Best of
Glbt

1993

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the Us Military


Randy Shilts - 1993
    The bestselling author of And the Band Played On follows with a book of even greater power and sweep as he investigates the situation of gays in the military over the past three decades, revealing for the first time that some of the most celebrated soldiers in American history were homosexual (including the Father of the United States Army).

Genet


Edmund White - 1993
    in works from 'Our Lady of the Flowers' to 'The Screens', he created a scandalous personal mythology while savaging the conventions of his society. His career was a series of calculated shocks marked by feuds, rootlessness, and the embrace of unpopular causes and outcast peoples. Now this most enigmatic of writers has found his ideal biographer in novelist Edmund White, whose eloquent and often poignant chronicle does justice to the unruly narrative of Genet's life even as it maps the various worlds in which he lived and the perverse landscape of his imagination.

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems, 1987-1992


Audre Lorde - 1993
    Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was the author of ten volumes of poetry and five works of prose. She was named New York State Poet in 1991; her other honors include the Manhattan Borough President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994.

Drawing Blood


Poppy Z. Brite - 1993
    Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.

The Sea of Light


Jenifer Levin - 1993
    Angelita is the hurricane that brings down a plane carrying a team of star-quality swimmers, groomed from childhood to compete at the international level. Babe Delgado is a young Cuban-American woman, presumed dead, who is rescued from the crash. Fifty-one hours in the Atlantic have left her scarred in body and spirit, afraid to compete again. Brenna Allen is a tough, driven swim coach at a small university, grieving for a lover lost to cancer. She finds solace in building her own winning team, driving her overworked captain, Ellie Marks, ever harder. Ellie is a child of holocaust survivors, struggling to own herself and her sexuality as hard as she's working to win. Brenna recruits Babe, promising to help her rebuild her damaged body, strength, and will. The Sea of Light is a story of wins, losses, and passions in a world where destiny and magic interfere with victory, where families are forced to reconcile with private hurts and false dreams, and where a redemptive, healing love between women - erotic and overwhelmingly intimate - stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the world. A sensitive, powerful tale of self-discovery, sexual identity, and violent emotions unleashed by sudden disaster, this novel is sure to command attention and acclaim.

Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connections Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred


Randy P. Conner - 1993
    Illustrations and photos.

My Own Private Idaho


Gus Van Sant - 1993
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

Leonard and Larry, Vol. 1: Domesticity Isn't Pretty


Tim Barela - 1993
    

Everyday Acts and Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home


Anndee Hochman - 1993
    and to understand that when we throw away that rule book we are not alone."--Ms.¶"A wonderful trove of experimentation and possibility."--The Women's Review of Books¶"This book is a homecoming!"--Philadelphia Daily News

Such Times


Christopher Coe - 1993
    Dominic is probably dying in Los Angeles. Jasper, older by almost a generation, was for many years Timothy's lover. Among Jasper's infidelities was a brisk fling with Dominic. Timothy and Dominic are having dinner in Los Angeles after viewing Dominic's taped appearance on a nationally televised quiz show. They have maintained their ambivalent friendship for twenty years. Tonight their conversation is lively but guarded. Timothy has not told Dominic of Jasper's death; Dominic doesn't inquire into Timothy's own state, and this is a question Timothy is in no hurry to answer. Through Timothy's eyes, we see that though AIDS can be deadly, it can also be taken, as Timothy chooses to, as a challenge to live. His thoughts are filled by memories of Jasper, and he takes the reader on a vivid tour of male sex at its most untamed - as it was in the seventies and the eighties - when the explosion of AIDS forced thousands of men to take a new direction. We feel the press of bodies along the waterfront of Manhattan, in the boites, and even the streets of Paris. It is possible Timothy will even come away from this dinner with a heightened understanding of Jasper, and of their long and lost romance. It is certain that the reader will be rewarded by the deeper insights of this harrowing (and often hilarious) account of love between men in such times.

Annie Oakley's Girl


Rebecca Brown - 1993
    And 'A Good Man,' one of the most important. Rarer than the newness, the wit, the vivid readability, is the deep caring understanding, the wholeness, the truth which this astonishing, haunting writer creates her people. 'A Good Man' will be a revelation, an epiphany to many a reader."—Tillie Olsen"In Annie Oakley's Girl, people are so much larger, their motives, dreams and mysteries so much more complex than you ever imagined. Love is so much more dangerous, grief so much more powerful, hope so much more tenuous and necessary. I read everything Rebecca Brown writes, watch for her books and hunt down her short stories. She is simply one of the best contemporary lesbian writers around, and Annie Oakley's Girl is stunning."—Dorothy AllisonPublished in 1993 by City Lights, this collection includes seven stories: "Annie," "The Joy of Marriage," "Folie a Deux," "Love Poem," "The Death of Napoleon: Its Influence on History," "A Good Man," and "Grief."Rebecca Brown is the author of a dozen books of prose including The Last Time I Saw You, The End of Youth, The Dogs, The Terrible Girls (City Lights) and The Gifts of the Body (HarperCollins)."Brown's fourth (The Terrible Girls, 1992, etc.) mixes fantasy, conjecture, and some realism in seven stories that feature atmospheric neo-feminist allegories and fables. The two longest pieces are the most striking: "Annie" (originally published in Adam Mars-Jones's Mae West is Dead: Recent Lesbian & Gay Fiction) is about the narrator's love affair with Annie Oakley—it's part historical pastiche, part touching daydream, and part biting satire. Juxtaposing the narrator's western daydreams with grittier realism, Brown manages to force upon her narrator the kind of rude awakening best displayed by Tim O'Brien in Going after Cacciato. She also has a good deal of fun along the way: in one instance, Annie Oakley signs autographs at Saks—"the release of her authorized biography coincides with the arrival of the special line of new fall fashions—Annie Oakley Western Wear." "A Good Man" (which first appeared in Joan Nestle and Naomi Holoch's Women on Women II) is a tribute to a decent man dying of AIDS, nursed off and on by his lesbian friend; the striking "Folie a Deux" posits a couple who deliberately cripple themselves—one deaf, one blind—so that "Each of us had something the other didn't have"; and the remaining four stories, published in Britain in 1984, are dreamlike fables. In the best, "Love Poem," the narrator and "you," an artist (the second person becomes a tic in several of these), sneak into the Tate and destroy the artist's work; "The Joy of Marriage" is a touching but ideological look at a honeymoon; "Grief" is about a woman sent off by her clique to a foreign country—she never returns. Occasionally moving, the story's too obliquely personal to make enough sense to a wider audience. Imagistic, edgy fictions about postmodern longing in a world off its screws—and where sadness seems to be a woman's only fate."—Kirkus Reviews

The Sea of Light


Jennifer Levin - 1993
    

Landscape without Gravity: A Memoir of Grief


Barbara Lazear Ascher - 1993
    With an older sister's efficiency, she notified her parents and arranged Bobby's cremation; then, almost against her will, she began to grieve. This extraordinary book is a record of what she encountered in that "landscape without gravity."Here is a bold account of a sister coming to terms with her brother's death and with the type of grief that arises only when one sibling loses another—a grief that is all too often unacknowledged and borne in silence. Here too is a map for that "hero's journey" we call mourning. Ascher locates the moments of healing inside the kind of hurt that seems to last forever, making this profoundly comforting, invaluable reading for anyone—especially brothers and sisters faced with loss.

Reasons Of The Heart


Bron Nicholls - 1993
    But at the centre of Fred's universe is Jonathan, the boy who followed him a long a rainy street to sell him a newspaper ...In his recounting, Fred looks for the patterns in his life which might explain his nature.This is a powerful story which replays ancient themes of sex, guilt, power and, above all, love.

My Life as a Pornographer & Other Indecent Acts


John Preston - 1993
    Benson, Preston here collects 30 years' worth of essays and lectures on a wide variety of topics with one common theme: sex. The work offered here runs the gamut from the essential and enlightening to the downright silly, with "A Modest Proposal for the Support of the Pornographic Arts" definitely falling into the later category. Preston's sex-positive stand on safer-sex education as the only truly effective AIDS-prevention strategy will certainly not win him any conservative converts, but AIDS activists will be shouting their assent. As the title suggests, Preston celebrates a time when homosexuality was defined in more purely sexual terms, which gives some of the work an oddly nostalgic quality. Despite some contradictions that weaken a few of the more conceptual arguments, Preston's book is a bridge from the sexually liberated 1970s to the more cautious 1990s, and Preston has walked much of that way as a standard-bearer to the cause for equal rights. Recommended for special collections and larger libraries where the topic will be of interest.- Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Neglected Walt Whitman: Vital Texts


Walt Whitman - 1993
    These 66 texts include 49 poems, 11 passages from poems, four prose texts, and one image-text. Some of the poems, such as "Respondez," are quite simply Whitman at his best: poems that represent the height of his passion and artistry; others, including the "Calamus" cluster, are crucial for illuminating the great sexual mystery of Whitman - for throwing light on the relationship between the "real" Whitman and the immortal persona he created in Leaves of Grass - "Walt Whitman, a kosmos." Yet most other currently available readers editions of Whitman omit most of these texts, all other readers editions omit some of them, and the "authoritative" Library of America Complete Poetry and Collected Prose omits all of them. What is it the other editions are so afraid of? Together, these writings refute the standard assumptions about what kind of poet Whitman was, proposing a subtler and more complex portrait. The Whitman who emerges here is a more dangerous man than we knew before, not only a praisemaker but also an outlaw.

Dancing on the Moon: Short Stories About AIDS


Jameson Currier - 1993
    With profound literary courage, Chekhovian compassion, and humor, Currier writes not only about those who are living with AIDS and those who have died from it, but also about the friends, families, and lovers who nurse and care for the sick and remember them afterward.

The Perennial Political Palate: The Third Feminist Vegetarian Cookbook


Bloodroot Collective - 1993
    Primarily vegan, with many luscious dairy-free cake and dessert recipes, and liberally spiced with quotes from feminist writing. A tribute to the seventeen-year history of this fine restaurant

Sorrow is the Only Faithful One: The Life of Owen Dodson


James V. Hatch - 1993
    A luscious read for fans of several genres, James Hatch's biography of Owen Dodson is the story of a gifted poet, novelist, educator, and director whose life was a lonely struggle with arthritis, alcohol, racism, and homophobic prejudice.

The New Worlds of Women


Cecilia TanShawn Dell - 1993
    Eleven women writers turn their vivid imaginations to faraway planets, erotic futures, and sensual fairy tales, to celebrate sexuality and explore what it means to be a woman who loves women.

While England Sleeps


David Leavitt - 1993
    In While England Sleeps, available for the first time in two years, he moves beyond precisely controlled domestic drama to create a historical novel, set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, that tells a story of love and the violent chaos of war.

Living in Secret


Cristina Salat - 1993
    Finally, after years of living apart, Amelia, and her mom decide there is only one thing to do. On a cold October night, Amelia's mother comes to steal her away. For Amelia, living in secret means changing her name, not going to school, and pretending she is twelve instead of eleven. The adventure of beginning a whole new life, with brand new family and friends, is marred only by the shadow of a past that could shatter the present in an instant, should anyone find out who Amelia really is.

Lotus of Another Color


Rakesh Ratti - 1993
    For the first time, lesbians and gay men from India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries tell stories of coming out and challenging prejudice.

Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto


Robert E. Shore-Goss - 1993
    Goss calls on church leaders to make their churches truly open to gay and lesbian Christians.

She's Always Liked the Girls Best: Lesbian Plays


Claudia Allen - 1993
    

Native: A Novel


William Haywood Henderson - 1993
    "Finely wrought".--The Village Voice.

Circles


Perry Brass - 1993
    Consider this: You're closeted Nick Lawrence, happily married to a wealthy woman in Beverly Hills. Suddenly your life has been taken over by an alien force-and the secret you've worked so hard to maintain is exploding in your face. Your only ally is a strange, old man from a distant planet, who threatens to kill you. What's next? You're the young, blue-eyed Republican vice president of the United States secretly trying to win over the hidden wealth and power of gay America, while promoting your own agenda of "family values." Whom will you enlist for help? You're a gay Russian mathematician who's discovered an organic substance that can pass through time, space, and other beings. What do you do when you discover that this substance has taken over you? Circles returns to tiny Ki, a primitive, violent planet where Same-Sex love is a part of the balance of life. There Enkidu, once the promised mate of the ambitious hunter Greeland, has become the most hunted man on the planet. His only way out is to escape to Earth, alone, and there in a riot-scarred Los Angeles, take on the identity and body of another man. There he will find a partner who will do anything for him, including kill-and there he will attempt to save the lives of those he loves, including the tortured, handsome man whose body and fate he now owns. Circles is both graphic and mystical. It brings to life some of the most unforgettable characters ever put into a contemporary novel. Advancing the chronicles of the extraordinary planet Ki, Circles will also advance the cause of gay fiction out of its narrow focus and into the world-embracing landscape of our era. Circles will become a powerful key to the evolution of gender studies and the expanding gay consciousness of the 21st Century, whose effects are already being seen, culturally and politically, today.

I Believe in Angels


Fiona Cooper - 1993
    Here are wronged lovers and passionate dreamers; dole-queue heroes and French Resistance heroines; children taking faltering steps in a chaotic world, and waltzing grannies: religious fanatics, true believers, painters and penguins. Interspersed with the joyously whimsical are tales that turn a searchlight on our deepest hopes and our darkest fears. Wry and ironic, this is nevertheless a celebration of love from a writer very firmly on the side of the angels.

Chautauqua: A Romance


Catherine Ennis - 1993
    Bernie Hebert receives an ominous phone call: "There's cholera in Lake Charles" in this suspenseful tale set in the bayous of Louisiana.

The Arena


John Preston - 1993
    

Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town


Esther Newton - 1993
    Not simply the leisure-time freedoms from work and noise and pollution, but the far rarer freedom to socialize in public without risking a beating, to stroll arm in arm without hesitation, to leave the curtains open without fear -- in short, to live the American dream that was denied to gay men and lesbians on the U.S. mainland. In her rich and detailed cultural history of Cherry Grove, Esther Newton tells for the first time the full story of this unique community, the oldest gay and lesbian town in America.

Facets Gay and Lesbian Video Guide


Patrick Z. McGavin - 1993
    The second edition of the best-selling "Facets Gay & Lesbian Video Guide" includes descriptions and sources for more than 400 new lesbian and gay films all readily available on video -- now including a list of nearly 1000 titles.

The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy


Robert Aldrich - 1993
    Episodes of exile, murder, drug-taking, wild homosexual orgies and court cases are woven into an original study of a significant theme in European culture. The myth of a homoerotic Mediterranean made a major contribution to general attitudes towards Antiquity, the Renaissance and modern Italy and Greece.