On one level, Special Subcommittee is an experimental family history of Samuel Solomon's communist, labour-organiser grandparents in McCarthyist America, told through the sterile language of redacted FBI files and transcripts of congressional hearings. Against these subcommittees of repression, he then invents an ardent and committed lyric of queer communist relation revolving around his chosen family: his friends, lovers, and political comrades. The combination is wild, radical, and subversive.
About the book
On one level, Special Subcommittee is an experimental family history of Samuel Solomon's communist, labour-organiser grandparents in McCarthyist America, told through the sterile language of redacted FBI files and transcripts of congressional hearings. Against these subcommittees of repression, he then invents an ardent and committed lyric of queer communist relation revolving around his chosen family: his friends, lovers, and political comrades. The combination is wild, radical, and subversive.