Reading: Sensible Footwear

[white_hart]

Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide is at once cartoonist Kate Charlesworth's autobiography in graphic novel form and a history of LGBTQ+ culture in Britain over the last seventy years. Charlesworth mixes formative moments from her life (the gradual realisation of her sexuality, key relationships, moves from a small town near Barnsley to Manchester, London and Edinburgh) and her career with double-page spreads, each focused on a period of a few years, setting out key events for the LGBTQ+ community during those years - legal changes, LGBTQ+ figures in public life (including a couple I hadn't realised were gay), cultural milestones from the first use of the word "homosexuality" on the BBC to Brookside's lesbian kiss and beyond.

I thought this was terrific; Charlesworth tells her own story in an entertainingly self-deprecating and utterly relatable way, while the "history" sections are bursting with things I didn't know about the quarter-decade or so before I was old enough to understand that queerness was a thing, and a thing that applied to me at that. The artwork is vivid and engaging, mixing Charleworth's cartoons with newspaper headlines and occasional photos. The pages are busy and complicated and I think I will want to read it again soon, as I suspect there are things I missed first time through, but that certainly won't be any hardship.

Comments

[white_hart]

I would also have been entirely delighted to read a book all about sensible footwear, but I liked it as a queer history too :-)

[nineveh_uk]

It does sound like it covers its actual subject very well!