A-qing, the adolescent hero, comes from an impoverished family. His father casts him out after learning that his son is gay. A-qing drifts into New Park, a gay hangout in Taipei, and begins his life as a hustler. He meets other boys living on the street, also forsaken by their families: Little Jade, who is constantly searching for his unknown father; Mousey, an orphan and petty thief; and Wu Min, a shy tender kid, who attempts suicide when discarded by a middle-aged man. These four boys become fast friends and are taken under the protection of Chief Yang, a fiftyish gay guru in the Park. The boys begin to build a family of their own. Meanwhile, A-qing meets Dragon Prince, whose passionate and faithful love for Phoenix Boy has become a legend of the Park...The second part of the novel deals with the Cozy Nest, a gay bar run by Chief Yang, where the boys and other homosexual exiles have found refuge. The bar is sponsored by Papa Fu, whose young soldier son had shot himself when his homosexuality was exposed.In Taiwan, the gay community is known as the buoliquan, literally "glass community," while the individuals are called "glass boys" or "Crystal Boys."Crystal Boys was first published in Taiwan and has since appeared in Hong Kong and in mainland China: two editions (Beijing and Harbin) were published in 1987. A film, Outcasts, based on the novel and directed by Yu Kan-Ping (1986) is currently available in the United States on video cassette (subtitled).

    Bette Midler inspires with her words full of charm. As she tells us how Baby Divine escapes harm. How so much talent could be in one girl? To fathom it makes my poor brain start to whirl. She not only acts, sings, dances and writes! She's the brightest of stars in a world full of nights ...

    It was an ironic moment; the book had been turned down by more than a dozen mainstream houses, and the outpouring of rave reviews validated the book's artistic and social importance. Shocking, brutal, and unrepentantly literary, Saul's Book tells the story of Sinbad, a teenage hustler, and Saul, his older, criminal lover. A cross between Last Exit to Brooklyn and City of Night, Saul's Book is an honest, unsparing and frightening look not only at life on the streets, but at how salvation of any sort comes at an enormous price. Out of print for almost a decade, the reissue of Saul's Book is an important literary event.

    It ranges in tone and content from celebration to satire. While the collection can, I hope, be read for pleasure, I would like to think of it also as a record, a history of the different ways in which homosexual people have been seen and have seen themselves. Only if we know something about the past is there a chance we can do something about the future. To that extent, I would like to think of the voices collected here as those of encouragement."— Stephen Coote

    from 1940 to 1970. John D'Emilio's new preface and afterword examine the conditions that shaped the book and the growth of gay and lesbian historical literature."How many students of American political culture know that during the McCarthy era more people lost their jobs for being alleged homosexuals than for being Communists? . . . These facts are part of the heretofore obscure history of homosexuality in America—a history that John D'Emilio thoroughly documents in this important book."—George DeStefano, Nation"John D'Emilio provides homosexual political struggles with something that every movement requires—a sympathetic history rendered in a dispassionate voice."—New York Times Book Review"A milestone in the history of the American gay movement."—Rudy Kikel, Boston Globe

    His diary of his early years, The Paris Diary and the New York Diary, was widely acclaimed. The Later Diaries continues one of the most sustained efforts in the intimate journal form ever undertaken and offers candid insights into his astonishing life, career, art, friendships, and love. In these years, Lions, Miss Julie, and Poems of Love and the Rain were composed and most of his books written; he also continued to meet the famous and infamous and to write of them with the charm that Janet Flanner characterized as "worldly, intelligent, licentious, highly indiscreet."

    With genuine caring and concern for her boys, Franny looks after the gay men of Provincetown with the ultimate goal of making a place in the world for those who don't belong and making the world better for all.

    

    

    

    Housman (1859-1936) was a poet of great popularity and widespread influence: a Latin scholar of the front rank, a prose stylist, a notable writer of comic verse and, thanks to the success of A Shropshire Lad, one of the best-known poems in the English language.

    

    

    Her dislike of Yalies and all they represent at first extends to beautiful, self-possessed Victoria Locke. Then they fall in love and both their worlds change forever. Toothpick House is their story, but it is also the story of the women's movement, the changes it brings to traditional lesbian lives, and the ways in which it affected all young women of the 1970s.

    Duncan functioned as shaman of an emerging aesthetic grounded in magic, polytheism, and sexual freedom, a role that he cultivated in weekly Berkeley literary salons. For his biographer, Ekbert Faas, the mystic-poet Duncan was a harbinger of the coming cultural revolution, the iconic "guru" figure who, in the late 1940s, pried opened the door to the late 1960s.

    He's even kept the secret from his old schoolmate Hamish who's openly gay. When a friend of the two men is kidnapped and held for ransom by fanatics in the Middle East, Evan and Hamish plan a rescue. Soon international adventure and romance begin to uncover Evan's secrets.

    

    -- American BooksellerRevised and updated edition of a bestselling classic in the field. Examines coming out in the age of AIDS as well as the latest religious views.