I have been in a reading rut. It was a good run there for a while but nothing has been sticking to me, so I thought reading something I coukd potentially relate to will get me out of it, so I chose Matt Ortile’s “The Groom Will Keep His Nam: and other vowd I’ve made about race, resistance, and romance.’

The book is a collection of essays from Ortile where he writes about his life, and his struggles as a gay Filipino-American in New York City after moving to Las vegas from the Philippines at the age of twelve. Surely, something in there should stick with me, as I have lived in both NYC and LV. But Ortile is a millennial, and honestly, I am a genration older from him. For me, the resistance was AIDS, for him it’s Marriage Equality and the Trump administration. I appreciated his honesty, and when he gets personal especially with his love and sex life, it’s refreshing and relatable. But part of his essays seem to be very lecture-y, probably part from his academia influence, and frankly, not what I am looking for, reading wise, in these pandemic times. I was expecting this to be a quick read, and it took me a while to get through it. It’s very good, but it’s mostly not for me.