Best of
Queer

1984

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches


Audre Lorde - 1984
    These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the concept of difference—difference according to sex, race, and economic status. The title Sister Outsider finds its source in her poetry collection The Black Unicorn (1978). These poems and the essays in Sister Outsider stress Lorde's oft-stated theme of continuity, particularly of the geographical and intellectual link between Dahomey, Africa, and her emerging self.

Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality


Geoff Mains - 1984
    Through intimate forms of encounter, using such tools as pain-pleasure, bondage, and role-play, leather can bring a shift of conciousness and a new vision of the self. This innovative book pioneered in sensitively exploring and celebrating leathersexuality. As relevant today as when it was written 20 years ago, Urban Aboriginals is an intimate view of the gay male leather community. Within its pages, author Geoff Mains explores the spritual, sexual, emotional, cultural and physiological aspects that make this "scene" one of the most prominent yet misunderstood subcultures in our society. Geoff Mains was a sweet, intelligent, articulate, and wonderful man who cared passionately about the leather community. He wanted to make sure that its accomplishments would be remembered and its wild beauty understood. Urban Aboriginals resulted from his love and is an enduring part of his legacy. It is a unique cultural study, and a priceless document of a now vanished time. --Gayle Rubin, Ph.D., author and anthropologist I met Geoff Mains in the early 1980s. We shared a common vision: fusion of tribal subcultures "on a journey marked by fetish and mana, shaman, ritual and trance". Urban Aboriginals was way ahead of its time for clearly defining a significant transformation in Western Culture. I feel Geoff would have enjoyed seeing his blueprint for ecstatic exploration live on and blossom even further in the still Apollonian world of the 21st Century. --Fakir Musafar, Father of the Modern Primitive Movement In Urban Aboriginals, Geoff Mains pioneered our understanding of the connections between the neurochemistry of pleasure seeking and radical sexuality. But the book is more..... .so much more. Its stories and vignettes take us personally into the experience of different old guard "scenes" with intimacy, intensity, range and depth not found anywhere else. Simply required reading. --Guy Baldwin, M.S., author and psychotherapist Urban Aboriginals ranks high on the list of books that belong in any library of kinky writing. Geoff's contribution to our history, our community, and our understanding of ourselves has withstood the test of time. This book, important -- classic, and a must-read -- is one that makes a pre-eminent contribution to each and every one of us. Urban Aboriginals was the first works to teach me the meaning of real SM, a lesson it holds for all who will read it. --Jack Rinella, author

Manners from Heaven: A Divine Guide to Good Behaviour


Quentin Crisp - 1984
    

Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism


Elly Bulkin - 1984
    Cultural Writing. New to SPD. The award-winning feminist and lesbian press Firebrand Books closed its doors last year after sixteen years in the business. The authors of YOURS IN STRUGGLE -- Elly Bulkin, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith -- have now made the 1988 Firebrand edition of their collaborative work available through SPD. They write, YOURS IN STRUGGLE happened because we were able to talk to each other in the fist place, despite our very different identities and backgrounds -- white Christian-raised Southerner, Afro-American, Ashkenazi Jew. Each of us speaks only for herself, and we do not necessarily agree with each other. Yet we believe our cooperation on this book indicates concrete possibilities for coalition work.

Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous


Royston Lambert - 1984
    With many illustations of the people & places concerned in the affair & of the splendid & fascinating artefacts which it produced, this account, based on thoro research, is a compelling read. This book investigates the mysteries that surround how this obscure Greek boy came to dominate the powerful emperor Hadrian. The author recreates the glory & decadence of the Roman Empire ripe for decline. Antinous was the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The author demonstrates that Hadrian's private sexual life & his obsession with his young lover Antinous did have an impact on policy & his public actions, particularly the establishment of Antinous as a state sponsored god, to be worshiped by the citizens of the Roman Empire. When Antinous, around age 20, was accidentally drowned on the Nile, the 54 year old Hadrian was devastated & his grief changed the Empire

We Are All Part of One Another


Barbara Deming - 1984
    

The Butch Manual


Clark Henley - 1984
    

A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women


Beth Brant - 1984
    We are a nation. We are alive.

Légende: The Story of Philippa and Aurelie


Jeannine Allard - 1984
    They had no other models of such a thing, so they chose this solution: one of them posed as a man for most of their life together; they were married, adopted a child, and were very happy together.The one who posed as a man was lost at sea, and a statue was erected to her, symbolizing all the collective losses suffered by their small town. Many years later, when it was known that she had in fact been a woman, the statue was destroyed by angry and frightened people.This legend is still told in Brittany. Now Jeannine Allard has built from it, creating a hauntingly beautiful story of two women in love.

The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1947-1957


Judith Malina - 1984
    

The Graces


Aaron Shurin - 1984
    a territory of multiple voices & multiple selves