As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is."A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."  -- The Village VoiceA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARNational book Critics Circle Award Finalist

    Open Me Carefully invites a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship and misinterpretation.For the millions of readers who love Emily Dickinson's poetry, Open Me Carefully brings new light to the meaning of the poet's life and work. Gone is Emily as lonely spinster; here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive.

    Go behind the pen and into the psyche of dyke to watch out for Alison Bechdel--cartoon chronicler extraordinaire--as the inner workings of lesbiania's most quick-witted, longest-running social commentator are revealed.

    In 2001, the mesmerizing film adaptation was released to equally glowing reviews. Brilliantly innovative and oddly endearing, Hedwig and the Angry Inch—inspired by Plato’s Symposium—is the story of “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig Schmidt, the victim of a gruesomely botched sex-change operation, as dazzlingly recounted by Hedwig (née Hansel) herself in the form of a lounge act, backed by the rock band The Angry Inch.

    It tells the story of Wojnarowicz's creative birth, from publishing his first photographs and writing what would become The Waterfront Journals to completing his tour de force, Close to the Knives, at the height of his fame. In the Shadow of the American Dream is finally a record of the private Wojnarowicz, falling in love, exploring erotic possibilities on the Hudson River piers, becoming overwhelmed by the demands of survival, and searching for the pleasure and freedom he believed one could live on.

    Besieged by the press, his widow Millie flees to a remote Scottish village, where she seeks solace in memories of their marriage. The reminiscences of those who knew Joss Moody render a moving portrait of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, one that preserved a rare, unconditional love.

    Miranda is, too, one who'll find her femme persona as intriguing and fuckable as she is in boy drag. Jack thinks she's hot no matter what she looks like, and after "introducing" her to a few of his friends, decides to keep her on. This is San Francisco's notorious SOMA/South of Market, a neighborhood colonized by leatherfolk long before the dot-commers and ravers arrived. From dark alleys to tastefully-appointed dungeons, from hotel penthouses to tranny bars, Randy/Miranda embraces her heart's, mind's, and body's desires with an assortment of sexes, genders, and sexual orientations. With Jack and others--all denizens of San Francisco's sexual fringes--she creates her own queer version of family. Mistress of sexual storytelling Carol Queen offers a fresh look at sexual lifestyles and choices that are misinterpreted and repudiated by the mainstream. Her perceptive and knowledgeable treatment inserts a new viewpoint into the carefully developed relationships of power play, destroying stereotypes and modeling open communication. A 1999 Firecracker Alternative Book Award-winner in the original edition (Cleis Press, 1998).

    And that includes the crucial zone below the belt, both fore and aft. There was nothing ambiguous about Tom of Finland's interest in his objects of desire: "lf I don't have an erection when I'm doing a drawing, I know it's no good", he himself said. The eroti-cism is naked, even aggressive. The poses inevitably consigned his work to the pornography shelves, and the walls of leather bars in the gay scene. So far there has been no account of the artistic virtuosity of his work.The present volume traces the life and career of this important artist. Born in southern Finland, Tom played the piano at local coffee shops to supplement his income as a graphic artist until his watercolors of male sexuality began to appear as covers on major American gay publications. His impact as an artist has since stretched far beyond the gay scene.

    Offscreen, he was openly gay. This bestselling biography captures the rich gay subculture of Hollywood before the Production Code--before studio intimidation led to the establishment of the Hollywood closet. Alone among his contemporaries, Billy Haines (1900-1973) refused to compromise and was ultimately booted out by Louis B. Mayer. Forced to give up acting, Haines went on to become a top interior designer to the stars and to clients such as Nancy Reagan. By his side through it all was his lover, Jimmie Shields; their fifty-year relationship led their best friend, Joan Crawford, to call them the "happiest married couple in Hollywood." Wisecracker is an astounding piece of newly discovered gay history, a chronicle of high Hollywood, and--at its heart--a great and enduring love story.

    Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

    She inherited Shibden Hall, Yorkshire, seduced a neighbouring heiress, consolidated their estates (effectively a dynastic lesbian marriage), and developed the coal deposits there, managing them with flair and energy.In her account of this remarkable story, Female Fortune, Jill Liddington analyzes the role of gender in Lister's invasion of what were, at the time, almost exclusively male domains. The book is supported by generous selections from the diaries themselves.The extensive appraisal of Anne Lister's life and the themes drawn from the diaries make Female Fortune required reading for anyone engaged in current feminist analysis. It is an important text for students of women's studies, gender studies. social and cultural history, and lesbian and gay studies.

    In Trans Liberation, Feinberg has gathered a collection of hir speeches on trans liberation and its essential connection to the liberation of all people. This wonderfully immediate, impassioned, and stirring book is for anyone who cares about civil rights and creating a just and equitable society.

    African-American studies. Gay and lesbian studies. Using traditional storytelling and nontraditional verse to chronicle the course of love returning in the lifetimes of one woman-loving-woman named bull-dog-jean, the bull-jeanstories give cultural documentation and social commentary on African-American herstory and survival. Set in the rural South of the 1920s, the bull-jean stories herald the spirit of African-American people.

    After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the late 1980's, Wojnarowicz's art took on a sharply political edge, and from then until his death in 1992, he became entangled in highly public debates about medical research and funding, censorship in the arts, and politically sanctioned homophobia. Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz is the first book to explore the extraordinary breadth of his work in film, installation, sculpture, photography, performance, and writing, as well as his considerable influence on artists and writers working today. It features essays by leading art scholars, including New Museum senior curator Dan Cameron, along with excerpts from Wojnarowicz's own writings and previously unpublished material from the archives of the Wojnarowicz estate-works that cross literary lines, from memoir and fiction to political commentary and cultural critique.Dan Cameron, John Carlin, C. Carr, and Mysoon Rizk

    Alice Dreger focuses on events in France and Britain in the late nineteenth century, a moment of great tension for questions of sex roles. While feminists, homosexuals, and anthropological explorers openly questioned the natures and purposes of the two sexes, anatomical hermaphrodites suggested a deeper question: just how many human sexes are there? Ultimately hermaphrodites led doctors and scientists to another surprisingly difficult question: what is sex, really?Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex takes us inside the doctors' chambers to see how and why medical and scientific men constructed sex, gender, and sexuality as they did, and especially how the material conformation of hermaphroditic bodies--when combined with social exigencies--forced peculiar constructions. Throughout the book Dreger indicates how this history can help us to understand present-day conceptualizations of sex, gender, and sexuality. This leads to an epilogue, where the author discusses and questions the protocols employed today in the treatment of intersexuals (people born hermaphroditic). Given the history she has recounted, should these protocols be reconsidered and revised?A meticulously researched account of a fascinating problem in the history of medicine, this book will compel the attention of historians, physicians, medical ethicists, intersexuals themselves, and anyone interested in the meanings and foundations of sexual identity.

    Written with a powerful and personal voice, Schulman’s book is part gossipy narrative, part behind-the-scenes glimpse into the New York theater culture, and part polemic on how mainstream artists co-opt the work of “marginal” artists to give an air of diversity and authenticity to their own work. Rising above the details of her own case, Schulman boldly uses her suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are being represented in American art and commerce. Closely recounting her discovery of the ways in which Rent took materials from her own novel, Schulman takes us on her riveting and infuriating journey through the power structures of New York theater and media, a journey she pursued to seek legal restitution and make her voice heard. Then, to provide a cultural context for the emergence of Rent—which Schulman experienced first-hand as a weekly theater critic for the New York Press at the time of Rent’s premiere—she reveals in rich detail the off- and off-off-Broadway theater scene of the time. She argues that these often neglected works and performances provide more nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of gay men, Latinos, blacks, lesbians and people with AIDS than popular works seen in full houses on Broadway stages. Schulman brings her discussion full circle with an incisive look at how gay and lesbian culture has become rapidly commodified, not only by mainstream theater productions such as Rent but also by its reduction into a mere demographic made palatable for niche marketing. Ultimately, Schulman argues, American art and culture has made acceptable a representation of “the homosexual” that undermines, if not completely erases, the actual experiences of people who continue to suffer from discrimination or disease. Stagestruck’s message is sure to incite discussion and raise the level of debate about cultural politics in America today.

    This collection provides an overdue review of material that at one time could only be bought under the counter, beginning with the anonymous erotica of the 19th century. It features the pioneer homoerotic nude photographs of Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, posing nude youths in classical postures at Taormina in Sicily. It includes illustrations from groundbreaking magazines such as Physique Pictorial, the leading organ of the mid-50s gay scene, and it covers the entire range from classic masters of male nude photography, such as Herbert List, George Platt Lynes or Robert Mapplethorpe, to the pin-up beefcake of the sex magazines.

    The dogs, led by the cruel, charismatic bitch named Miss Dog, alternate between being brutal attack animals and loyal companions, being real and otherworldly. Some chapters draw upon the ecstatic and horrifying visions of Christian mystics; others take place in the landscapes of familiar fairytales; others in the banal settings of the late-night pick-up bars or suburban picnics. The narrator uneasily inhabits these worlds until the dogs force her to take irrevocable action."A snarling attack on the fairytale form. A good girl's fears of inadequacy materialize as a pack of vicious dogs."—Publishers Weekly"A strange and wonderful first-person voice emerges from the stories of Rebecca Brown, who strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."—The New York Times"Using unsentimental language that slices, pries and exposes layers of emotion and sexuality as a scalpel does a body, Brown veers into the uncharted territory."—The San Francisco Chronicle"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."—Dorothy Allison"A dry, witty, graceful—if savage—gift."—Mary GaitskillRebecca Brown is the author of other fictions, including The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley’s Girl, and The Gifts of the Body. She is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award, and was awarded a Genius Award and grant from Seattle's weekly magazine, The Stranger. She lives in Seattle.

    Clips, quips, vignettes and hallucinations, tragic news reports and hilarious short plays, conversations with both the quick and the dead, all shine their combined lights to reveal the way we experience life today in this ambitious novel.

    Nestle explores the “fragile unions” of contemporary lesbian life, both personal and historic.

    Kate Bornstein provides an introduction. Boys Like Her is a road movie of young queer life. Four distinct voices come together in a tag-team dialogue, interwoven with disturbingly beautiful photographs that echo their transformative energy.Reading this book is like watching a circus troupe juggle a chainsaw, a grapefruit, a beach ball and a pocket watch without dropping a beat, With identities ranging from boy-girl to power-femme to borderline testosterone-enhanced, these talented upstarts explore and explode gender, sex and family. Gentleness is mixed with harsh honesty, as grandmother's good advice jostles with hormone therapy, surviving the psych ward, rough play and lost love. Each piece stands alone, together they are a conversation, a road movie of young queer life, rolling with the punches and taking the reader along for a ride to remember!

    An accompanying essay by Esmund White puts Mapplethorpe into historical, social, sexual, and artistic context. 100 color and duotone plates. 3 gatefolds. Slipcased.

    Renaissance, Ruth Forman's second collection, speaks of the timeless themes of family, death, love, and rebirth in the inimitable voice Booklist called 'sexy, bittersweet, funny, feisty, and real.' With poetry that conveys a defiant, enlivened spirit and has won her acclaim, Ruth Forman measures the losses and celebrates the future of a generation.

    It gathers a wide range of evidence from the second century B.C. to the second century A.D.--above all from such literary texts as courtroom speeches, love poetry, philosophy, epigram, and history, but also graffiti and other inscriptions as well as artistic artifacts--and uses that evidence to reconstruct the contexts within which Roman texts were created and had their meaning. The book takes as its starting point the thesis that in order to understand the Roman material, we must make the effort to set aside any preconceptions we might have regarding sexuality, masculinity, and effeminacy.Williams' book argues in detail that for the writers and readers of Roman texts, the important distinctions were drawn not between homosexual and heterosexual, but between free and slave, dominant and subordinate, masculin and effeminate as conceived in specifically Roman terms. Other important questions addressed by this book include the differences between Roman and Greek practices and ideologies; the influence exerted by distinctively Roman ideals of austerity; the ways in which deviations from the norms of masculine sexual practice were negotiated both in the arena of public discourse and in real men's lives; the relationship between the rhetoric of nature and representations of sexual practices; and the extent to which same-sex marriages were publicly accepted.

    With hundreds of works by authors ranging from Ovid to James Baldwin, from Plato to Oscar Wilde, The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature presents a wide range of poetry, fiction, essays, and autobiography that depict love, friendship, intimacy, desire, and sex between men.

    A tough gay thriller set in the criminal under world of Glasgow, Scotland.

    On a far-off world, an asexual class of blands exists to serve their fellow humans, protected and isolated from contact with the rest of the universe. But no bland has ever left its sheltered homeworld--until now. Tedla has been found in an alley light-years away from its planet. And it has just tried to commit suicide. Val, an expert in alien cultures, helps Tedla recuperate and in doing so, uncovers the secret tortured world of the blands.

    From beginning to end some of these poems chart the journey that is life and one woman's cycle of dependency as she recovers her lost identity. Thematically, it is bound by a writer's search for love and fight for freedom, drawing on the spirit and will of Harriet Tubman, the image of the bloated body of Emmett Till, the bombing of Philadelphia Move, and lesbian love. In the tradition of June Jordan and Sapphire, Pamela Sneed presents an in-your-face, powerful, and stirring debut.

    Obsessed with getting to the root of things, Panati reveals facts that will surprise even the most informed reader.

    The vampire Mina Harker, who possesses the body of author Dodie Bellamy, confesses the most intimate details of her relationships with four vastly different men through past letters. Simultaneously, a plague is let loose in San Francisco-the plague of AIDS.Bigger-than-life, half goddess, half Bette Davis, Mina sends letter after letter to friends and co-conspirators, holding her reader captive through a display of illusion and longing. Juggling quivering vulnerability on one hand and gossip on the other, Mina spoofs and consumes and spews back up demented reembodiments of trash media and high theory alike. It's all fodder for her ravenous libido and "a messy ambiguous place where pathology meets pleasure." Sensuous and captivating, The Letters of Mina Harker describes one woman's struggles finding the right words to explain her desires and fears without confining herself to one identity.

    Original. UP.

    As well as their shared interest in politics, literature, art and theatre, the letters deal often and explicitly with the subject of homosexuality and with the sometimes scandalous activities of many of their close circle. Brooke and Strachey compare observations of fellow members of the exclusive Cambridge 'Apostles' (which included James' brother Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Bertrand Russell), of mutual 'Bloomsbury' friends (such as Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and George Mallory) and of such fellow Fabian Socialists as Hugh Dalton and Beatrice Webb. The correspondence provides important new biographical, psychological and cultural insights into Rupert Brooke and his poetry, and reveals the complexities of the man behind the heroic legend that his early death inspired.

    Glaser persuasively argues that coming out--as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered--has biblical precedence and sacramental dimensions. Using personal and biblical illustrations, he discusses coming out as an act of vulnerability, much like a sacrificial offering of ancient times, that invokes God's presence and effects atonement, or reconciliation. In this engaging book he shows how coming out, like other sacraments, may serve as a means of grace--that is, an experience of God's unconditional love.

    Written with a poet's grace, these daily meditations are interwoven with reference to the transforming experiences of coming out and of recovery. As the meditations foster a "daily conversation with the Spirit," they lovingly conjure the mutual trust and compassion that lead to a rich, fulfilling life.

    Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no travesti identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, travestis regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed. Kulick analyzes the various ways travestis modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how travestis earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most travestis, is a positive and affirmative experience. Arguing that transgenderism never occurs in a "natural" or arbitrary form, Kulick shows how it is created in specific social contexts and assumes specific social forms. Furthermore, Kulick suggests that travestis—far from deviating from normative gendered expectations—may in fact distill and perfect the messages that give meaning to gender throughout Brazilian society and possibly throughout much of Latin America. Through Kulick's engaging voice and sharp analysis, this elegantly rendered account is not only a landmark study in its discipline but also a fascinating read for anyone interested in sexuality and gender.

    In this land, the original America, men who wore women’s clothes and did women’s work became artists, ambassadors, and religious leaders, and women sometimes became warriors, hunters and even chiefs. Same-sex marriages flourished. Berdaches—individuals who combine male and female social roles with traits unique to their status as a third gender—have been documented in more than 150 North American tribes. By looking at this aspect of non-Western culture, Roscoe challenges the basis of the dualistic way most Americans think about sexuality, and shakes the foundation of the way we understand and define gender.

    In The Visible Man he pursues his aim by folding autobiography and memory into the thirty severe and fiercely truthful lyrics--poems presenting a constant tension between classical repose and the friction of life--that make up this exuberant book. This work, wrote Harold Bloom, "persuades me that Cole will be a central poet of his generation. The tradition of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane is beautifully extended in The Visible Man, particularly in the magnificent sequence 'Apollo.' Keats and Hart Crane are presences here, and Henri Cole invokes them with true aesthetic dignity, which is the mark of nearly every poem in The Visible Man."

    A provocative collection which mines the bond between the spiritual and carnal, the sacred and profane.

    It describes clearly the troubles that the "system" deliver to maintain the status-quo, and the overwhelming drive needed by both the child and the parent in overcoming these burdens and achieving success. This should be required reading for any parent of a Transgendered person. The writing style is easy and familiar and will make for a "quick read" ; one you won't want to put down

    Rather than dismissing such expression as mere convention, Rambuss takes it seriously as a form of erotic discourse, one that gives voice to desires that, outside the sphere of sacred rapture, would otherwise be deemed taboo. Through startling rereadings of works ranging from the devotional verse of the metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, and Traherne) to photographer Andres Serrano’s controversial “Piss Christ,” from Renaissance religious iconography to contemporary gay porn, Rambuss uncovers the highly charged erotic imagery that suffuses religious devotional art and literature. And he explores one of Christian culture’s most guarded (and literal) closets—the prayer closet itself, a privileged space where the vectors of same-sex desire can travel privately between the worshiper and his or her God.Elegantly written and theoretically astute, Closet Devotions illuminates the ways in which sacred Christian devotion is homoeroticized, a phenomenon that until now has gone unexplored in current scholarship on religion, the body, and its passions. This book will attract readers across a wide array of disciplines, including gay and lesbian studies, literary theory and criticism, Renaissance studies, and religion.

    A work of reference as well as the definitive history of a tradition, it traces writing by and about homosexual men from ancient Greece and Rome to the twentieth-century gay literary explosion.“Woods’ own artistry is evident throughout this elegant and startling book. . . . These finely honed gay readings of selected Western (and some Eastern) literary texts richly reward the careful attention they demand. . . . Though grounded in the particulars of gay male identity, this masterpiece of literary (and social) criticism calls across the divides of sex and sexual orientation.”—Kirkus Reviews (a starred review)“An encyclopedic mapping of the intersection between male homosexuality and belles lettres . . . [that is] good reading, in part because Woods has foregone strict chronology to link writers across eras and cultures.”—Louis Bayard, Washington Post Book World“Encyclopedic and critical, evenhanded and interpretive, Woods has produced a study that stands as a monument to the progress of gay literary criticism. No one to date has attempted such a grand world-wide history. . . . It cannot be recommended highly enough.”—Library Journal (a starred review)“A bold, intelligent and gorgeously encyclopedic study.”—Philip Gambone, Lambda Book Report“An exemplary piece of work.”—Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph

    Together, this extraordinary menage a trois spent the heady inter-war period frequenting Paris, Villefranche-sur-Mer, and other European cities, meeting up with such lively personalities as Thornton Wilder, Jean Cocteau, Katherine Anne Porter, Man Ray, Rene Crevel, and Christian Berard. Inspired by the encouragement of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Jane Heap, all three men went on to pursue vibrant careers in the arts. Platt Lynes became a celebrated photographer in 1931; Wheeler, with Wescott's sister-in-law, Barbara Harrison, started the extraordinary little press Harrison of Paris in 1930; and Wescott became a best-selling fiction writer in 1927. The photographs represented here date from the three-some's first meeting, and underscore the intimate bond they shared. It is a story of youthful passion and enthusiasm that speaks to the enduring ties that held these three talented men together throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

    Author David Roman examines the ways that gay men have used alternative, activist, and mainstream theatre and performance to intervene in the AIDS crisis. He considers solo performance, community-based projects, mixed-media events, activist demonstrations, and AIDS education theatre initiatives.

    (1 man.) THE MADNESS OF LADY BRIGHT traces the mental breakdown of Lesley Bright, an aging homosexual whose past returns to haunt him with the emptiness of the choices he made. (2 men, 1 woman.) THIS IS THE RILL SPEAKING, A Play for Voices, is a poetic, mosaic-style evocation of small-town life told through multiple voices which shift and blend from identity to identity. (3 men, 3 women.) SAY DE KOONING pits an artist and two female lovers against the very strains of modern life they hoped to escape by summering at the beach. Not even there, though, can they avoid the pitfalls of their own demanding personalities.(1 man, 2 women.)

    Infants' bodies are altered, and what was "ambiguous" is made "normal." Kessler's interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrinologists reveal how the intersex condition is normalized for parents and she argues that the way in which intersexuality is managed by the medical and psychological professions displays our culture's beliefs about gender and genitals.Parents of intersexed children are rarely heard from, but in this book they provide another perspective on reasons for genital surgeries and the quality of medical and psychological management. Although physicians educate parents about how to think about their children's condition, Kessler learned from parents of intersexed children that some parents are able to accept atypical genitals. Based on analysis of the medical literature and interview with adults who had received treatment as interesexed children, Kessler proposes new approaches for physicians to use in talking with parents and children. She also evaluates the appearance of a politicized vanguard, many of who are promoting an intersexual identity, who seek to alter the way physicians respond to intersexuality.Kessler explores the possibilities and implications of suspending a commitment to two "natural" genders and addresses gender destabilization issues arising from intersexuality. She thus compels readers to re-think the meaning of gender, genitals, and sexuality.

    Clarke investigates a rich assortment of Roman erotic art to answer this question—and along the way, he reveals a society quite different from our own. Clarke reevaluates our understanding of Roman art and society in a study informed by recent gender and cultural studies, and focusing for the first time on attitudes toward the erotic among both the Roman non-elite and women. This splendid volume is the first study of erotic art and sexuality to set these works—many newly discovered and previously unpublished—in their ancient context and the first to define the differences between modern and ancient concepts of sexuality using clear visual evidence.Roman artists pictured a great range of human sexual activities—far beyond those mentioned in classical literature—including sex between men and women, men and men, women and women, men and boys, threesomes, foursomes, and more. Roman citizens paid artists to decorate expensive objects, such as silver and cameo glass, with scenes of lovemaking. Erotic works were created for and sold to a broad range of consumers, from the elite to the very poor, during a period spanning the first century B.C. through the mid-third century of our era. This erotic art was not hidden away, but was displayed proudly in homes as signs of wealth and luxury. In public spaces, artists often depicted outrageous sexual acrobatics to make people laugh.Looking at Lovemaking depicts a sophisticated, pre-Christian society that placed a high value on sexual pleasure and the art that represented it. Clarke shows how this culture evolved within religious, social, and legal frameworks that were vastly different from our own and contributes an original and controversial chapter to the history of human sexuality.

    Susan Love). 85 photos.

    Set in North America and Japan, Exile and the Heart weaves beautiful stories of women on the diaspora negotiating love, identity and friendship.