The World Made a Rainbow

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It isn’t a question of loving him,’ said Ursula. ‘I love him well enough--certainly more than I love anybody else in the world. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. We have had the flower of each other. But I don’t care about love. I don’t value it. I don’t care whether I love or whether I don’t, whether I have love or whether I haven’t. What is it to me?’ By now they knew each other; she was the daytime, the daylight, he was the shadow, put aside, but in the darkness potent with an overwhelming voluptuousness. Lawrence's prose is the result of a bewildering compendium of biblical allusions, pagan and natural imagery and a profound grasp of the synaptic connections that trigger desire, yearning and the irrepressible urge to abandon the safety of one's individuality to leap into the unknown abyss of another being, to lose grip of self-dominance in favor of frenzied carnal and spiritual lust and to withstand the tempestuous battle of wills inherent in any relationship. An inclusive look at the LGBT+ community by YouTuber Ash Hardell. From in-depth definitions to useful infographics, The ABC’s of LGBT+ is perfect for anyone looking to better understand what it means to be LGBT+, whether for themselves or others. And Hardell’s personal anecdotes make it all the more relatable. Girl Hearts Girl by Lucy Sutcliffe

A sky full of rainbow waves permeates the air over the Stonewall Riots, a crucial moment in LGBTQ+ history in the United States. Full of illustrations, photographs, and interviews from those involved, The Stonewall Riots provides great context for a pivotal event in American history. LGBTQ Social Movements by Lisa M. Stulberg Light Makes a Rainbow was written by Sharon Coan. This easy to read book teaches kids about rainbows and how they are made. The book includes an index, a glossary, and more nonfiction text features. It took me a weirdly long time to realize I didn't really like most of this collection of short stories. There was one standout story, "Pioneer," about a middle schooler questioning their gender via being an ox in their school's colonialist and reductive pioneer reenactment day. I kept waiting to like another story like that one and it never happened.Overall, I'm pretty disappointed in this collection, but I am interested in what Conklin writes next. I think (hope) that perhaps they may be better suited to a novel format. We quite readily believe it,’ retorted Brangwen. ‘Neither do you intend him to be hopping for joy like a fish in a pond.’” A little over half of the novel covers the first 2 generations, while the remainder focuses on Ursula and her passions. Ursula falls in love with Anton Skrebensky, a British soldier of Polish ancestry, but he is conscripted to go to Africa. Little Owl’s Colors was written by Divya Srinivasan. This board book follows the adorable Little Owl around the forest, exploring the many colors found there.

So this all brings us to Ursula Brangwen, the oldest daughter of Will and Anna. She has opportunities that no female has ever had before in her family. She goes to college. She holds down a job outside the home. She experiences a level of independence almost equal to what she would have had if she had been born a man. This isn’t just given to her. She has to fight her family for it. As she feels herself become mired in the same marriage traps that her grandmother and mother surrendered to, she can’t let herself submit. She must escape. She wants to exist independently, not only from a husband and her family, but from everyone. She wants to always have choices and options to be who she wants to be without hindrances and to be able to seize the day without considerations. She wants to be loved without commitment and love without being subjugated. Tom, for all intents and purposes her father, really puts a fine point on exactly what is driving Anna to make Will so miserable. Multigenerational family sagas usually employ some common thread that binds together the disparate story arcs and subplots - presumably some long suppressed odious family secret, the effect of the altering milieu on evolving family dynamics, the denuding influence of time on family fortunes. And yet Lawrence's account of the Brangwen family is refreshingly free of any such cliched thematic glue. I had thought I liked disliked florid prose (as in The King of Elfland’s Daughter), preferring the sparse beauty of books like Stoner and Plainsong. I’m so glad the hypnotic yet arousing words of Lawrence widened my horizons.Lawrence is adept at hitting the reader with these great moments of understanding when everything that had been so murky becomes so clear. This novel is written on a grand scale, spanning a period from the 1840s to 1905, a time of great change in societal norms and industry. We follow the changing patterns of love and marriage in 3 generations of the Brangwens. Lawrence also weaves in religion, sexuality, the natural world, industrialization, homosexuality and women’s rights, to name a few.