Best of
Queer

1992

Millennium Approaches


Tony Kushner - 1992
    The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.

Before Night Falls


Reinaldo Arenas - 1992
    Very quickly the Castro government suppressed his writing and persecuted him for his homosexuality until he was finally imprisoned.

Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story


Paul Monette - 1992
    Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dream of "the thing I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing."Searingly honest, witty, and humane, Becoming a Man is the definitive coming-out story in the classic coming-of-age genre.

Bastard Out of Carolina


Dorothy Allison - 1992
    At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney—and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.

The Straight Mind: And Other Essays


Monique Wittig - 1992
    These political, philosophical, and literary essays mark the first collection of theoretical writing from the acclaimed novelist and French feminist writer Monique Wittig.

Written on the Body


Jeanette Winterson - 1992
    In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

Memories That Smell Like Gasoline


David Wojnarowicz - 1992
    This volume collects four tales--"Into the Drift and Sway," "Doing Time in a Disposable Body," "Spiral" and the title story--interspersed with ink drawings by the artist. "Sometimes it gets dark in here behind these eyes I feel like the physical equivalent of a scream. The highway at night in the headlights of this speeding car speeding is the only motion that lets the heart unravel and in the wind of the road the two story framed houses appear one after the other like some cinematic stage set..." From these opening sentences of the book (in "Into the Drift and Sawy"), Wojnarowicz lets loose a salvo of explicit gay sexual reverie harshly lit by the New York cityscape: escapades in movie theaters and bus terminals, amid the ascent of AIDS and Wojnarowicz's own consciousness of the virus in himself and at large in the gay community.

At Your Own Risk


Derek Jarman - 1992
    One of the first filmmakers to project an unabashed gay sensibility onto screen, Jarman creates here a montage of autobiography, interviews, and social history that shifts back and forth through time, resulting in an intriguing portrait of his personal and artistic growth from the 1940s to the present. Jarman is able to distill the essence of an era with just a few well-chosen anecdotes. He is outraged at what he sees as the complicit passivity of the British government's response to the AIDS epidemic; throughout, he drops the uncaring words of government officials like deadly bombs. Some readers may find his honesty brazen and offensive, but Jarman is truly a spokesman for his tribe, a teacher and a sage who, while staring death in the face, keeps his eyes open to report back with a deep understanding of what is important to the gay community. Highly recommended.- Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry


Essex Hemphill - 1992
    Ceremonies offers provocative commentary on highly charged topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of African-American men, feminism among men, and AIDS in the black community.

Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights


Eric Marcus - 1992
    military to marriage and adoption, the gay civil rights movement has exploded on the national stage. Eric Marcus takes us back in time to the earliest days of that struggle in a newly revised and thoroughly updated edition of Making History, originally published in 1992. Using the heartfelt stories of more than sixty people, he carries us through the compelling five-decade battle that has changed the fabric of American society.The rich tapestry that emerges from Making Gay History includes the inspiring voices of teenagers and grandparents, journalists and housewives, from the little-known Dr. Evelyn Hooker and Morty Manford to former vice president Al Gore, Ellen DeGeneres, and Abigail Van Buren. Together, these many stories bear witness to a time of astonishing change, as gay and lesbian people have struggled against prejudice and fought for equal rights under the law.“Rich and often moving . . . at times shocking, but often enlightening and inspiring: oral history at its most potent and rewarding.”—Kirkus Reviews

The Man With Night Sweats


Thom Gunn - 1992
    Originally published in 1992, it was Thom Gunn's first book of verse in ten years.

Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly: The Essays and Opinions of Charles Ludlam


Charles Ludlam - 1992
    Seen by some as simply a gifted buffoon, Ridiculous Theatre: Scourge of Human Folly exposes Ludlam as a clear-eyed, hard-headed thinker and master craftsman. His luminous essays (never widely available in his lifetime) and provocative opinions (drawn from interviews, unpublished papers and notebooks) reveal a complex mind comprehensively focused on theatrical invention.Charles Ludlam: Artistic director, playwright, director, designer and star of New York’s acclaimed Ridiculous Theatrical Company. During his twenty years with the Ridiculous, Ludlam won Obie and Drama Desk awards as well as playwriting fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. His more than thirty plays are among the most thought-provoking entertainments in the modern repertoire and continue to be widely performed throughout the world.

David Wojnarowicz: Tongues of Flame


Barry Blinderman - 1992
    Essays: "Fables,Facts, Riddles and Reasons in Wojnarowicz's Mythopoetica," by Carlo McCormick; "AIDS, Pure War and 'Being Queer In America'," by Curtis White; "David Wojnarowicz: As The World Turns," by John Carlin; "The Compression Of Time: An Interview With David Wojnarowicz," by Barry Blinderman. Writings by David Wojnarowicz: "Losing The Form In Darkness," "Self Portrait In Twenty-three Rounds," "Being Queer In America: A Journal Of Disintegration," "Living Close To The Knives," and "Post Cards From America: X-Rays From Hell." Biographical dateline by David Wojnarowicz. Comprehensive list of exhibitions, chronology and bibliography.

Keith Haring: Future Primeval


Barry Blinderman - 1992
    Contributors to the text include William Burroughs and Timothy Leary.

The Sound of Heaven


Joseph Olshan - 1992
    In Rome, the Eternal City, he meets Diana. Their attraction is intense and immediate. A passionate relationship is born and soon they are inseparable, reveling in their shared love of art and Italian culture. But storm clouds hang over their union: dark secrets of abuse from his youth, her pain over her brother’s death, and James’s open admission that he has known other men sexually.Back in New York, their relationship falls apart. For James and Diana, it is time to move on; to come to terms with the ghosts that haunt their lives and family histories; to find new paths and new lovers. But the darkness of their relationship is inescapable and persistent even though their love is gone. James has received news that will impact both their lives in devastating ways: He is HIV positive.Joseph Olshan’s The Sound of Heaven is an extraordinary novel, at once romantic and troubling, terrifying and compassionate.

Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound


Judith Katz - 1992
    Jewish lesbian magic realism -- dynamic piece of writing.

We Say We Love Each Other: Poetry


Minnie Bruce Pratt - 1992
    Simultaneous.

Tom of Finland: His Life and Times


F. Valentine Hooven III - 1992
    Valentine Hooven III hs written a full biography of the man, while tracing the evolution and impact of his art on the world.

Queer Edward II


Derek Jarman - 1992
    Queer Edward II is a poetic commentary on the making of this luscious film--a lavish book that leaves no holds barred and brings the film to life with luminous stills from the set.

Eros & Thanatos


Duane Michals - 1992
    The evocative images and poems collected in Eros & Thanatos conjure memories of love and loss, lust and longing, in what is perhaps the most revealing and overtly sensual of Michals's works to date. The full richness of Michals's imagery emerges from these exquisite, large-format sheet-fed gravures.

Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome


Amy Richlin - 1992
    Covering such topics as vase painting, tragic and comic drama from fifth-century Athens, Hellenistic philosophy and sex manuals, Roman history, poetry, wall-painting, representations of gladiatorial combat, and romance novels, the contributors approach sexuality from both sides of the feminist pornography debate, including the use of film theory. A path-breaking application of feminist theory to the study of Greek and Roman cultures, this text offers new insight into the notion of sexuality in the ancient world.

Counting Myself Lucky: Selected Poems, 1963-1992


Edward Field - 1992
    A collection of selected (from his six previous volumes) and new poems by Field, who never has forgotten the relationship between laughter and grief.