Best of
Queer

2000

Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality


Anne Fausto-Sterling - 2000
    In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms - sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed - and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

Tiopa Ki Lakota


D. Jordan Redhawk - 2000
    But the tribal shaman has a vision that Anpo is wicakte - a two-souled person embodying both male and female spirits. She will become a great warrior and a great asset to her people. During a vision quest, Anpo finds that her life will be intertwined with the lives of a sacred white buffalo and a pale skinned woman with yellow hair, yet both will be wounded by her actions. Kathleen McGlashan Stevens has been captured by renegade Indians, and thrust into a terrifying and foreign culture where she must learn to survive. The sacred white buffalo brings Anpo and Kathleen together. As their relationship develops, Anpo wonders: Can she change her destiny, or is she fated to wound the woman she loves?

Smiling in Slow Motion


Derek Jarman - 2000
    These previously unpublished journals stretch from May 1991 until two weeks before the author’s death in February 1994.

Close to Spider Man


Ivan E. Coyote - 2000
    The young women in Ivan Coyote's deeply personal stories are looking to make a break from their circumstances, but the North is in their bones: so is their connections to family, friends, and other women. Like the protagonist in the title story, a waitress whose attempts to help a young co-worker saddled with a lunatic father finds her running across rooftops and climbing ladders; by getting close to Spider Man, she gets closer to freedom.Startling in their intimacy, the stories in "Close to Spider Man" make up a moving scrapbook of what it's like to be a young queer woman in the North, journeys imbued with the colours of a prescient sexuality and an honest heart.Runner-up, Danuta Gleed Award for Short-FictionNow in its third printing.

My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home


Amber L. Hollibaugh - 2000
    Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker, and journalist. My Dangerous Desires presents over twenty years of Hollibaugh’s writing, an introduction written especially for this book, and five new essays including “A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home,” “My Dangerous Desires,” and “Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism.” In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one’s class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labeling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherríe Moraga. From the groundbreaking article “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With” to the radical “Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist,” Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allison’s moving foreword pays tribute to a life lived in struggle by a working-class lesbian who, like herself, refuses to suppress her dangerous desires. Having informed many of the debates that have become central to gay and lesbian activism, Hollibaugh’s work challenges her readers to speak, write, and record their desires—especially, perhaps, the most dangerous of them—“in order for us all to survive.”

Brush Fires in the Social Landscape


David Wojnarowicz - 2000
    Flaring with immediacy and unbridled intensity, David Wojnarowicz's work embraces and illuminates the repressed, the unspeakable, and the intolerable. This collection of Wojnarowicz's paintings, photographs, and writings also includes essays by Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, Fran Lebowitz, and Karen Finley, among others.

Break Every Rule: Essays on Language, Longing, and Moments of Desire


Carole Maso - 2000
    Ever refusing to be marginalized or categorized by genre, Maso is an incisive, compassionate writer who deems herself daughter of William Carlos Williams, a pioneer in combining poetry and fiction with criticism, journalism, and the visual arts. She is daughter, too, of Allen Ginsberg, who also came from Paterson, New Jersey. Known for her audacity, whether exploring language and memory or the development of the artistic soul, Maso here gives us a form-challenging collection, intelligent, and persuasive.

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life


Michael Warner - 2000
    In place of sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.

The Fat Lady Sings


Jacqueline Roy - 2000
    Locked in a psychiatric unit because her public singing brought her to the attention of the police, Gloria meets another British woman of Jamaican descent with whom she can share her past, giving them both hope for the future.

Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church


Jack Bartlett Rogers - 2000
    Throughout history, he observes, Christianity has moved towards ever greater openness and inclusiveness. Today's church is led by many of those who were once cast out: people of color, women, and divorced and remarried people. He argues that when we interpret the Bible through the lens of Jesus' redemptive life and ministry, we see that the church is called to grant equal rights to all people. Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality describes Rogers' own change of mind and heart on the issue; charts the church's well-documented history of using biblical passages to oppress marginalized groups; argues for a Christ-centered reading of Scripture; debunks oft-repeated stereotypes about gays and lesbians; and concludes with ideas for how the church can heal itself and move forward again. A fascinating combination of personal narrative, theology, and church history, this book is essential reading for all concerned with the future of the church and the health of the nation. "This is an extraordinary book, arguably the best to appear in the long, drawn-out debates within churches over homosexuality," says J. Philip Wogaman, former senior minister at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. "Rogers' book will be useful to people of ALL mainline denomination..." says the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. "For those who truly wish to know what the Bible does and does not say, this is a real find."

Shorter Views


Samuel R. Delany - 2000
    Delany brings his remarkable intellectual powers to bear on a wide range of topics. Whether he is exploring the deeply felt issues of identity, race, and sexuality, untangling the intricacies of literary theory, or the writing process itself, Delany is one of the most lucid and insightful writers of our time. These essays cluster around topics related to queer theory on the one hand, and on the other, questions concerning the paraliterary genres: science fiction, pornography, comics, and more. Readers new to Delany's work will find this collection of shorter pieces an especially good introduction, while those already familiar with his writing will appreciate having these essays between two covers for the first time.

The Room Lit By Roses


Carole Maso - 2000
    Author Biography: Carole Maso is the author of six novels, including Ghost Dance and Defiance. She is a professor of English at Brown University.

Stitching a Revolution: The Making of an Activist


Cleve Jones - 2000
    Both an important cultural history of the AIDS crisis and an intimate personal memoir, Stitching a Revolution is the story of a man who, besieged by discrimination, death, and despair, found the courage and strength of spirit to conceive and create a unique healing vision-the AIDS Memorial Quilt.Against the turbulent backdrop of politics and sexual liberation in San Francisco during the seventies, Jones recounts his coming-of-age alongside friend and mentor Harvey Milk -- and, later, Milk's assassination and the ensuing riots that threatened to tear down all they had accomplished. But Jones's political aspirations were put on hold after the emergence of an insidious, unexplainable "gay cancer" that would soon become known throughout the world as AIDS. Demoralized by the tide of death and despair sweeping his community, brutally assaulted by gay-bashing thugs, and faced with the specter of his own positive diagnosis, Jones sought a way to restore hope to a world falling apart beneath his feet.What started out as a simple panel of fabric stitched for his best friend now covers a space larger than twenty-five football fields and contains over eighty thousand names. The Quilt has affected the lives of many people, bridging racial, sexual, and religious barriers to unite millions in the fight against AIDS.Stitching a Revolution is a compelling, dramatic tale with a cast of memorable characters from all walks of life. At times uplifting, at times heartwrenching, this inspiring story reveals what it means to be human and how the power of love conquers all -- even death.

My Life in the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin'


Mel Cheren - 2000
    What started out as a whisper of an idea between lovers - Garage owner Michael Brody and financial backer Mel Cheren - eventually culminated into a dance palace that existed for more than a decade and is still spoken about with reverence.Keep on Dancin' gives hundreds of private recollections from the people who were there: Tom Moulton, Francois Kevorkian, Grace Jones, Thelma Houston, Frankie Knuckles, Junior Vasquez and others help recreate the moment when love was the message.Scheduled for release in the spring, Keep on Dancin' promises to usher in a wave of Garage nostalgia. An authorized CD of Larry Levan's Garage classics is also scheduled for release this spring. Ultimately, the author, who has devoted himself to AIDS related philanthropic work, plans to reopen the Garage in its original space in Manhattan, with the profits going to AIDS related charities.

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl


John Colapinto - 2000
    The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History


Ruth Vanita - 2000
    Same-Sex Love in India presents a stunning array of writings on same-sex love from over 2000 years of Indian literature, writings testify to the flourishing of same-sex love in various forms since ancient times, without overt persecution.

Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative


Mary Burger - 2000
    The anthology includes renowned writers like Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, Nicole Brossard, Daphne Marlatt, Lydia Davis and Kevin Killian, writers who have spent years pondering the meaning of storytelling and how storytelling functions in our culture, as well as presenting a new generation of brilliant thinkers and writers, like Christian Bök, Corey Frost, Derek McCormack and Lisa Robertson.Contemporizing the friendly anecdotal style of Montaigne and written by daring writers of different ages, of different origins, from many different regions of the continent, from Mexico to Montreal, these essays run the gamut of mirth, prose poetry, tall tales and playful explorations of reader/writer dynamics. They discuss aesthetics founded on new explorations in the field of narrative, the mystery that is the body, questions of how representation may be torqued to deal with gender and sexuality, the experience of marginalized people, the negotiation between different orders of time, the 'performance' of outlaw subject matter.Brave, energetic and fresh, Biting the Error tells a whole new story about narrative.Biting the Error is edited by Mary Burger, Robert Glück, Camille Roy and Gail Scott, the co-founders of the Narrativity Website Magazine, based at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State University.

The Naked Civil Servant; How To Become A Virgin; Resident Alien


Quentin Crisp - 2000
    Book Club edition containing the three cpmplete works of Crisp's New York Diaries.

Cottonmouth Kisses


Clint Catalyst - 2000
    Whether he's writing about a chance sexual encounter at a Goth club or revealing the inner thoughts of young hustlers, Catalyst grinds platitudes into toxic dust with a vivid, whip-smart voice.

Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities


Mark McLelland - 2000
    In so doing, it touches on a number of important issues, including whether there can be a universal 'gay identity' and whether or not strategies developed for increasing gay and lesbian visibility in western countries are appropriate to the social situation in Japan

Amazons in the Drawing Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks


Whitney Chadwick - 2000
    The first female painter since Artemisia Gentileschi in the seventeenth century to portray an ideal of heroic femininity, Romaine Brooks (1874-1970), like her contemporary Gwen John, shaped an image of the androgynous New Woman for the twentieth century.An American born in Rome, Brooks spent most of her life in Paris. After a brief but passionate romance with the poet Gabriel D'Annunzio, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship, she turned to relationships with women and to art to express her emerging self. For many years the companion of Natalie Barney, whom the artist depicted as L'Amazone in one of her most famous portraits, Brooks belonged to the international lesbian community that included Compton and Faith MacKenzie, Renée Vivien, Radclyffe Hall (who immortalized Brooks as the barely fictionalized American painter Venetia Ford in The Forge), and Una, Lady Troubridge.The milieu Brooks chose was the privileged, often eccentric demi-monde of wealthy aristocrats and expatriate writers, artists, intellectuals, and performers who gathered in Rome, London, Capri, Paris, and Florence. The social circles she traveled in included Somerset Maugham, Norman Douglas, Charles Freer, Count Robert de Montesquiou, Jean Cocteau, Augustus John, Carl Van Vechten, and Ida Rubenstein, several of whom were subjects for Brooks's portraits.Amazons in the Drawing Room, published in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition of Brooks's work--the first since 1971--opening at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in June 2000, provides a fresh context to view Brooks's haunting and compelling art. Whitney Chadwick's overview of Brooks's life and artistic focus and Joe Luchesi's examination of Brooks's portraits and photographs of Russian dancer Ida Rubenstein bring into sharp focus the complex artistic, literary, and political influences that shaped Brooks's sensibility and approach to portraiture.

War Boy


Kief Hillsbery - 2000
    On the bus headed out of town they hook up with Finn and Critter, a couple of speed-freak boyfriends who take a shine to both of them. They also meet Ula, who is mourning the death of her fiancé and taking a trip across the United States in his memory. The five become fast allies, united by personal loss and by the allure of intimacy only friends in the throes of conflict can understand. When Jonnyboy drops out of sight, Radboy stays behind in San Francisco, where the underground world he has been introduced to inspires his own burgeoning sexual and emotional desires.

Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith


Debra R. Kolodny - 2000
    Reflecting a wide spectrum of religious tradition and spiritual paths--including Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, 12-step, Christian and Jewish--over 30 contributors speak about the intersections of their faith practice and their bisexuality.

Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss


Betsy Warland - 2000
    As Betsy spends the last two weeks with her mother, she revisits their difficult relationship and unravels some of the hurt and anger.

Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender


Anna Livia - 2000
    Most accounts do not extend beyond policy issues like the official institution of non-sexist language. In this volume, Anna Livia reveals continuities both before and after the sexist language refore movement and shows how the creative practices of pronoun use on the part of feminist writers had both aesthetic and political ends. Livia uses the term pronoun envy ironically to show that rather being a case of misguided envy, battles over gendered language are central to feminist concerns.Livia examines a broad corpus of written texts in English and French, concentrating on those texts which problematize the traditional functioning of the linguistic gender system. They range from novels and prose poems to film scripts and personal testimonies, and in time from the 19th century to the present. Some withhold any indication of gender; others have non-gendered characters. Livia's goal is two-fold; to help bridge the divide between linguistic and literary analysis, and to show how careful study of the manipulation of linguistic gender in these texts informs larger concerns. This fresh and highly interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of several vital areas, including language and gender, sociolinguistics, and feminist literary analysis.

Mercy Mercy Me


Elena Georgiou - 2000
    An English-Cypriot by birth and Brooklynite by design, Georgiou is part bewitched observer, art seductress, part spy. She dances across the urban landscape and reports back from the streets in stereophonic sound. Music is the overriding metaphor for the life she creates and its spiritual underpinnings. The Margins of desire are Georgiou's home -- from the first shudder of physical attraction to the awareness of one's body, one's identity, through the arms of lover or in the lyrics of a popular song. Her work is as much about the faith that beats of life and love as it is about the expression of these experiences, as beautiful and elegiac as they may be. Tapping cultural icons from Bill Clinton to Bob Marley, Monet to Mary J. Blige, her poems simmer with lyrical energy that blurs the line between the spoken and written word. The result is a language as accessible as it is original; poems that hit the ear as smoothly and seductively as Marvin Gaye singing Mercy Mercy Me, and resonate just as deeply. This collection introduces the voice of a brilliant new poet whose mix of words, music, images and ideas pushes the genre to its most exciting outer limits.

Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality


Micha Ramakers - 2000
    It is work whose erotic and emotional power remains unabated to this day. Lavishly illustrated with drawings and photographs, Dirty Pictures is a lively and entertaining book encompassing the rise of the gay movement, the world of fine art, and the function (and the functioning) of pornography. For the millions of fans of Tom's work throughout the world, as well as readers unfamiliar with his work, this study brings uncommon insight into Tom of Finland's decidedly uncommon work.

The Island of Lost Luggage


Janet McAdams - 2000
    . . at the Island of Lost Luggage, they line up: the disappeared, the lost children, the Earharts of modern life. It's your bad luck to die in the cold wars of certain nations. But in the line at Unclaimed Baggage, no one mourns for the sorry world that sent them here . . ." The abused. The oppressed. The terrified victims of institutionalized insanity. Making daring connections between the personal and the political, Janet McAdams draws new lines in the conflict between the new and old worlds as she redefines the struggle to remain human.This award-winning collection of poetry forges surprising links among seemingly unrelated forms of violence and resistance in today's world: war in Central America, abuses against Nature, the battleground of the bedroom. McAdams evokes the absurdity of everyday existence as she sends out a new call for social responsibility.The Island of Lost Luggage is the poetry winner of the 1999 First Book Awards competition of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure


Kenji Yoshino - 2000
    In this article, Professor Kenji Yoshino seeks to explain why the category of bisexuality has been erased in contemporary American political and legal discourse.

George Platt Lynes, 1907-1955


David Leddick - 2000
    This skill and passion for his subjects led to enormous success in the 30s and 40s as he was published in the leading fashion magazines of the day -- "Vogue," "Harper's Bazaar" and others. But Platt Lynes was also a myth-maker with a photographic obsession that sadly remained mostly unpublicised until after his death. In collaboration with his male nude models he was able to transcend time and place -- these images simultaneously glance back as a "homage" to Greek mythology and athleticism, and look forward to the modern, urban eroticism of Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber. This book breaks down his body of work into distinct sections. The portraits include such luminaries of twentieth century art and society as Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Countess Bismarck and Gertrude Stein, as well as fellow lens-men Cecil Beaton and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and it is clear from the lighting and the often surreal framing that he was a master of the form. This extends into his work with ballet and fashion, but of course it is in his extensive nude images that his admiration for the male body and his expert technique are truly brought together.

Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil


James N. Green - 2000
    Among these tropical fantasies is that of the uninhibited and licentious Brazilian homosexual, who expresses uncontrolled sexuality during wild Carnival festivities and is welcomed by a society that accepts fluid sexual identity. However, in Beyond Carnival, the first sweeping cultural history of male homosexuality in Brazil, James Green shatters these exotic myths and replaces them with a complex picture of the social obstacles that confront Brazilian homosexuals.Ranging from the late nineteenth century to the rise of a politicized gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s, Green's study focuses on male homosexual subcultures in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. He uncovers the stories of men coping with arrests and street violence, dealing with family restrictions, and resisting both a hostile medical profession and moralizing influences of the Church. Green also describes how these men have created vibrant subcultures with alternative support networks for maintaining romantic and sexual relationships and for surviving in an intolerant social environment. He then goes on to trace how urban parks, plazas, cinemas, and beaches are appropriated for same-sex erotic encounters, bringing us into the world of street cruising, male hustlers, and cross-dressing prostitutes.Through his creative use of police and medical records, newspapers, literature, newsletters, and extensive interviews, Green has woven a fascinating history, the first of its kind for Latin America, that will set the standard for future works. "Green brushes aside outworn cultural assumptions about Brazil's queer life to display its full glory, as well as the troubles which homophobia has sent its way. . . . This latest gem in Chicago's 'World of Desire' series offers a shimmering view of queer Brazilian life throughout the 20th century."—Kirkus ReviewsWinner of the 2000 Lambda Literary Awards' Emerging Scholar Award of the Monette/Horwitz TrustWinner of the 1999 Hubert Herring Award, Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies

Illustrations and Drawings of the 1950's


Andy Warhol - 2000
    This important catalogue presents some of Warhol's earliest works, including his multiple Mona Lisa.

Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography


Elisabeth L. Engebretsen - 2000
    Alongside new freedoms and modernizing reforms, and with mainstream media and society increasingly tolerant, lalas still experience immense family and social pressures to a degree that this book argues is deeply gendered. The first anthropological study to examine everyday lala lives, intimacies, and communities in China, the chapters explore changing articulations of sexual subjectivity, gendered T-P (tomboy-wife) roles, family and kinship, same-sex weddings, lala-gay contract marriages, and community activism. Engebretsen analyzes lala strategies of complicit transgressions to balance surface respectability and undeclared same-sex desires, why "being normal" emerges a deep aspiration and sign of respectability, and why openly lived homosexuality and public activism often are not.Queer Women in Urban China develops a critical ethnographic analysis through the conceptual lens of "different normativities," tracing the paradoxes and intricacies of the desire for normal life alongside aspirations for recognition, equality, and freedom, and argues that dominant paradigms fixed on categories, identities, and the absolute value of public visibility are ill-equipped to fully understand these complexities. This book complements existing perspectives on sexual and gender diversity, contemporary China, and the politics and theories of justice, recognition, and similitude in global times.

The Pleasure of Their Company


Doris Grumbach - 2000
    Using the occasion of her eightieth-birthday party to reflect on the past, Doris Grumbach delivers an enchanting memoir of the writers, friends, and loves who have accompanied her in mind and body through an extraordinary life of letters.

Trailblazing: The True Story of America's First Openly Gay Track Coach


Eric Anderson - 2000
    We ended up having more workers than competitors, and rain was nearly the sole occupant of the bleachers lining our ancient brick-dust track. Of the few athletes who showed to compete, one runner caught my eye. His rail-thin body reminded me of a Kenyan runner's; he looked like a champion. He appeared old enough to be in high school, but I didn't recognize him and figured him to be a junior-high runner. Always on the lookout for future athletes, I wanted to find out more. But rules governing our sport prohibited me from speaking to potential athletes until they had graduated from the eighth grade. To circumvent this, I asked one of my runners, Erich Phinizy, to investigate. "Find out his age and where he goes to school," I said. "And tell him about our program."Erich returned with valuable information. The runner was in junior high and would be attending Huntington Beach next year. He also informed me that our future runner was of English descent. Erich pointed to the only two people sitting in the bleachers and said, "Those are his parents.""Damn, not England," I thought. "They're a bunch of soccer freaks," I hoped he wouldn't be like a former English runner of mine, who once remarked, "What's the purpose of running if there's no ball to kick along the way?"Although the soccer coach and I were close friends, we often competed for the same athletes, as soccer players are often runners and vice versa. Each of us ran a quality program, coachingour athletes year-round."So, Erich, what's his name?""Oh, I didn't get that, Coach. Sorry.""Don't worry about it."The possibility of this kid's running for our team excited me, especially since he had come to race the three-mile, an unusually long distance for a 13-year-old. I scanned the entry list and saw, unfortunately, that there were only two other runners in his race. One was a 60-year-old jogger, and the other was Erich. Eager to assess the kid's talent, I asked Erich to pace him. "Run alo

1984: Selected Letters


Samuel R. Delany - 2000
    Through 57 letters and documents from the 1984, Delany offers portraits of millionaire parties, avant-garde artistis, porno-house denizens, modern-day gurus, tax auditors, and the early years of Aids in New York City.

The Stately Homo: A Celebration of the Life of Quentin Crisp


Paul Bailey - 2000
    His various careers—as a performer, artist's model, writer of a memorable autobiography, and authority on style and etiquette—are examined with wit, affection, and disinterested criticism. Designed to explore his life from a variety of angles, The Stately Homo is a tribute to one of the twentieth century's true English eccentrics.

Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present


Steven Capsuto - 2000
    Splashed against the tumultuous backdrop of the McCarthy witch hunts, Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, the birth of the 700 Club and the religious right, the outbreak of AIDS and the arrival of in-your-face queer activism, this chatty, authoritative broadcast history tells the stories of such notorious and noteworthy moments as- 1947: Radio gays--A bitchy fashion photographer throws fits at the drop of a designer hat on the adaptation of Moss Hart's Lady in the Dark- 1967s: Monkey business--The Monkees flick limp wrists while caroling "Don we now our gay apparel" for a Christmas special- 1974: Pepper in the wound--A notorious Police Woman episode depicts a gang of deadly lesbians who rob, torture, and murder senior citizens- 1977: Wash your mouth out--Billy Crystal portrays Jodie Dallas on Soap, the first hit series with a gay character in a central role- 1991: L.A. Law breaks 'em--Amanda Donohoe and Michelle Greene share a two-second kiss . . . and start a storm of controversy- 2000: The last laugh--Featuring not one but two gay male characters, Will & Grace skyrockets to the top of the ratings chartsFrom mocking banter between Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on '50s radio to a historic peck between women on '90s television, from the stereotyping of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as sissies and psychopaths to their widespread acceptance as real people, Alternate Channels is a compulsively readable chronicle of lesbian, gay, and bisexual images in the media--packed with unthinkable shows, bizarre personalities, unlikely heroes, and some of the strangest protests ever staged in the name of civil rights.

Funny That Way: Adventures in Fabulousness


Joel Perry - 2000
    For readers of "Frontiers Newsmagazine" and "Instinct," his fish-out-of-water observations have provided both deep belly laughs and comfort in knowing that even the imperfect can thrive in the City of Angels. His optimistic joie de vivre, irreverent outlook and finely tuned sense of self-deprecation consistently furnish both insight and howls of laughter. Joel Perry writes and produces comedy sketches for the same company that produces Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Jim Rome, Michael Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh-and often wakes up feeling dirty about it. He lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, Fred, and two cats who are so adorable and cuddly you just want to vomit.

Liberty's Excess: Fictions


Lidia Yuknavitch - 2000
    Plots play out across the body, as if formed, deformed, reformed by culture. Drugs, violence, and sex inscribe the literal flesh of "figures" standing in for what formerly passed for character. In these fictions a woman is more likely to appear with a needle in her arm than a baby. Sometimes a woman cannot be distinguished from a man at all.Cutting from subject to object, severing the eye/I from skin, these fictions bring America back to its body. In Liberty's Excess, capitalism and individualism lose their cover stories, releasing desire all over culture's deadening hum. Yuknavitch is both master and mistress of this dis-formed beauty, creating a landscape neither Waste Land nor Kansas nor Pomo Glitter.

Between Dances


Erasmo Guerra - 2000
    With the same grim beauty as John Rechy’s “City of Night” and Jean Genet’s “The Thief’s Journal,” this novel traces the arabesques of acrid smoke and loneliness wound around the dim world of hustlers and johns, of porn theaters and crumbling hotel rooms. "Between Dances," an early work by Erasmo Guerra, received a Lambda Literary Award in 2000 and was reissued in a second edition. Praise for "Between Dances" “I was drawn to this book with its plot about a young Latino ‘thang’ trying to survive in New York by dancing in sleazy strip joints. What a kick to read about New York City from the point of view of a gay Tejano. The protagonist, Marco, is a Tex-Mex Holly Golightly—part hustler, part hopeless romantic.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of “The House on Mango Street” “Between Dances is a novel about looking for light in the shadows and holding onto hope in the face of despair.” —The Bloomsbury Review “[Guerra’s] writing is beautifully rendered . . . Between Dances is an impressive debut. It is safe to assume that we can expect further greatness from Erasmo Guerra.” –Lambda Book Report “. . . distinguished by a writing style that is as lavish and beautiful as the world it describes is bleak and harsh.” —Southern Voice

Babies


Keith Haring - 2000
    Matched with entries from his writings, which reveal his thoughts on life, children, friendship and art, this volume presents a collection of Haring's drawings.

Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People


Viviane Namaste - 2000
    Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.

Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS


Edmund White - 2000
    Rather than being a harrowing, in-the-trenches account of AIDS . . . Loss within Loss is a reflective, self-possessed, and frequently inspiring testimonial, benefiting from the perspective that only time provides."—David Bahr, The AdvocateAuthor Biography: Edmund White is the award-winning author of The Married Man, The Farewell Symphony, Genet, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, A Boy's Own Story, and several other books. He is professor of creative writing at Princeton University.

Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents, and Teachers


Norma Bowles - 2000
    In all, Cootie Shots is comprised of about 50 2-15 minute educational plays for Elementary School audiences.The lessons covered are:o Love is what makes a familyo Children should feel free to play with whatever toys appeal to them, study whatever subjects interest them and choose career paths unhindered by gender stereotypeso Name-calling is never acceptableo Putting people down because how they look and whom they love is neither kind nor fair.The cast of characters includes:RapunzelRosa ParksCesar ChavezHarvey MilkEmily DickinsonAlexander the GreatThe Statue of Libertyand more!