Queer Book Club

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What Is Black Flame About?

Set in 1980s New York, Black Flame follows Ellen, a film archivist restoring a cursed underground horror film called The Baroness. As she works frame by frame, the film begins to bleed into her reality. She sees visions, hears voices, and has strange encounters that may or may not be supernatural. The deeper she goes, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel.

Why it’s queer: Ellen is a deeply repressed queer woman clinging to a suffocating version of heterosexual normalcy. She’s terrified of her attraction to women and fantasizes about exerting masculinity. The horror isn’t just supernatural. It’s internalized homophobia, misogyny, and generational trauma.

The Real Monster Is Internalized Homophobia (And It’s Devastating)

Ellen is deeply uncomfortable in her own life. Repressed, judgmental, obsessed with masculinity, and resentful of her “weak” boyfriend Jesse. She fantasizes about the kind of man her parents would approve of. She polices her own desire at every turn. When she encounters Rachel, a film critic who lives the life Ellen is too afraid to want, her response isn’t curiosity. It’s vicious, almost reflexive cruelty.

Watching her is genuinely uncomfortable and that discomfort is completely intentional.

Felker-Martin isn’t writing a triumphant coming-out story. She’s asking a harder question: what happens when repression doesn’t just wound you but warps you? When survival curdles into self-destruction and then into something darker?

Ellen’s horror is internal before it’s ever supernatural.

The Cursed Film at the Heart of This Novel

I really loved the interesting way Felker-Martin uses film restoration here. Archivists preserve the past but what happens when the past is violent, fascist, or cursed? Ellen’s visions of the filmmaker’s history reveal old money, occult protection, and grief over a lost male lover, making it clear that this story is about inherited trauma as much as haunted cinema.

There’s something Felker-Martin is saying here about what it means to handle violent history with care and whether “care” is even possible when the thing you’re preserving wants to consume you.

The Relationships: Messy, Queer, and Charged

Ellen’s dynamic with her boyfriend Jesse is pretty uncomfortable. He’s overly affectionate and eager to be “the good boyfriend.” We also learn that she’s his first sexual experience, which adds another layer of imbalance.

Then there’s Rachel, the film critic, who sees through Ellen, something she can’t handle. The way Ellen lashes out at her is one of the most painful scenes in the book. The cruelty shows her self-loating.

We also meet Freddie, Ellen’s ex from college, who feels less like someone she’s running toward and more like someone she’s using as an emotional escape.

None of these relationships offer Ellen or the reader any real comfort.

Read this if you: enjoy queer horror with real teeth, like morally complicated protagonists who don’t redeem themselves neatly, or want a book that treats internalized shame as the terrifying force it actually is.

Maybe skip it if: you need your horror cathartic or your queer narratives hopeful. This one doesn’t offer either.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

Queer Book Club Questions

1. Do you think the horror in Black Flame is supernatural or a manifestation of Ellen’s psychological unraveling?
2. How did you interpret Ellen’s shift into someone who choose destruction rather than fears it?
3. How does Felker-Martin use generational trauma to complicate who’s “responsible” for who Ellen becomes?
4. How did you interpret the ending? Was it hopeful, nihilistic, or symbolic?

If you’ve read Black Flame (affiliate link), I need to hear your take on that ending. Drop me a message on Threads or Bluesky.

Gays & Confused covers queer horror, cozy rom-coms, and everything in between. If you want book picks that actually make you think (and occasionally spiral), follow along so you don’t miss what we’re reading next.

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If you love inspiring LGBTQ+ memoirs and novels that explore masculinity and identity, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (affiliate link) is essential reading.

As part of my own little Queer Book Club, I’ve been posting my reactions and thoughts regularly on Threads and Bluesky as I read. I fell a bit behind schedule with this one, but I’d love for you to join the conversation.

This was my first James Baldwin novel and I really enjoyed his very conversational almost stream of consciousness style. The story unfolds like a tangle of attraction and guilt, told entirely through the lens of one man trying (and failing) to outrun himself. Let’s get into it.

Uneasy Dreams in Paris and New York

When we first meet David in Paris, it feels almost like a romantic escape, but the illusion doesn’t last. Paris is magical and precarious, a city where beauty and despair live side by side. We find that David’s been scraping by, chasing security through older patrons like Jacques, while pretending not to notice how dependent he’s become on their attention. Even when he recalls his life in New York, the same tension exists. The dream of these cities, and of manhood, can quickly become hollow when you’re living in denial.

Denial and Desire

Then we meet Giovanni. He’s magnetic, charming, and full of life. I was swooning while reading this. He moves through the world with a kind of emotional openness that David can’t handle. Their relationship begins with attraction and slides quickly into a kind of obsession.

David’s guilt over early homosexual experiences still haunts him, and his obsession with “being a man” keeps him emotionally frozen. Even in the safety of queer spaces, he judges effeminate men and distances himself. Baldwin uses this tension to show how toxic masculinity doesn’t just harm others, it devours the self.

The Idea of Masculinity

As David and Giovanni’s relationship deepens, Baldwin begins pulling apart the fragile myths of masculinity that David clings to. Jacques, the older gay man who pursues younger lovers, becomes a mirror for what David fears becoming. David seems to equate love with weakness. When he tells Giovanni that he’s “trying to make him a wife,” Baldwin cracks open the internalized homophobia at the core of David’s fear: to love another man is, to him, to lose his manhood.

The Illusion of Normalcy

David’s fiancée, Hella, is his safety net, his fantasy of normalcy. She represents the version of himself he wants to believe in. A man that’s masculine and accepted by society. But even she’s more complex than what he wants. She’s independent and adventurous, uninterested in being anyone’s symbol of salvation.

Their return to the south of France marks a shift. David seems to have what he needs with Hella and has removed himself from his queer friend group in Paris. We know something’s gone terribly wrong with Giovanni. David sounds concerned while almost detached from the situation, but everything starts unraveling.

Love and Loss

The final chapters are devastating. Giovanni falls from romantic dreamer to prisoner awaiting execution. David begins to realize that he destroys every relationship that could reveal him to himself.

When Giovanni confronts him, it’s brutal honesty: David isn’t leaving him for Hella, but for the lie of being “normal.” Giovanni sees him completely, and that’s what terrifies David most.

By the end, Giovanni faces death, and David faces the mirror. David self sabotages and flees from Hella, throwing himself into his true desires. But without Giovanni, it’s hollow. The story ends in heartbreak without closure and Baldwin intends it that way.

Why Giovanni’s Room Still Matters

For a novel written in 1956, Giovanni’s Room has so much connection to the modern world. Baldwin captures how societal expectations around gender and sexuality twist intimacy into something painful and performative. It’s a queer love story, a tragedy, and even a study in repression. I also think that it’s an emotional blueprint for so many queer people who’ve struggled to reconcile love and identity. And that’s what makes it one of the most enduring and inspiring LGBTQ+ novels of all time.

Queer Book Club Questions 

• Some questions to explore in your own book club discussion:
• What is Baldwin saying about masculinity with David’s character?
• How do you interpret David’s obsession with masculinity?
• What are your thoughts on the spark between David and Giovanni?
• How does Baldwin make David and Giovanni’s relationship feel romantic and tragic?
• What moments in the book feel the most honest about queerness?
• Do you think David could ever be happy?
• Did you feel sympathy for David or frustration?
• What moments hit you hardest?

Have you read Giovanni’s Room? What were your thoughts on this story? Let’s chat about it on Threads or Bluesky.

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Okay, confession time. I started reading Reinaldo Arenas’ Before Night Falls (affiliate link) months and months ago and promised myself that I’d post about it on socials as my own Queer Book Club. Needless to say, I’m a very slow reader and it took me quite a while to get this book club session started. This memoir has been on my reading list for ages and I’m so glad I read it. Not only did I find it beautifully written but also offers an unflinching, intimate look at gay life under an authoritarian regime.

If you’re a fan of inspiring LGBTQ memoirs that explore resilience, resistance, and identity, you absolutely must pick up this book.

Why Before Night Falls Is One of the Most Inspiring LGBTQ Memoirs

The first 100 pages cover Arenas’ youth in rural Cuba and honestly, it was pretty jarring, and at times a little uncomfortable. I’m not sure what I came to this book expecting, but what I found was a deeply intimate and sometimes brutal account of life under an authoritarian regime. 

Queer Identity, Humor, and Resistance in Cuba

Throughout the book, it was depressing to see how frequently and casually homosexual acts occured among men who still cling to toxic homophobia. As Arenas writes:

“I realized that being called a ‘f****t’ in Cuba was one of the worst disasters that could ever happen to anyone.”

And at the same time, there’s also some humor and joy in the story. I was really amused by The Four Categories of Gays excerpt. Despite everything, Arenas captures moments of queer connection, pleasure, and resistance.

Reading about a country slipping into dictatorship, about how people cope, resist, and break, is deeply unsettling right now. The repression Arenas lived through echoes in so many corners of today’s world. It may not be comforting, but I think it’s really important in this moment to pay attention to stories and experiences like this.

Life in Prison, Surveillance, and Surreal Humor

In the second half of the book, Arenas is imprisoned and then spends several years struggling to survive in a surveillance state that has marked him as a threat to the party. And yet even these chapters are laced with surreal humor. 

There’s a scene where his neighbor Blanca gathers the community in their building to reveal that she can no longer perform sex work as her breasts have shriveled. To provide her some relief, Arenas and his neighbors dig a hole through a closet to give Blanca a window and discover an abandoned convent filled with trinkets to sell. The whole situation seems surreal and absurd.

And then there’s the trickster character of Hiram Prado, a former friend turned informant who pops up throughout the second half as an almost cartoonish menace. His presence provides some comic relief even though his activities were a very serious threat. 

The Harsh Reality of Exile for Queer Writers

One of the most sobering elements of Before Night Falls is that Arenas doesn’t find true freedom in the U.S. or Europe. After successfully fleeing communist Cuba, he goes on to face homophobia, alienation, and exploitation in exile. He received appalling treatment by his publishers. Leftists romanticize the regime he fled. Cuban exiles and activists dismiss him. He’s seen as too angry, too queer, too inconvenient.

“…although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream. And I came here to scream.”

This tension between survival and expression is what makes Before Night Falls one of the most inspiring LGBTQ memoirs you’ll ever read, even in its bleakest moments.

A Defiant Ending That Redefines Courage

The memoir ends not with triumph, but with resistance. There’s no hopeful next chapter. Just Arenas, refusing to be polite or palatable. Writing through surveillance. Through illness. Through exile. Until the very end.

Before Night Falls isn’t an easy read and it’s not really a feel-good summer book. But it’s essential LGBTQ+ literature, and one of those rare inspiring LGBTQ memoirs that reminds us of the power of defiance and authenticity. It’s a testament to living and existing against all odds.

If you’ve read it, I’d love to know:

📖 What stuck with you?

📖 Did anything surprise you?

📖 How did you sit with the ending?

And if you haven’t picked it up yet, I hope this post inspires you to grab a copy. (affiliate link)