Lindsay Amer: Processing the World Around Me

I’m a digital creator and LGBTQ+ activist making queer-focused children’s media!

I love to cook and I watch lots of cooking competition shows, Top Chef and Masterchef Junior are my favorites.

I just finished reading Less by Andrew Sean Greer. I saw a friend’s post about it on their Instagram story with a rave review and I wanted to read it for myself!

Absolutely the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. My favorites are Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows. I loved Harry’s world and his tenacity throughout the series to fight for good, no matter the personal risk. His activism and bravery is something that has been hugely inspiring to me throughout my life. I listen to the Jim Dale audiobooks frequently and revisit the movies at least once a year. For picture books, I really loved a book called Verdi by Janell Cannon about a snake that doesn’t want to grow up. It’s beautifully illustrated and I love stories about characters who cling to their youth and hold tight to the joys of childhood. Peter Pan has a similar theme and I’ve always connected deeply with that character.

I was a HUGE reader as a kid. So much so that I would stay up until 4 am just to finish reading a book, no matter what book. I loved using it to escape to new worlds. I’ve always been pretty introverted and shy, and disappearing into a story helped me connect with characters and worlds outside of my own. Reading has always helped me understand myself in new and interesting ways, by refracting our world and helping me look at characters and themes that arose and figure out where I place myself in opposition to them. Stories, particularly stories in literature, help me process the world around me.

I just bought Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. I had read her book A Visit from the Goon Squad years ago and saw this one in a bookstore so I picked it up to see what it was about and the storyline about a woman in a man’s job on the Navy Yard in New York during WWII immediately intrigued me. I’m working on a writing project with similar themes so I thought reading it might help!

Definitely on a beach or near a pool or some other body of water. My couch isn’t too shabby either.

Hmmm, this is a tough one. I think reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke when I was in grad school was inspirational. I was in the middle of figuring out who I was as an artist and creator and eagerly wanted to make work that *matters* and reading Rilke’s letters helped me slow down and learn to be more present and have patience and trust in the process of growth and maturation that comes with time. It’s a lesson that’s proven incredibly powerful over the years.

I own a lot of random queer theory and performance theory books from undergrad and grad school. Particularly books about cognitive and identity development theory in early childhood that I used for my dissertation. My favorite of these is called Making Things Perfectly Queer by Alexander Doty and it’s a book of academic essays and queer readings of pop culture films. There’s an analysis of The Wizard of Oz in that book as a lesbian coming of age allegory with Glinda as a femme lesbian, and the Wicked Witch as the villainous butch. It’s super interesting!

I really loved Gaby Dunn’s financial advice book called Bad with Money based on her podcast. I just really love her transparency around her journey with finances from a very relatable millennial queer perspective. I’m working my way through a bunch of other non-fiction books right now, but that one definitely stood out.

I gave a TED Talk in May of this year and it reached over 1 million views over the summer when it was featured on the TED.com homepage. That was definitely a milestone for my career.

Right now I have Sasha Velour’s coffee table book on display in my living room and I feel great about that choice.

This is a tough question because there are a couple of different ways to do this! What I’m wondering is if we’re teaching them about humanity through these books, or are we just trying to show off the best of our literary works? Also if we’re trying to educate them, are we trying to get them up to date on what the world is like now, or are we talking about history here? I have lots of questions! If we’re teaching, I’d probably go with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion to talk about death and grief, then Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to talk about love, and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott to talk about family. And those are all obviously written by white people, which isn’t awesome. But if we’re showing off the best of our literature, I’d go with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I think. I don’t know. I had a hard time with this one!

This is also a really tough question! I kinda want to say the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling but also The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Harry Potter has just always been an incredible constant in my life as a story that has grown with me as I’ve grown into my identity and adulthood and has meant something different and new every time I’ve revisited it. But I read The Great Gatsby when I was in high school in my junior year when I was very confused about my sexuality and was desperately in love with my best friend. Reading that book helped me process a really important time in my life as I struggled with my identity and it remains special because of the impact it had on me then.

I went through a big JD Salinger phase in high school and read all of his published works and loved how he built a distinctive picture of New York and a family living in New York (where I grew up) through his characters. My favorite of his is probably Franny and Zooey. There wasn’t a lot of queerness in the books I was reading as a kid, and I came to queer YA a lot later than I wish I had, but I absolutely love The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth, and Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

I’ve got a big pile I’m trying to work through right now! Once I’m done with Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, I think I’ll finally try to finish Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I want to learn more about him and his food philosophy. As someone who loves to cook and travel and eat locally and healthily, I’m curious about his journey and his life.

Image credit: Ryan Lash / TED