Best of
Queer

2003

The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure


Storm Constantine - 2003
    The author of many acclaimed works of science fiction and fantasy, she is best known for her daring, stylish and provocative Wraeththu trilogy (The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit, The Bewitchments of Love and Hate, The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire). The series, which chronicled the rise of a new race of seductive androgynous beings with awesome powers, was hailed as a modern fantasy masterpiece, winning an avid international following of devoted readers.Now, with The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, Storm Constantine returns once again to the saga of the Wraeththu with a new epic that reveals previously unknown truths about the origins of these remarkable beings. Long before the Wraeththu assumed total mastery of the Earth and dominion over the dwindling remnants of the human race, they were a wild and passionate people, living in scattered tribes, worshiping strange gods, increasing their numbers by transmuting humans into their own kind. But all that changed on a festival night that surpassed all others, a night when the world changed forever and the Wraeththu began to realize their awesome potential.It was a time when the archmage Thiede wove the strands of Wraeththu destiny. When two young Wraeththu hara came together to produce a miraculous new life. When Pellaz, a brash and reckless young leader, rose from destruction to take his place in Wraeththu history. And a child called Lileem found a path of passion and power that led to unknown worlds of mystery.A tale of intrigue and betrayal, bloodshed and pleasure, dark and dangerous supernatural forces, ardent and consuming passions, The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure is a thrilling new chapter in a compelling fantasy epic.

Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin


John D'Emilio - 2003
    the methods of Gandhi, spearheaded the 1963 March on Washington, and helped bring the struggle of African Americans to the forefront of a nation's consciousness. But despite his incontrovertibly integral role in the movement, the openly gay Rustin is not the household name that many of his activist contemporaries are. In exploring history's Lost Prophet, acclaimed historian John D'Emilio explains why Rustin's influence was minimized by his peers and why his brilliant strategies were not followed, or were followed by those he never meant to help.

What Night Brings


Carla Trujillo - 2003
    What Night Brings is the unforgettable story of Marci's struggle to find and maintain her identity against all odds - a perilous home life, an incomprehensible Church, and a largely indifferent world. Winner of the Miguel Marmol prize focusing on human rights, the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Literary Foundation Latino Book Award, the Bronze Medal from Foreword Magazine, and Honorable Mention for the Gustavus Meyers Books Award. Also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.

Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique


Roderick A. Ferguson - 2003
    But what is missing from the picture--sexual difference--can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology--Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest Burgess, Robert Park, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Julius Wilson--has measured African Americans' unsuitability for a liberal capitalist order in terms of their adherence to the norms of a heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family model. In short, to the extent that African Americans' culture and behavior deviated from those norms, they would not achieve economic and racial equality. Aberrations in Black tells the story of canonical sociology's regulation of sexual difference as part of its general regulation of African American culture. Ferguson places this story within other stories--the narrative of capital's emergence and development, the histories of Marxism and revolutionary nationalism, and the novels that depict the gendered and sexual idiosyncrasies of African American culture--works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. In turn, this book tries to present another story--one in which people who presumably manifest the dys-functions of capitalism are reconsidered as indictments of the norms of state, capital, and social science. Ferguson includes the first-ever discussion of a new archival discovery--a never-published chapter of Invisible Man that deals with a gay character in a way thatcomplicates and illuminates Ellison's project. Unique in the way it situates critiques of race, gender, and sexuality within analyses of cultural, economic, and epistemological formations, Ferguson's work introduces a new mode of discourse--which Ferguson calls queer of color analysis--that helps to lay bare the mutual distortions of racial, economic, and sexual portrayals within sociology. A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American culture.

The Transgender Studies Reader


Susan Stryker - 2003
    Because transpeople challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies, desire, and identity, the field is both fascinating and contentious. The Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world. By bringing together the voices and experience of transgender individuals, doctors, psychologists and academically-based theorists, this volume will be a foundational text for the transgender community, transgender studies, and related queer theory.

Leave Myself Behind


Bart Yates - 2003
    After his father dies, Noah's mother, a temperamental poet, takes a teaching job in a small New Hampshire town, far from Chicago and the only world Noah has known. While Noah gets along reasonably with his mother, the crumbling house they try to renovate quickly reveals dark secrets, via dusty Mason jars they discover interred between walls. The jars contain scraps of letters, poems, and journal entries, and eventually reconstructs a history of pain and violence that drives a sudden wedge between Noah and his mother. Fortunately, Noah finds an unexpected ally in J.D., a teenager down the street who has family troubles of his own.

The Value of X


Poppy Z. Brite - 2003
    Friends since childhood, they become lovers at age 16 and must deal with the realities of being gay in a hardscrabble neighborhood, a traditional Catholic family, and the restaurant kitchens where they've begun to work.

Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin


Bayard Rustin - 2003
    to the precepts of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thereby launching the birth of the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. Widely acclaimed as a founding father of modern black protest, Rustin reached his pinnacle of notoriety in 1963 as organizer of the March on Washington.Long before the March on Washington and King’s ascendance to international prominence, Rustin put his life on the line to challenge racial segregation. His open homosexuality, however, remained a point of contention among black church leaders, with controversy sometimes embroiling even King himself.Time on Two Crosses showcases the extraordinary career of this black gay civil rights pioneer. Spanning five decades, the book combines classic texts ranging in topic from Gandhi’s impact on African Americans, white supremacists in Congress, the antiwar movement, and the assassination of Malcolm X, with never-before published selections on the call for gay rights, Louis Farrakhan, affirmative action, AIDS, and women’s rights. Also included are twenty-five photos from the Rustin estate.

Homosexuality & Civilization


Louis Crompton - 2003
    By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World.Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great.Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece.Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, "Homosexuality and Civilization" is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.

Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire


Jill Liddington - 2003
    Betrayed once again by another woman’s marriage plans, she knew her romantic youth was over. So many of her female friends had married and settled. Anne cast around forlornly for the life-companion she had so long sought. She held melancholy spirits at bay by reading new geology and new gardening books in Shibden’s well-stocked library.
 Then a chance re-acquaintance with neighbouring heiress Ann Walker changed all that. Anne Lister is best known to us as a lesbian diarist. Nature’s Domain tracks her intense courtship of Ann Walker, vividly and candidly recorded in Anne’s daily journals - and partly written in her own secret code. This influential Anne Lister book also documents how she began redesigning the Shibden landscape and playing a powerful new role in the local political tumult after the passing of the great Reform Bill. This dramatic story, hitherto unknown and never before unpublished, unfolds to New Year’s Eve 1832. It records how Anne Lister’s indomitable will enabled her to mould nature to her own powerful desires. “Nature’s Domain gives a compelling overview of a key time in Anne Lister’s remarkable life. Jill Liddington guides us knowledgeably through the diaries of 1832, offering crucial insight into Anne’s private and candour observations about love, sex, money and politics.” Laura Johansen, Cultural Destinations Manager, Halifax. Jill Liddington is co-author of One Hand Tied Behind Us (1978) which became a suffrage classic. She is author of Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840 (1994) and of Female Fortune: the Anne Lister diaries 1833-36 (1998). She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and lives in Mytholmroyd near Halifax. Sally Wainwright’s BBC1 drama series, Gentleman Jack was inspired by Female Fortune and Nature’s Domain

An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures


Ann Cvetkovich - 2003
    She argues for the importance of recognizing---and archiving---accounts of trauma that belong as much to the ordinary and everyday as to the domain of catastrophe. Cvetkovich contends that the field of trauma studies, limited by too strict a division between the public and the private, has overlooked the experiences of women and queers. Rejecting the pathologizing understandings of trauma that permeate medical and clinical discourses on the subject, she develops instead a sex-positive approach missing even from most feminist work on trauma. An Archive of Feelings challenges the field to engage more fully with sexual trauma and the wide range of feelings in its vicinity, including those associated with butch-femme sex and AIDS activism and caretaking.An Archive of Feelings brings together oral histories from lesbian activists involved in act/up New York; readings of literature by Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Cherrie Moraga, and Shani Mootoo; videos by Jean Carlomusto and Pratibha Parmar; and performances by Lisa Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, and the bands Le Tigre and Tribe 8. Cvetkovich reveals how these cultural formations---activism, performance, and literature---give rise to public cultures that both work through trauma and transform the conditions producing it. By looking closely at connections between sexuality, trauma, and the creation of lesbian public cultures, Cvetkovich makes those experiences that have been pushed to the peripheries of trauma culture the defining principles of a new construction of sexual trauma-one in which trauma catalyzes the creation of cultural archives and political communities.About the Author: Ann Cvetkovich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism.

Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir


Lillian Faderman - 2003
    Her mother, whose family perished in the Holocaust, was racked by guilt at having come to America and left them behind; she suffered recurrent psychotic episodes. Her only escape from the brutal labor of her sweatshop job was her fiercely loved daughter, Lilly, whose poignant dream throughout an impoverished childhood was to become a movie star and "rescue" her mother. Lilly grew up to become Lil, outwardly tough, inwardly innocent, hungry for love and success. A beautiful young woman who was learning that her deepest erotic and emotional connections were to women, she found herself in a dangerous but seductive lesbian underworld of addicts, pimps, and prostitutes. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful and to redeem her mother's suffering, she entered the University of California at Berkeley and worked her way through college as a burlesque stripper. A brilliant student, she ultimately achieved a Ph.D. At last she became Lillian, the woman who in time became a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer, and a charismatic, groundbreaking scholar of gay and lesbian studies. Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, this is an extraordinary memoir: the nakedly honest -- and very American -- story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.

The Complete Strangers in Paradise, Volume 3, Part 5


Terry Moore - 2003
    Francine and Katchoo are high-school best friends who are reunited when Francine comes back to town after years away from her hometown. David is their new friend entangled in their complicated lives. From creepy ex-boyfriends and insensitive bosses to the reality of AIDS and underworld prostitution, you never know what will come up next - but you can always count on laughing and crying at the same time. This foil-stamped casebound hardcover with color dust jacket includes a special color cover art section, sketches, and more.

Why I am Not a Painter and Other Poems


Frank O'Hara - 2003
    The city was a place of endless possibility, and he captured the pace and rhythms, the quandaries and exhilarations of city life. This selection of his work is edited by Mark Ford.

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century


Graham Robb - 2003
    Long before Stonewall and Gay Pride, there was such a thing as gay culture, and it was recognized throughout Europe and America. Graham Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance. He describes the lives of gay men and women: how they discovered their sexuality and accepted or disguised it; how they came out; how they made contact with like-minded people. He also includes a fascinating investigation of the encrypted homosexuality of such famous nineteenth-century sleuths as Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes himself (with glances forward in time to Batman and J. Edgar Hoover). Finally, Strangers addresses crucial questions of gay culture, including the riddle of its relationship to religion: Why were homosexuals created with feelings that the Creator supposedly condemns? This is a landmark work, full of tolerant wisdom, fresh research, and surprises.

The Beautiful: Collected Poems


Michelle Tea - 2003
    A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2004 and a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Je Nathanaël


Nathanaël - 2003
    JE NATHANAEL is an endangered text. Neither essay nor poem nor novel nor sex show, what it takes from language it gives back to the body. Through Nathanael, Andre Gide's absent, imagined and much desired apprentice in Les nourritures terrestres (Fruits of the Earth), this text explores ways in which language constrains the body, shackles it to gender, and proposes instead an altogether different way of reading, where words are hermaphroditic and in turn transform desire (consequence). Suggesting that one body conceals another, JE NATHANAEL lends an ear to this other body and delights in the anxiety it provokes. Nathalie Stephens writes in English and French, and sometimes neither. She is the author of several published works, including PAPER CITY, which is also available from SPD.

The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde


Merlin Holland - 2003
    In 1895, Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, delivered a note to the Albemarle Club addressed to "Oscar Wilde posing as sodomite." With Bosie's encouragement, Wilde sued the Marquess for libel. He not only lost but he was tried twice for "gross indecency" and sent to prison with two years' hard labor.With this publication of the uncensored trial transcripts,readers can for the first time in more than a century hear Wilde at his most articulate and brilliant. The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde documents an alarmingly swift fall from grace; it is also a supremely moving testament to the right to live, work, and love as one's heart dictates.

The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy


Lisa Duggan - 2003
    But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. The Twilight of Equality? searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel. After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies, Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail. Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.

Aye, and Gomorrah


Samuel R. Delany - 2003
    In Venice an architecture student commits a crime of passion. A white southern airport loader tries to do a favor for a black northern child. The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction--but with a difference! These tales take place twenty-five, fifty, a hundred-fifty years from now, when men and women have been given gills to labor under the sea. Huge repair stations patrol the cables carrying power to the ends of the earth. Telepathic and precocious children so passionately yearn to visit distant galaxies that they'll kill to go. Brilliantly crafted, beautifully written, these are Samuel Delany's award-winning stories, like no others before or since.

Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe


Christopher Penczak - 2003
    Now he has written a book of clearheaded theory and practice that is bound to become a classic. With Gay Witchcraft, Penczak joins the ranks of his forebearers in spirit, gay writers who have taken a tradition and made it home. This is a complete book of theory and spiritual practices of Witchcraft for the gay community. Penczak's writing will make it much easier for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people interested in practicing any form of Witchcraft. Exploring the history of Paganism and offering a compendium of spells, meditations, ceremonies, and affirmations that will enrich both the novice and the experienced practioner seeking out new views of myth, ritual, and healing.

Room Where I Was Born


Brian Teare - 2003
    Though the poems are borne out of the intersection of violence and sexuality, they also affirm the tenderness and compassion necessary to give consciousness and identity sufficient meaning. Its language the threshold over which the brutal crosses into the beautiful, this collection is an achievement of courage and vision.

The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky


Karen X. Tulchinsky - 2003
    On a hot Toronto night in 1933, at an amateur baseball game at Christie Pits field, four Nazi youths flashed a large black swastika, shouting "Heil Hitler!" Within seconds, a group of Jewish youths charged at them, trying to grab the flag. One of the Nazi youths snatches back the banner and breaks free, running with the flag through the park, setting off a four-hour race riot involving 15,000 people, injuring hundreds, and sending scores to the hospital. In this panoramic novel, Karen X. Tulchinsky traces the fortunes of the Lapinskys from the evening of the riots through World War II and into the 1950s. It is then, in a boxing ring at Madison Square Garden, that Sonny Lapinsky must decide whether or not to reconcile with a family torn apart by a violent past — a decision that will affect generations to come, including his son and future biographer, Moses. Set against the Great Depression, race riots, and World War II, this family saga about a Jewish boy-cum-champion boxer is filled with humor, sorrow, bravery, folly, and the stuff of everyday life.

Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces


Juana María Rodríguez - 2003
    Images of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture suggest a Latin Explosion at center stage, yet the topic of queer identity in relation to Latino/a America remains under examined.Juana Mar�a Rodr�guez attempts to rectify this dearth of scholarship in Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces, by documenting the ways in which identities are transformed by encounters with language, the law, culture, and public policy. She identifies three key areas as the project's case studies: activism, primarily HIV prevention; immigration law; and cyberspace. In each, Rodr�guez theorizes the ways queer Latino/a identities are enabled or constrained, melding several theoretical and methodological approaches to argue that these sites are complex and dynamic social fields.As she moves the reader from one disciplinary location to the other, Rodr�guez reveals the seams of her own academic engagement with queer latinidad. This deftly crafted work represents a dynamic and innovative approach to the study of identity formation and representation, making a vital contribution to a new reformulation of gender and sexuality studies.

The Fifth Stage


Margaret A. Helms - 2003
    She muddles through daily routines, her only respite coming in the form of a harmless crush on Rebecca Greenway. Claire believes that the sexy restaurant manager is safely unavailable. But when Rebecca shows signs of interest, Claire's past unravels, revealing an immeasurable love and a dark secret. .an outstanding contribution to lesbian fiction. Author Margaret A. Helms deftly alternates past and present events in the life of Claire Blevins to build an enthralling and intriguing story. Her rich prose, compelling plot, lively pace, and strongly-drawn characters make The Fifth Stage an outstanding contribution to lesbian fiction. -- Nann Dunne, editor and publisher of Just About Write (www.justaboutwrite.com), author of The War Between the Hearts, and other stories.

Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents


Thomas K. Hubbard - 2003
    Covering an extensive period—from the earliest Greek texts in the late seventh century b.c.e. to Greco-Roman texts of the third and fourth centuries c.e.—the volume includes well-known writings by Plato, Sappho, Aeschines, Catullus, and Juvenal, as well as less well known but highly relevant and intriguing texts such as graffiti, comic fragments, magical papyri, medical treatises, and selected artistic evidence. These fluently translated texts, together with Thomas K. Hubbard's valuable introductions, clearly show that there was in fact no more consensus about homosexuality in ancient Greece and Rome than there is today. The material is organized by period and by genre, allowing readers to consider chronological developments in both Greece and Rome. Individual texts each are presented with a short introduction contextualizing them by date and, where necessary, discussing their place within a larger work. Chapter introductions discuss questions of genre and the ideological significance of the texts, while Hubbard's general introduction to the volume addresses issues such as sexual orientation in antiquity, moral judgments, class and ideology, and lesbianism. With its broad, unexpurgated, and thoroughly informed presentation, this unique anthology gives an essential perspective on homosexuality in classical antiquity.

Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood


David Strah - 2003
    Recent surveys reveal that millions of children have found loving homes either by being born to, or adopted by, gay men. This book is a celebration of these remarkable new families.Gay Dads includes twenty-five personal accounts from men describing their unique journeys to fatherhood and the struggles and successes they have experienced as they raise their children. This is the first book to provide such an expansive exploration of this extraordinary new family unit. With beautiful black-and-white photographs of each of the families, Gay Dads is a moving tribute to familial love.

Double Pleasure, Double Pain


Nikki Rashan - 2003
    Rashan takes readers along on a passionate journey for an answer to the common question, Who am I?, in this story of a young woman who must decide whether to continue a lopsided relationship with her boyfriend, or submit to the unfamiliar passions felt toward another woman.

Oppression, Privilege, and Resistance: Theoretical Perspectives on Racism, Sexism, and Heterosexism


Lisa M. Heldke - 2003
    Resting upon this oppression model are two sets of theories, one concerned with the phenomenon of privilege--the companion of oppression--and the other with resistance--the response to oppression. The significant number of readings addressing the different forms that resistance takes are perhaps the most important part of the book for students struggling with the questions "What is being done?" and "What can I do?"

The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament


Theodore W. Jennings Jr. - 2003
    In The Man Jesus Loved, Jennings proposes a gay affirmative reading of the Bible in the hope of respecting the integrity of these texts and making them more clear as well as more persuasive. This reading suggests that the exclusion of persons on the basis of their sexual orientation or same-sex practices fundamentally distorts the Bible generally and the traditions concerning Jesus in particular.

American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism


Nancy Ordover - 2003
    The Nazis may have given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice--and the "science" that supports it--is still disturbingly alive in America in anti-immigration initiatives, the quest for a "gay gene, " and theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots and persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political and cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal and scientific legitimacy. American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, and sexuality are crucially linked through a concern with regulating the "unfit." These links emerge in Ordover's examination of three separate but ultimately related American eugenics campaigns: early twentieth-century anti-immigration crusades; medical models and interventions imposed on (and sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, and bisexuals; and the compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are put to ideological uses and how "faith in science" can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals and conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse and policies.

Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls, and Other Renegades


Catherine Smith - 2003
    Featuring an unusual collection of vintage photographs from the 1850s to the 1920s, Women in Pants documents an almost forgotten revolution in clothing. Defying convention, Victorian dress reformers as well as farmers, laborers, miners, cowgirls, and sportswomen openly wore trousers, while other women disguised themselves in men's attire to get good jobs, go to combat, engage in relationships with other women, or experiment with gender identity. Candid, often humorous quotes from contemporary newspapers and magazines complement the photographs and enhance our understanding of the culture and time in which these women lived. For some, wearing pants was a necessity; for others, it was an act of defiance; for still others, it was just fun.

Adam & Andy


James Asal - 2003
    Read their amazing adventures and lose yourself in the minutiae of their daily lives! Marvel at their strength and resolve as they wage war on careless ineptitude and bad coffee! Blast off into incredible fits of jealousy over their impossibly broad shoulders and comprehensive wardrobes!

Forbidden Acts: Pioneering Gay & Lesbian Plays of the 20th Century


Ben HodgesRuth Goetz - 2003
    Among the ten plays, three are completely out of print. Included are The God of Venegeance (1918) by Sholom Asch, the first play to introduce lesbian characters to an English-language audience; Lillian Hellman's classic The Children's Hour (1933), initially banned in London and passed over for the Pulitzer Prize because of its subject matter; and Oscar Wilde (1938) by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, a major award-winning success that starred Robert Morley. More recent plays include Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band (1968), the first hit "out" gay play that was the most realistic and groundbreaking portrayal of gays on stage up to that time; Martin Sherman's Bent (1978), which daringly focused on the love between two Nazi concentration camp inmates and starred Richard Gere; William Hoffman's As Is (1985), which was one of the first plays to deal with the AIDS crisis and earned three Tony Award nominations; and Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994), which starred Nathan Lane and won the Tony Award for Best Play. The other plays are Edouard Bourdet's The Captive (1926), Ruth and Augustus Goetz's The Immoralist (1954) and Frank Marcus's The Killing of Sister George (1967). Forbidden Acts includes a broad range of theatrical genres: drama, tragedy, romance, comedy and farce. They remain vibrant and relevant today as a testament of art's ability to persevere in the face of oppression.

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question


Daniel Boyarin - 2003
    With important essays by such well-known figures in queer and gender studies as Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Marjorie Garber, Michael Moon, and Eve Sedgwick, this book is not so much interested in revealing--outing--"queer Jews" as it is in exploring the complex social arrangements and processes through which modern Jewish and homosexual identities emerged as traces of each other during the last two hundred years.

Alf


Bruno Vogel - 2003
    Banned and burned by Hitler,this openly [gay] and [pacisfist] novel studies the path of two young students from age fifteen through to death in the trenches of WW1.

The Boyfriend


Keith Morrisette - 2003
    Jacques was almost eighteen and gay-in spite of all the stories he'd read where he didn't fit the profile; his family wasn't loaded, he didn't drive an incredible road machine, and he was neither effeminate nor the super-jock. He didn't hate himself, and while he didn't exactly bolt out of the closet, he wasn't in a state of painful denial either. So, what did he want? Chris wanted love, but that's tough to find. But that didn't matter anyway, because everything he heard and saw told him all gay men wanted was sex-and that he knew how to find. Looking for it one night he met Jamie Levesque, and with stars in his eyes he had to change his mind... The way Chris saw it, once he had a boyfriend, everything was going to be different. Just like in the stories, life with Jamie was going to be sunshine, romance, and rainbows forever-right? Uh-huh. Right.

A man of no importance: A new musical


Terrence McNally - 2003
    

Queer Cultures


Jennifer Digrazia - 2003
    Presented in a way that is historically contextualized, politically complex, and far-reaching across different disciplines, the readings demonst

Notebook of Roses and Civilization


Nicole Brossard - 2003
    Taken together, they create an audacious new architecture of meaning.Nicole Brossard, one of the world’s foremost literary innovators, is known for her experiments with language and her groundbreaking treatment of desire and gender. This dextrous translation by the award-winning poets and translators Erin Moure (Little Theatres) and Robert Majzels (Apikoros Sleuth) brings into English, with great verve and sensitivity, Brossard’s remarkable syntax and sensuality.

My Big Fat Queer Life: The Best of Michael Thomas Ford


Michael Thomas Ford - 2003
    Publishers Weekly has called Michael Thomas Ford a "cranky, bemused, and extremely funny." Lambda Book Report has described Ford as "genially misanthropic," and Southern Voice has named him "our freshest, most fearless satirist." Ford’s series of My Queer Life books (Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me, That’s Mister Faggot to You, It’s Not Mean If It’s True, and The Little Book of Neuroses) have racked up four Lambda Literary Award nominations, with two back-to-back wins, and appeared on bestseller lists from New York to Dallas to Sacramento. Now the best of his writing has been collected along with five new, brilliantly funny essays to create the essential My Queer Life -compendium.Raves for Michael Thomas Ford’s My Queer Life:"Ford is a delightfully inventive wit."—Publishers Weekly"He truly entertains by being meaningfully hilarious."—Booklist"One of the funniest books I’ve read this year."—Kelly Justice, Carrytown Books—Richmond, VA; Book Sense 76 Pick"A fresh voice, unafraid to tackle any subject and tickle, if not outright hit, below the belt."—Rain TaxiMichael Thomas Ford is the author of more than fifty books in a variety of genres, including biographies and young-adult fiction. His books in the My Queer Life series have been national bestsellers and earned him two Lambda Literary Awards. He lives in San Francisco.

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance


A.B. Christa Schwarz - 2003
    An important book." --Jim ElledgeThis groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers' works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent--the only "out" gay Harlem Renaissance artist--portrayed men-loving men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing.

Fragments of the Artwork


Jean Genet - 2003
    This collection testifies to Genet's enormous influence on the modern theater, on the development of the novel, and on the representation of crime, sex, gender, and race. In lyrical essays and one candid interview, these works present an untutored, original, defiant Genet, displaying his provocative insights and acuities on a range of topics.Genet wrestles with the athletic genius of Rembrandt, adores the intricate criminal resurrections of Dostoevsky, challenges our easy readings of Brecht, and, in what is one of the most exalting art historical essays ever written, provides us with his detailed personal account of the work and presence of Alberto Giacometti. Altogether these essays comprise a series of engrossing meditations on the central motives of theatricality and art.

The Best Short Stories of Lesléa Newman


Lesléa Newman - 2003
    "Right Off the Bat" is a monologue by a 12-year old girl whose lesbian mothers have been gay-bashed. "Eggs McMenopause" tells the story of how a sleep-deprived butch finds a unique solution to the trials and tribulations of menopause. In "The Babka Sisters," a women's studies student interviews a nursing home resident and hears a tale the woman has never told anyone: the story of the girl she fell in love with in high school. And in "Mothers of Invention," a couple tests their relationship when one woman decides she wants to have a baby and the other woman does not. Newman's stories covers a dazzling array of themes pertaining to contem-porary lesbian life, including long-term relationships, one-night stands, family-of-origin angst, motherhood, friendships with gay men, AIDS, breast cancer, aging, loss and bisexuality. Many of these stories explore Jewish identity as well. Each story in this collection is told with Newman's trademark wit, honesty, talent and compassion.LeslA(c)a Newman's literary awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the -Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Six of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. A native New Yorker, she currently lives in western Massachusetts.

Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging


Gary Atkins - 2003
    A century later Mike Lowry became the first governor of the state to address the annual lesbian and gay pride rally in Seattle. Gay Seattle traces the evolution of Seattle's gay community in those 100 turbulent years, telling through a century of stories how gays and lesbians have sought to achieve a sense of belonging in Seattle.Gary Atkins recounts the demonization of gays by social crusaders around the turn of the century, the earliest prosecutions for sodomy, the official harassment and discrimination through most of the twentieth century, and the medical discrimination and commitment to mental hospitals that continued into the 1970s as homosexuality was diagnosed as a disease that could be "cured."Places of refuge from this imposed social exile were created in underground theater and dance clubs: the Gold Rush-era burlesque shows, modern drag theater, and in mid-century the emergence of openly gay bars, from the Casino to Shelley's Leg. Many of these were subjected to steady exploitation by corrupt police - until bar owner MacIver Wells and two Seattle Times reporters exposed the racket.The increasingly public presence of gays in Seattle was accompanied by the gradual coalescence of social services and self-help organizations such as the Dorian Society, gay businesses and advocacy groups including the Greater Seattle Business Association, and the stormy relationship between the Vatican, Seattle's Catholic hierarchy, and gay worshippers.Atkins' narrative reveals the complex and often frustrating process of claiming a civic life, showing how gays and lesbians have engaged in a multilayered struggle for social acceptance against the forces of state and city politics, the police, the media, and public opinion. The emergence of mainstream political activism in the 1970s, and ultimately the election of Cal Anderson and other openly gay officials to the state legislature and city council, were momentous events, yet shadowed by the devastating rise of AIDS and its effect on the homosexual community as a whole.These stories of exile and belonging draw on numerous original interviews as well as case studies of individuals and organizations that played important roles in the history of Seattle's gay and lesbian community. Collectively, they are a powerful testament to the endurance and fortitude of this minority community, revealing the ways a previously hidden sexual minority "comes out" as a people and establishes a public presence in the face of challenges from within and without.

The Queer God


Marcella Althaus-Reid - 2003
    Others enter churches with love letters hidden in their bags, because their need for God and their need for love refuse to fit into different compartments. But what goodness and righteousness can prevail if you are in love with someone whom you are ecclesiastically not supposed to love? Where is God in a salsa bar?The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. Its chapters on Bisexual Theology, Sadean holiness, gay worship in Brazil and Queer sainthood mark the search for a different face of God - the Queer God who challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God's part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor.Only a theology that dares to be radical can show us the presence of God in our times. The Queer God creates a concept of holiness that overcomes sexual and colonial prejudices and shows how Queer Theology is ultimately the search for God's own deliverance. Using Liberation Theology and Queer Theory, it exposes the sexual roots that underlie all theology, and takes the search for God to new depths of social and sexual exclusion.

Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies


Robert McRuerJoanne Rendell - 2003
    The two fields are premised on the idea that the categories of heterosexual/homosexual and able-bodied/disabled are historically and socially constructed. Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies explores how the frameworks for queer theory and disability studies suggest new possibilities for one another, for other identity-based frameworks of activism and scholarship, and for cultural studies in general.Topics include the study of "crip theory" and queer/disabled performance artists; the historical emergence of normalcy and parallel notions of military fitness that require both the production and the containment of queerness and disability; and butch identity, transgressive sexual practices, and rheumatoid arthritis.Contributors: Sarah E. Chinn, Eli Clare, Naomi Finkelstein, Catherine Lord, Cris Mayo, Robert McRuer, Todd Ramlow, Jo Rendell, Ellen Samuels, Carrie Sandahl, David Serlin, Patrick White

Focus On Living: Portraits of Americans with HIV and AIDS


Roslyn Banish - 2003
    Although thousands of them die each year, advances in medical treatment have allowed many people to control the infection and survive longer. But what are their lives like? This book combines superb photographs and compelling first-person accounts to document the feelings and experiences of a wide range of Americans who are carrying the HIV virus. In these pages, men and women speak candidly about their lives, their relationships, and how they have come to terms with the presence of this chronic and potentially deadly disease. The forty people in the book come from a diverse array of geographic, economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. They are young and old, gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender. Some have unexpectedly extended their lives and gone back to work, thanks to protease inhibitors and other new drugs. Others worry about the side effects of the medicines and struggle to maintain their health. What becomes clear in these interviews is that HIV is everybody's disease—it knows no boundaries. Yet there are some in our society who still prefer to blame the afflicted rather than embrace them. By allowing HIV-positive people to speak openly and movingly about their lives, Focus on Living seeks to remove the curtain of invisibility that still cloaks the disease and to reduce the stigma that contributes to silence.

Sky Lounge


Mark Bibbins - 2003
    Lovers struggle to connect; groupies, hustlers, and corporate drones covet better—or at least different—lives; locations fluctuate, without forewarning, from bars to beaches to city streets. With beguiling tonal and formal variety, these poems question the ordinary and unwitting acceptance of the status quo as they hover where "error arranges itself." As indebted to Stereolab and Siouxsie Sioux as to any poetic lineage, Sky Lounge introduces an imagination committed to making irreverence, sensuality, and elegy into a provocative new music.

Speaking in Queer Tongues: GLOBALIZATION AND GAY LANGUAGE


William L. Leap - 2003
    Speaking in Queer Tongues investigates the tensions and adaptations that occur when processes of globalization bring one system of gay or lesbian language into contact with another.   Western constructions of gay culture are now circulating widely beyond the boundaries of Western nations due to influences as diverse as Internet communication, global dissemination of entertainment and other media, increased travel and tourism, migration, displacement, and transnational citizenship. The authority claimed by these constructions, and by the linguistic codes embedded in them, is causing them to have a profound impact on public and private expressions of homosexuality in locations as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and Israel.   Examining a wide range of global cultures, Speaking in Queer Tongues presents essays on topics that include old versus new sexual vocabularies, the rhetoric of gay-oriented magazines and news media, verbal and nonverbalized sexual imagery in poetry and popular culture, and the linguistic consequences of the globalized gay rights movement.

Last Summer


Michael Thomas Ford - 2003
     Josh Felling has always been a romantic--up until the moment his lover Doug announced that he'd had an affair with a guy from their gym. Now, with his life playing out like a very bad movie of the week, Josh impulsively heads to the Cape for a few days--long enough to figure out where his relationship--what's left of it--might be going. But the summer has other plans for Josh, and his trip to P-town will bring bigger changes than he ever imagined. With its windswept dunes, lazy summer days, and starry nights filled with possibilities, Provincetown holds special appeal for those who call it home. . .and for those who come seeking its open welcome. People like Reilly Brennan, son of an old P-town family, whose days are caught up in wedding plans, even as his nights are increasingly taken over by heated fantasies about other men. . .Wide-eyed, blond-haired, All-American Toby Evans, an escapee from the Midwest ready to spend the summer in the equivalent of gay boot camp for anyone who will tutor him. . .Elegant Emmeline, age unknown, a southern belle straight out of Faulkner, with a mean drag act and almost enough money for her permanent gender transformation. . .Ty Rusk, one of Hollywood's hottest new stars hiding an ages-old secrets about to explode. Weaving in and out of these and other lives like the concierge of a Grand Hotel, Josh is in for the summer of his life, a time of turning points and bridges burned, of second chances and new beginnings, of renewal and hope that will bring him closer to becoming the man he needs to be. "This is a cut above more mainstream gay fiction offerings, thanks to Ford's crisp prose and snappy, contemporary dialogue. . ..the sandy, barefoot-friendly setting morphs all the melodrama into a satisfying beach book--and a pleasant fiction debut for Ford."--Publishers Weekly

Queer Studies: An Interdiciplinary Reader


Corber - 2003
     Brings together important essays that have helped to establish sexuality as one of the most vital areas of study in the humanities and social sciences. Includes an introductory essay by the editors that provides a context for this pivotal scholarship and promotes dialogue across disciplines. Discusses key issues in the field, including sexual politics, cultural construction of sexuality, transnationalism, race, community, sexual citizenship and the nation-state. Functions as a primary text for introductory as well as advanced courses, as a general introduction to the field, and as a scholarly resource.

Fuck Pity #2: Whaddyalookinat!?


Colin Kennedy Donovan - 2003
    

Daughter of Art History: Photographs by Yasumasa Morimura


Yasumasa Morimura - 2003
    Where once the viewer' s gaze met the eyes of a reclining female nude, a European master painter, or a Western religious icon, that gaze is now returned by the hauntingly photo-realistic eyes of a Japanese man. Since the early eighties, Yasumasa Morimura has been invading the established canon of Western art-- offering both wry commentary and loving tribute-- by replacing the figures and faces of its well-known masterpieces with his own. After painstakingly recreating the surroundings of some of art-history' s most iconic paintings, like a chameleon, Morimura assumes their subjects' identities through elaborate makeup and costume, and inserts himself into the scene. To view the resulting photographs is an uncanny experience. "Daughter of Art History" begins with a foreword by renowned art historian Donald Kuspit who describes Morimura's art as "a kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, in which painting, sculpture, and photography form a seamless conceptual whole. His photographs may be mock masterpieces, but they are nonetheless masterpieces, for they show mastery of three mediums usually regarded as irreconcilable." Morimura has shown extensively in international solo exhibitions, and his work is in the collections of the Yokohama Museum of Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth; The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia; TheMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston; and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Gay Perspective: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe


Toby Johnson - 2003
    By living outside gender norms, gay people are more open to seeing across boundaries of gender and gain access to a less dualistic outlook on the nature of life. Once again, Johnson approaches this potentially controversial subject matter with -erudition, empathy and visionary speculation and gives meaning to gay consciousness beyond superficial issues of sexual behavior.Toby Johnson is the editor of "White Crane," a quarterly journal of gay men's spirituality, as well as the -author of Gay Spirituality. He lives in Wimberley, Texas.

The Professional's Guide to Badgering People


Maya Mistful - 2003
    Draco Malfoy/Zacharias Smith (Harry Potter Series) Fanfic.