Best of
Queer

1989

The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.


Jaime Hernández - 1989
    After the sci-fi trappings of his earliest stories (as seenin Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series),Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalisticenvironment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the livesof the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. Acentral story and one of Jaime's absolute peaks is "The Death ofSpeedy." Such is Jaime's mastery that even though the end of the storyis telegraphed from the very title, the downhill spiral of Speedy, thelocal heartthrob, is utterly compelling and ultimately quitesurprising. Also in this volume, Maggie begins her on-again off-againromance with Ray D., leading to friction and an eventual separationfrom Hopey.(Note: A number of these stories, including a whole cycleof wrestling stories starring or co-starring Rena Titañon, were notcollected in the hardcover Locas.)

28 Barbary Lane: The Tales of the City Omnibus


Armistead Maupin - 1989
    The reader starts playing the old childhood game of 'Just one more chapter and I'll turn out the lights,' only to look up and discover it's after midnight.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review Originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (1978), More Tales of the City (1980), and Further Tales of the City (1982) afforded a mainstream audience of millions its first exposure to straight and gay characters experiencing on equal terms the follies of urban life.Among the cast of this groundbreaking saga are the lovelorn residents of 28 Barbary Lane: the bewildered but aspiring Mary Ann Singleton, the libidinous Brian Hawkins; Mona Ramsey, still in a sixties trance, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver, forever in bright-eyed pursuit of Mr. Right; and their marijuana-growing landlady, the indefatigable Mrs. Madrigal.Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads them through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity


Judith Butler - 1989
    This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.

Conversations with James Baldwin


James Baldwin - 1989
    It includes the last formal conversation with him.Twenty-seven interviews reprinted here come from a variety of sources--newspapers, radio, journals, and review--and show this celebrated author in all his eloquence, anger, and perception of racial, social, and literary situations in America.Over the years Baldwin proved to be an easily accessible and cooperative subject for interviews, both in the United States and abroad. He frequently referred to himself as "a kind of transatlantic commuter." Whether candidly discussing his own ghetto origins, his literary mission and achievements, his role in the civil rights movement, or his views on world affairs, black-and-white relations, Vietnam, Christianity, and fellow writers, Baldwin was always both popular and controversial.This important collection contributes significantly to the clarification and expansion of the ideas in Baldwin's fiction, drama, essays, and poetry. It gives additional life to a stunning orator and major literary figure who considered himself a sojourner even in his own country. Yet early in his career Baldwin told Studs Terkel: "I am an American writer. This country is my subject."

Out on the Shelves: Lesbian Books Into Libraries


Jane Allen - 1989
    

The Heart of Thomas


Moto Hagio - 1989
    Fourteen year-old Thomas Werner falls from a lonely pedestrian overpass to his death immediately after sending a single, brief letter to a schoolmate:To Juli, one last timeThis is my loveThis is the sound of my heartSurely you must understandThus begins the legendary and enigmatic Heart of Thomas, by Moto Hagio. Inspired by Jean Delannoy’s 1964 film, Les Amities Particulieres, The Heart of Thomas was nearly cancelled early in its serialization, in 1974, until Hagio’s first trade paperback, The Poe Clan, Volume 1, sold out in a single day, giving her new series a new lease on life. The result was a story more complex, less accessible, and yet so compelling it can be found near or at the top of any list of classic shojo manga. Translated by manga scholar Matt Thorn and packaged with the same loving attention to detail as Hagio’s Eisner Award nominated A Drunken Dream, The Heart of Thomas is already the most eagerly anticipated manga translation of the new decade.

Cunt Coloring Book


Tee A. Corinne - 1989
    Just ask Tee Corinne. Sometime in the early 70's, she began asking her friends if they would show her their vaginas so she could draw them. A few years later, she left her husband, came out as a lesbian & published a book of all her pussy portraits. She called it the Cunt Coloring Book. "Coloring, according to Tee, was a very good way for kids to learn about the female sex, 'because a major way we learn to understand the world, as children, is by coloring.'" But there were many who did not agree. They found the book's cover & title offensive. So they made Tee change it to the O'Keefeian Labia Flowers, & mask the cartographic vagina on the front with sketches of actual flora. That's when sales started to plummet. People didn't want flowers. They wanted cunts. Thus the original title & cover were restored.

Shy


Kevin Killian - 1989
    Killian produces a pantheon of distinctive characters--including himself as a young writer whose half-hearted work on a book about his murdered gay lover is stalled by his absorption in the dramas of others around him. The misfits, losers, adolescent rebels and rootless souls of Smithtown, Long Island (N.Y.), whose petty dreams and futile hopes the author sets forth with mercy, are the spiritual kin of Christopher Isherwood's creations in The Berlin Stories. Killian displays a facility for developing teenaged characters, such as Harry Van who, at 15 or 16, is continually aware that his golden youth is temporary; and Paula, a romantic who finds enlightenment in the music of David Bowie. His work is also noteworthy for unlikely phrasings ("Her face lit up like a jack-o-lantern, from inside, with the incredible light and heat of love").

Reports from the Holocaust: The Story of An AIDS Activist


Larry Kramer - 1989
    "Reports From the Holocaust" contains a chronological selection from the steady torrent of articles and speeches that Larry Kramer has produced since the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

A Vindication of the Rights of Whores


Gail Pheterson - 1989
    Now, 200 years later, prostitutes are calling for similar rights and equality. The need o speak out for the rights of sex workers became clear to Margo St. James, a former prostitute, in the early 1970s. She founded Coyote (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) in 1973 and went on to establish a network of prostitutes, social workers and politicians.The book consists of the voices of a diverse group of prostitutes, sex worker's rights activists and feminist scholars from around the world, discussing their lives and their concerns.It includes the complete text of the World Charter for Prostitutes' Rights; unedited transcripts of workshop arranged by topic from the First World Whores' Congress held in Amsterdam in February 1985 and Second World Whores' Congress at the European Parliament held in Brussels in October 1986; position papers; as well as interviews with various participants.

The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam


Charles Ludlam - 1989
    

Compañeras: Latina Lesbians: An Anthology


Juanita Ramos - 1989
    In these pieces, some in Spanish, most in English, 47 women born in 10 different countries address issues such as coming out, relationships with families and friends, political organizing and community building. This groundbreaking collection, originally published in 1987 by the Latina Lesbian History Project, allows women to speak about what it means to be Latina and lesbian in their communities. Throughout, the voices in this book explore the process of self-commitment to a political struggle to end all forms of Oppression.

Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches


Martin Taylor - 1989
    A remarkable anthology, including many largely unknown poems from the trenches, in which Martin Taylor illustrates the extraordinary range of emotions generated by the horror of the First World War and the experience of trench warfare.

Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past


Martin Duberman - 1989
    Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Jeffrey Weeks and John D'Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, Jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Casto's Cuba - and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community - all are given a context in this fascinating work.

The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket


John Weir - 1989
    "There's no moving away from this wrenching, beautifully told story".--Los Angeles Times.

Everything Is Nice: Collected Stories, Fragments and Plays


Jane Bowles - 1989
    But it was enough to establish a reputation as one of the 20th century's most original fiction writers.

Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures


Renate Stendhal - 1989
    "After an astonishing, playful essay, the book opens into a revelatory combination of quotes, quips and 360 photos of Stein and her wildly brilliant circle."--Elle

Kicking the Habit


Jeanne Cordova - 1989
    Jeanne Cordova, author of "My Immaculate Heart" in LESBIAN NUNS: Breaking Silence, takes us once again behind the forbidden convent door for a revealing look at the joys and sorrows of Sisterhood.  This compelling and sometimes shocking autobiography chronicles Cordova's early life as a naive young woman from the Republican suburbs of Southern California.  Sent to the ghettos of Skid Row and Watts by Mother Superior, Cordova runs headlong into the chaos of inner city life, the social unrest of the '60s, disillusionment with religious life and her own burgeoning sexuality.

Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS


John PrestonStephen Chapot - 1989
    Here are their reports from the midst of an ongoing struggle, personal dispatches from the frontlines by some of the most accomplished writers of our time.

Epitaphs for the Living: Words and Images in the Time of AIDS


Billy Howard - 1989
    At his invitation, each person wrote below his or her image a statement, or message, about living--and dying--with AIDS.