Karen Tongson

Karen Tongson's new book is Why Karen Carpenter Matters.

From her interview with Jeffrey Masters for the Advocate:

Jeffrey Masters: Why is Karen Carpenter still so beloved by LGBTQ people?

Karen Tongson: I think of her music as latter-day torch songs. They're expressions of longing and unrequited love in a way a lot of queer people can relate to because for the longest time, so many of us lived in a space where we never thought that anyone would ever love us. Or that we might be in this game alone.

That music provided a bit of a soundtrack to that, as well as with her own secrets, with her anorexia and the privacy of that pain, the kind of closetedness of that.

JM: You write about the code-switching that happened in terms of her gender, growing up but also with music producers. Were audiences as aware of that while she was alive?

KT: I actually don't think so. The Carpenters were a very tightly managed act. Karen was such a tomboy when she was growing up. She used to be a real rough-houser. She played drums before she was a singer. That was a huge part of her story, but what people ended up seeing eventually is the demure girl in a strangely frilly Victorian frock singing...[read on]

Visit Karen Tongson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue