, performed by Matthew Broderick, Jin Ha, F. Murray Abraham, Sonia Manzano, and Karen Pittman — presented by Symphony Space, 7:30 p.m. ET. $12-15. More info.

Megha Majumdar discusses A Burning — hosted by the Seminary Co-op, 6 p.m. CT. More info.

Thursday, Dec. 3

Sabaa Tahir discusses A Sky Beyond the Storm with Nicola Yoon and Megan McCluskey — hosted by Vroman's, 6 p.m. PT. $5-27. More info.

Friday, Dec. 4

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore discusses The Freezer Door with T Fleischmann — hosted by Women & Children First, 7 p.m. CT. More info.

Saturday, Dec. 5

Minotaur Books presents A Cozy Christmas, featuring Ellie Alexander (Chilled to the Cone: A Bakeshop Mystery), Donna Andrews (The Gift of the Magpie: A Meg Langslow Mystery), and Carolyn Haines (A Garland of Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery), and moderated by S.C. Perkins — hosted by Murder By the Book, 7 p.m. CT. $5. More info.

Sunday, Dec. 6

Chelsea G. Summers discusses A Certain Hunger with Laurie Penny — hosted by Skylight Books, 4 p.m. PT. More info.

And more! Check out the full list here.

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