The Light Looks Like Me
Words on Love from Queer Youth
Exploring personal identities in metaphorical, poetic terms, The Light Looks Like Me is a passionate and inspiring LGBTQIA+ anthology.
A touching and complex anthology, The Light Looks Like Me explores what it means to love.
Mixing poetry, prose, fiction, personal essays, graphic novel elements, and art, the book encompasses themes including what it means to have a true family and the complexities of love for queer youth. Some pieces address race and political issues, and some comment on how difficult it can be to feel secure in one’s identity. The contributors’ art is about finding themselves while facing myriad family and social pressures. Underlying all of the entries are messages of hope for better times to come.
The organization is accessible, with longer stories interspersed between sections of poetry and art. There are also occasional breaks for comic book–style storytelling. The pieces function well as standalones and can be moved between at will.
Memorable images arise in entries like “Buds of Lavender”:
weariness has not entered your
bird-like bones,
weighing your hollow body
to the oil slick concrete.
And “Stone-Carved,” a reinterpretation of the Medusa tale, includes a noteworthy account of eating a fig: “These shreds trail warm down my throat until my skin sheds its scarring, my muscles knit themselves whole, and my tongue prickles once again with moisture.” Such attention to detail is characteristic throughout the collection, whose selections reflect a clear concentration on quality.
Found families are the focus in the short stories “Love You, Bestie” and “Love with a Time Traveler,” whose characterizations shine. The first is about platonic love and how magical it can be; its heroine pushes through her hesitancy to declare her affection for a friend. In the latter story, the protagonist transitions and navigates the complexities of parenting with the help of friends. In other entries, the character development is more loose, as with a story about a protagonist going to lunch with friends, where they chat and laugh about variations of the game “Kiss, Marry, Kill”; its notes about catharsis from depression do not align as well with its development.
The art reflects a range of styles, with an emphasis on floral designs and abstract color combinations. There are paintings of vines and digital pictures; among the latter, one features a weeping dog comforting an upset human, rendered in a hand-drawn style. The graphic novel stories are inventive too: “My Time to Heal” is crafted to look like the images are on lined notebook paper, and “Anak” uses digital art to cover the realities of living with immigrant parents who do not understand gender fluidity. In “Anak,” the juxtaposition of blue and pink in images used to render the protagonist and gendered objects is resolved at the end when the main character turns purple, resulting in a visual transformation as well as a written one.
An optimistic anthology of work by LGBTQIA+ teenagers, The Light Looks Like Me is a poignant, encouraging collection that gives insight into the realities of queer love.
Reviewed by
Jennifer Maveety
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
