Publisher's Synopsis
In 2016 Amelia Abraham decided to quit everything and move to Iceland for love, but came home with her tail between her legs when the relationship ended after just ten days. Thinking about her crushed hopes - marriage, kids; things that she never saw as possible for queer people when she was growing up - the breakup becomes a moment to reflect on the idea that for LGBTQ+ people living in the West today, the options are greater than ever before. Yet, before we can take up these rights, Queer Intentions argues that we must ask ourselves a few questions. What were LGBTQ+ people before us fighting for - our right to be the same, or to be different? At what cost does our assimilation come? And which parts of the LGBTQ+ community are getting left behind? Embarking on a journey across the West - where the tensions that come with so called 'equality' are most acute - she searches for the answer to these problems, as well as the broader question of what it means to be queer in 2019. Starting with the first same-sex marriage in Britain, on to a giant drag convention in L.A., travelling across Pride parades in Europe, to a transgender model agency in New York, onwards via Turkey's underground LGBT scene, and arriving in progressive Stockholm, Queer Intentions - and the characters in it - provides the ultimate exploration of the joys and pains of being LGBTQ+ in the West at a time when queer culture has never been so mainstream.
