"Here's the thing with kissing: it matters intensely or not at all."
Mid-kiss, do you ever wonder who you are, who you're kissing, where it's leading? It can feel luscious, libidinal, friendly, but are we trying to make out something through our kissing? For Kathryn Bond Stockton, making out is a prism through which to look at the cultural and political forces of our world: race, economics, childhood, books, and movies. Making Out is Stockton's memoir about a non-binary childhood before that idea existed in her world. We think about kissing as we accompany Stockton to the bedroom, to the closet, to the playground, to the movies, and to solitary moments with a book, the ultimate source of pleasure.
Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly-an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books-specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author's emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.

About the Author
Kathryn Bond Stockton is Distinguished Professor of English, Dean of the School for Cultural and Social Transformation, and Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity at the University of Utah. Most recently, she is the author of The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways in the Twentieth Century (2009).

Reviews
"Kathryn Bond Stockton's Making Out is a wonderfully intense experience from start to finish...[It] is a complex examination of the process we go through while trying to understand ourselves within the context of others: faces, kisses, literature, film, and sexual expression with or without the enigma of lips meshing with other lips." -- Popmatters



Book Information
ISBN 9781479843275
Author Kathryn Bond Stockton
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 136g