Best of
Queer

2005

Crush


Richard Siken - 2005
    Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”

Hunter's Way


Gerri Hill - 2005
    But even after having six different partners in seven years, Tori isn't prepared when she's forced to team up with the hot-tempered Samantha Kennedy.Samantha, on the other hand, is trying to juggle a new job, a demanding boyfriend, and now finds herself with an even greater challenge -- being partnered with the most difficult detective in the entire squad.After a brief terrorist scare disrupts their serial killer investigation, the two women find themselves growing closer. Samantha begins to question the relationship with her longtime boyfriend, and Tori, never one to allow anyone to get close, begins to feel her defenses slipping in Sam’s presence.A serial killer and drug deals gone bad; the two detectives struggle with their feelings, trying to maintain their professional relationship while keeping their nearly flammable physical relationship in check.With Hunter’s Way, Gerri Hill masterfully blends suspense and intrigue with her unique style of romance.

Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems


June Jordan - 2005
    . . is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet.”—Alice Walker“Always urgent, inspiring, and demanding, Jordan’s work has left its indelible mark everywhere from Essence to The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and from theater stages to the floors of the United Nations and the United States Congress.”—BOMBDirected by Desire is the definitive overview of the poetry of June Jordan, considered one of the most lyrically gifted poets of the late twentieth century. Directed by Desire gathers the finest work from Jordan’s 10 volumes, as well as 70 new, never-before-published poems that she wrote while dying of breast cancer. Throughout over 600 pages readers will find intimate lyricism, elegance, fury, meditative solos, and dazzling vernacular riffs.As Adrienne Rich writes in her introduction, June Jordan “wanted her readers, listeners, students, to feel their own latent power—of the word, the deed, of their own beauty and intrinsic value. . . . She believed, and nourished the belief, that genuine, up-from-the-bottom revolution must include art, laughter, sensual pleasure, and the widest possible human referentiality.”From These PoemsThese poems they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready?June Jordan taught at the University of California Berkeley for many years and founded Poetry for the People. Her 28 books include poetry, essays, fiction, and children’s books. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and The Nation. Her numerous awards include a PEN West Freedom to Write Award and a lifetime achievement award from the National Black Writers Conference. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.

Loose End


Ivan E. Coyote - 2005
    Coyote has developed a reputation as one of North America’s most disarming storytellers; her tales of life as an out dyke on the roads and trails of the North as well as rural America are rich in their plainspoken, honest truths. In Loose End, her third story collection, Ivan focuses her attention on the city: urban life, specifically in the East End of Vancouver, a diverse neighborhood of all types—old, young, gay, straight, white, black, Asian—communing at local coffee bars over hot rods, the art of skinny-dipping, and changes in the weather. Ivan presides over this circus of activities with her cool gaze, whether it’s trying to impress the woman with the hot tub next door, or showing her mother how to use a cordless drill.Ivan’s world is the world of being out and open and unafraid; it’s also a world in which no ghettos—racial, cultural, or defined by sexuality or gender—exist. With the calm, observant eye of a master storyteller, Ivan E. Coyote shows us how to break free of the rigors of authority and be true to ourselves, warts and all.

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart: Poems


Gabrielle Calvocoressi - 2005
    In painstaking, vernacular verse, she conveys the ambitions and failings of a distraught populacein the edgy jazz portrait, "Suite Billy Strayhorn," for example, or the enthralling, interwoven sequence, "At the Adult Drive-In," which conveys, at once, a personal and communal corruption. Penetrating and compassionate, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart portrays, with a storyteller's arc, the troubled landscape of the left-behind.

Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay


Annie Proulx - 2005
    Now the major motion picture "Brokeback Mountain" is being hailed as equally masterful, with performances that are "the stuff of Hollywood history" "(The New York Times)." "Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay" offers readers insight into how this classic short story was turned into an award-winning screenplay and film. "Brokeback Mountain" was originally published in "The New Yorker." It won the National Magazine Award. It also won an O. Henry Prize. Included in this volume is Annie Proulx's haunting story about the difficult, dangerous love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. Also included is the Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning screenplay for the major motion picture, written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. All three writers have contributed essays on the process of adapting this critically acclaimed story for film. This book is an indispensable tool for film students and aficionados.

Walking with Ghosts: Poems


Qwo-Li Driskill - 2005
    Tender, startling, confrontational and erotic, this book honors the dead and brings the survivors back home.

The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World


Alan Downs - 2005
    Yet despite the progress of the recent past, gay men still find themselves asking, "Are we really better off?" The inevitable byproduct of growing up gay in a straight world continues to be the internalization of shame, a shame gay men may strive to obscure with a façade of beauty, creativity, or material success. Drawing on contemporary psychological research, the author's own journey to be free of anger and of shame, as well as the stories of many of his friends and clients, The Velvet Rage outlines the three distinct stages to emotional well-being for gay men. Offering profoundly beneficial strategies to stop the insidious cycle of avoidance and self-defeating behavior, The Velvet Rage is an empowering book that will influence the public discourse on gay culture, and positively change the lives of gay men who read it.

Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred


M. Jacqui Alexander - 2005
    Jacqui Alexander is one of the most important theorists of transnational feminism working today. Pedagogies of Crossing brings together essays she has written over the past decade, uniting her incisive critiques, which have had such a profound impact on feminist, queer, and critical race theories, with some of her more recent work. In this landmark interdisciplinary volume, Alexander points to a number of critical imperatives made all the more urgent by contemporary manifestations of neoimperialism and neocolonialism. Among these are the need for North American feminism and queer studies to take up transnational frameworks that foreground questions of colonialism, political economy, and racial formation; for a thorough re-conceptualization of modernity to account for the heteronormative regulatory practices of modern state formations; and for feminists to wrestle with the spiritual dimensions of experience and the meaning of sacred subjectivity.In these meditations, Alexander deftly unites large, often contradictory, historical processes across time and space. She focuses on the criminalization of queer communities in both the United States and the Caribbean in ways that prompt us to rethink how modernity invents its own traditions; she juxtaposes the political organizing and consciousness of women workers in global factories in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada with the pressing need for those in the academic factory to teach for social justice; she reflects on the limits and failures of liberal pluralism; and she presents original and compelling arguments that show how and why transgenerational memory is an indispensable spiritual practice within differently constituted women-of-color communities as it operates as a powerful antidote to oppression. In this multifaceted, visionary book, Alexander maps the terrain of alternative histories and offers new forms of knowledge with which to mold alternative futures.

Deviant Propulsion


C.A. Conrad - 2005
    The title refers to the idea that those who are deviant propel the world forward at top speed. Delving into the center of the endless webs of repression against our bodies, desires, politics, and imaginations, are those whose actions and motion cut away at the systemic limitations of society. This collection of poems was written with the inspiration and work of these people in mind.As a working class queer poet, Conrad has had to fight through different stratifications of oppression his entire life. His poems vibrate with the flamboyant desire that manifests itself in queer culture, where the right to act on basic desires can become a battleground, and everyday acts of love and devotion must be enacted as a political form of defiance. The poems that emerge from this life long struggle illustrate the sharp edge of that defiance and desire, where joy is closely linked to death. In a world ruled by those who govern with fear, and in a landscape barbed with those who are terrified of desire, moving at speed of deviants is the only way to transform potential into action, and desire into positive change.

The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco


Joshua Gamson - 2005
    And everyone, finally, was welcome--to come as themselves. This is not a fairy tale. This was real, mighty real, and disco-sensation Sylvester was the piper.Yale-trained sociologist Joshua Gamson uses Sylvester's life to lead us through the story of the 1970s, when a generation took off its shame. Celebrity, sociology, and music history mingle in this endlessly entertaining story of a singer who embodied the freedom, spirit, and flamboyance of a golden moment in American culture.

Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity


Afsaneh Najmabadi - 2005
    Peeling away notions of a rigid pre-modern Islamic gender system, Afsaneh Najmabadi provides a compelling demonstration of the centrality of gender and sexuality to the shaping of modern culture and politics in Iran and of how changes in ideas about gender and sexuality affected conceptions of beauty, love, homeland, marriage, education, and citizenship. She concludes with a provocative discussion of Iranian feminism and its role in that country's current culture wars. In addition to providing an important new perspective on Iranian history, Najmabadi skillfully demonstrates how using gender as an analytic category can provide insight into structures of hierarchy and power and thus into the organization of politics and social life.

Full Circle


Michael Thomas Ford - 2005
    The news shatters the peace of his world and awakens memories that have been dormant for years.

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology


E. Patrick JohnsonCathy J. Cohen - 2005
    Bringing together essays by established and emergent scholars, this collection assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior work on race and sexuality and highlights the theoretical and political issues at stake in the nascent field of black queer studies. Including work by scholars based in English, film studies, black studies, sociology, history, political science, legal studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the volume showcases the broadly interdisciplinary nature of the black queer studies project.The contributors consider representations of the black queer body, black queer literature, the pedagogical implications of black queer studies, and the ways that gender and sexuality have been glossed over in black studies and race and class marginalized in queer studies. Whether exploring the closet as a racially loaded metaphor, arguing for the inclusion of diaspora studies in black queer studies, considering how the black lesbian voice that was so expressive in the 1970s and 1980s is all but inaudible today, or investigating how the social sciences have solidified racial and sexual exclusionary practices, these insightful essays signal an important and necessary expansion of queer studies.Contributors. Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace

Bliss


Fiona Zedde - 2005
    It's a world Bliss wanders through with blinders on, all the while craving more. And she finds it in the most unlikely of places.Embarking on a series of carnal adventures with a notorious bad girl as her guide, Bliss opens herself to every new experience and every taboo. In abandoned warehouses, private fetish clubs, even her own office, Bliss is skating on the thin ice of desire--until her world comes crashing in.Now, broken and wanting, Bliss decides to spend a summer in her birthplace, Jamaica, where she hopes to reconcile with her estranged father and rediscover herself. There, in a land of lush ripeness, of heat, warm breezes, easy smiles, and the family she left behind, Bliss will discover what she didn't know was missing. It's a journey that will awaken every one of her senses and take her to the edge of known pleasure and far beyond it, to a love that is as sexy as it gets, as real as can be, and more surprising than she can imagine--a place of total bliss.

Walk Like A Man


Laurinda D. Brown - 2005
    Laurinda Brown's characters explore every aspect of black lesbian life - whether it's first times, illicit trysts, cheating hearts or longtime love.

Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures


Gayatri Gopinath - 2005
    Focusing on queer female diasporic subjectivity, Gopinath develops a theory of diaspora apart from the logic of blood, authenticity, and patrilineal descent that she argues invariably forms the core of conventional formulations. She examines South Asian diasporic literature, film, and music in order to suggest alternative ways of conceptualizing community and collectivity across disparate geographic locations. Her agile readings challenge nationalist ideologies by bringing to light that which has been rendered illegible or impossible within diaspora: the impure, inauthentic, and nonreproductive.Gopinath juxtaposes diverse texts to indicate the range of oppositional practices, subjectivities, and visions of collectivity that fall outside not only mainstream narratives of diaspora, colonialism, and nationalism but also most projects of liberal feminism and gay and lesbian politics and theory. She considers British Asian music of the 1990s alongside alternative media and cultural practices. Among the fictional works she discusses are V. S. Naipaul’s classic novel A House for Mr. Biswas, Ismat Chughtai’s short story “The Quilt,” Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy, and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Analyzing films including Deepa Mehta’s controversial Fire and Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, she pays particular attention to how South Asian diasporic feminist filmmakers have reworked Bollywood’s strategies of queer representation and to what is lost or gained in this process of translation. Gopinath’s readings are dazzling, and her theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching.

In the Blood of the Greeks


Mary D. Brooks - 2005
    The peaceful life of the town has given way to the chaos of war. Two girls, one Greek, the other German, come together in an unlikely union to save the lives of Jews targeted by the Nazis. Fourteen year old Zoe Lambros' faith in God is shattered after her mother's death at the hands of the German Commander. She determines to defy the enemy in every way she can--including a festering urge to kill the German Commander's daughter, Eva Muller. Eva Muller has a tortured past, and a secret, if revealed, will lead to certain death at the hands of her father. Despite knowing the risk, Eva is working with the village priest to help the Jews escape. With her activities closely observed, Eva needs help to continue the clandestine operation. Zoe Lambros is not who Eva has in mind but they have to put aside their mutual antipathy to each other and work together. They know that one wrong move will put an end to their lives.Awards:- Finalist Gay/Lesbian Fiction - International Book Awards 2015 - Finalist First Novel - IAN (Independent Author Network) Book Of The Year Awards 2015- Finalist Outstanding Historical Fiction - IAN (Independent Author Network) Book Of The Year Awards 2015

Gay Men, Wicca and Living a Magical Life: The Path Of The Green Man


Michael Thomas Ford - 2005
    This thought-provoking and engaging guide is filled with a wide range of practical information and step-by-step plans for beginning your study and personal practice, including: - Exploring the connection between spirituality and sexuality- Meditating and creating sacred spaces- Finding rituals and deities that are right for you- Manifesting your desires through magic- Living a joyful, purposeful life- Eight original stories inspired by the Wiccan Sabbats- And so much more

Tom of Finland Volume I: The Comic Collection


Tom of Finland - 2005
    This volume features 14 stories, including the first completed by Tom in 1946, and the last, done in 1986. Along the way we meet Jack in the Jungle, Beach Boys, Greasy Rider, Ringo & the Renegades, and Tom's most infamous creation, Kake, the ultimate leatherman. The stories are arranged chronologically in a book sized to fit perfectly in one hand, wrapped in our new Panic Jacket that allows the book to be read any place, any time, by simply removing and reversing the cover to give the appearance of a serious scholarly tome. For boys who like boys who like art—but are sometimes embarrassed to enjoy their art in public—this attractive package is not to be missed.Durk Dehner is Tom's archivist and provided the original art for these volumes. He was born in Alberta, Canada, where he studied art before moving to the United States in the mid-'70s. Dehner was instrumental in bringing Tom out of the underground and in focusing public attention on his work. The two co-founded the Tom of Finland Foundation in 1984, and Dehner continues as head of the Foundation, headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

Leigh Bowery Looks: Photographs by Fergus Greer 1988-1994


Fergus Greer - 2005
    One of Britain's most heroically ambitious yet underappreciated designers and performance artists, Bowery remains an inspiration to many contemporary fashion designers, though few are willing to admit it. In Leigh Bowery Looks you can see why: It contains 300 previously unpublished photographs of Bowery, an extraordinary body of work that was the outcome of his collaboration with British photographer Fergus Greer between 1988 and 1994, the year of Bowery's death.

The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D'Allesandro


Sam D'Allesandro - 2005
    This new collection includes all of D'Allesandro's published stories (including those first collected in the out-of-print cult classic The Zombie Pit) as well as unpublished stories found among D'Allesandro's papers years after his death by his editor, the poet and novelist Kevin Killian, who worked with the literary estate to create this extended edition of his writing. The Wild Creatures explores a strange terrain of urban legend, the power of sexual obsession, and the thin line where the too-cool becomes the too-hot. Sam D'Allesandro's focused, vivid writing is the stuff of legend: writing so powerful it drags the reader in by the neck.

The Zen of La Llorona


Deborah A. Miranda - 2005
    It complicates that indigenous identity with visceral explorations of gendered violence, sexual orientation and mothering in an unpredictable, chaotic world.

Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings


Eithne Luibhéid - 2005
    Within the vast scholarship on this wave of immigration, however, little attention has been paid to queer immigrants of color. Focusing particularly on migration from Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, and the Philippines, Queer Migrations brings together scholars of immigration, citizenship, sexuality, race, and ethnicity to provide analyses of the norms, institutions, and discourses that affect queer immigrants of color, also providing ethnographic studies of how these newcomers have transformed established immigrant communities in Miami, San Francisco, and New York.

Pierre et Gilles : Sailors & Sea


Pierre et Gilles - 2005
    Welcome to the seductive pictures of Pierre et Gilles. Again and again they show people in kitschy scenarios against a background of flowers and hearts. When they are not snapping portraits of the well-known - most of whom are close friends like Marc Almond or Nina Hagen - and not-so-known, they photograph themselves. Bizarre, and full of obscure significance, the photographs are reminiscent of stills from film melodramas.They are always colourful and presented with beguiling polish. They plunder the repertoire of historical presentation as though they were leafing through a collection of fabrics, and assume identities as though they were part of a mail-order catalogue.Now the latest and most comprehensive collection of the works of these two photographers can be presented to the public - in a format designed by the artists themselves. In matt skin-colour, with a golden edging, the embossed cover is reminiscent of a quilted counterpane and promises a cuddly experience within. Once between the covers one can frolic at will in a soft, artificial world of pictures. This saccharine collection of kitsch encompasses all aspects of homosexuality and offers them in an appetising form even to those who abhor them. A straight challenge is issued to all readers to participate - at least with their eyes - in this unbridled celebration of a life beyond guilt and expiation.

Little Theatres


Erín Moure - 2005
    With each book, Moure seeks to re-create writing from the ground up.Little Theatres appears at a pressing historical crossroads, when we most need our language to be made restive again. Like the agua/water running through the collection -- at once lingual exchange, submersion, balm, and sustenance -- Moure's voices are as fluid, clear, animated, and shimmering with light and life as ever.Galician and English intermingle in this collection like currents of the same river. How can we open the infinitely small spaces of Little Theatres in our own lives? Can they take the place of war? And who, exactly, writes them? Erin Moure? The unjustly ignored thinker Elisa Sampedrin? Or a speaker inside us finally willing to give Little Theatres its due attention? An intimate act of cultural and personal interflow, this work from a major poet has the power to alter our perception of where, and on what scale, the action is taking place.

Where the Edge Gathers:: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion


Yvette A. Flunder - 2005
    She focuses on the following marginalized groups: 1) same-sex couples, to convey the need to re-examine sexual and relational ethics; 2) transgendered persons, to illustrate the importance of radical inclusivity; 3) and gay persons living with AIDS, to emphasize the need to de-stigmatize society's view of any group of people. The book, which combines both Flunder's personal experiences with marginalized people and theological and pastoral literature on the topic, will appeal to denominational leaders and clergy who minister to the marginalized and/or the inner city.

Obedience


Kari Edwards - 2005
    LGBT Studies. "let's begin/ there are mental facts/ as potent physical facts" begins OBEDIENCE, the most recent collection of poems by nationally renowned poet and visual artist kari edwards. A kaleidoscopic rumination on "bodies of resistance" to the relentless erasures of time, OBEDIENCE gathers its materials equally from the physical world and analytical accounts of it to offer a rhythmic disruption of the relative real, a progressive troubling of the phenomenal world, from gross material to the infinitesimal. "what time is it you say/ split between fingertips/ and what bleeds now"--from OBEDIENCE.

Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957


Matt Houlbrook - 2005
    wrote to his friend Billy about all the exciting men he had met, the swinging nightclubs he had visited, and the vibrant new life he had forged for himself in the big city. He wrote, "I have only been queer since I came to London about two years ago, before then I knew nothing about it." London, for Cyril, meant boundless opportunities to explore his newfound sexuality. But his freedom was limited: he was soon arrested, simply for being in a club frequented by queer men.Cyril's story is Matt Houlbrook's point of entry into the queer worlds of early twentieth-century London. Drawing on previously unknown sources, from police reports and newspaper exposés to personal letters, diaries, and the first queer guidebook ever written, Houlbrook here explores the relationship between queer sexualities and modern urban culture that we take for granted today. He revisits the diverse queer lives that took hold in London's parks and streets; its restaurants, pubs, and dancehalls; and its Turkish bathhouses and hotels—as well as attempts by municipal authorities to control and crack down on those worlds. He also describes how London shaped the culture and politics of queer life—and how London was in turn shaped by the lives of queer men. Ultimately, Houlbrook unveils the complex ways in which men made sense of their desires and who they were. In so doing, he mounts a sustained challenge to conventional understandings of the city as a place of sexual liberation and a unified queer culture.A history remarkable in its complexity yet intimate in its portraiture, Queer London is a landmark work that redefines queer urban life in England and beyond.“A ground-breaking work. While middle-class lives and writing have tended to compel the attention of most historians of homosexuality, Matt Houlbrook has looked more widely and found a rich seam of new evidence. It has allowed him to construct a complex, compelling account of interwar sexualities and to map a new, intimate geography of London.”—Matt Cook, The Times Higher Education Supplement Winner of History Today’s Book of the Year Award, 2006

Bullets & Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry


Emanuel Xavier - 2005
    A luscious, vibrant, and wicked anthology featuring poetry by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Regie Cabico, Staceyann Chin, Celena Glenn, Daphne Gottlieb, Maurice Jamal, Shane Luitjens, Marty McConnell, Travis Montez, Alix Olson, Shailja Patel, and Horehound Stillpoint.

If You've a Ready Mind


Maya Mistful - 2005
    The story uses a common Harry Potter fanfic trope — sorting a character into a different House — to show how Draco Malfoy might have developed in Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin.

The Beautifully Worthless


Ali Liebegott - 2005
    Along the way they witness and partake in an American landscape filled with poverty, warm six-packs, roulette wheels, murder sites, and their own family.

Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon And the Pre-raphaelites


Victoria Osborne - 2005
    Six introductory essays, written by experts, provide new insights into his key works and their contexts, while the plates reproduce paintings and drawings rarely seen since their first showing. This study provides a full assessment of Solomon's work in oil and watercolour, drawing and illustration, and also re-appraises works by his friends and associates, among them Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Solomon introduced themes of sexual desire into British painting, charging it with a new poetry and sensuality, and this volume offers a unique opportunity to rediscover what Oscar Wilde called the 'strange genius' of an extraordinary outsider of British art. Black & white and colour.

Other Fugitives and Other Strangers


Rigoberto González - 2005
    Gay and Lesbian Studies. A testimony of sexuality in times of violence, this journey into the intimate language of the male body is freighted with danger and desire and expressed through a dark eroticism reminiscent of Garcia Lorca and Cavafy. "A brilliant poet of two nations, he is a treasure found"--Sandra McPherson. Rigoberto Gonzalez is the author of four books--So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks (a 1998 National Poetry Series selection), two bilingual children's books, and a novel, Crossing Vines, which was a ForeWord Magazine Fiction Book of the Year. Gonzalez is a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of PEN and the National Book Critics Circle. He is an associate professor of English and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a contributing editor to Poets & Writers magazine.

Nothing Is True-Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin


John Geiger - 2005
    He went everywhere when the going was good. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the "interzone" of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.Gysin's ideas influenced generations of artists, musicians and writers, among them David Bowie, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Genesis POrridge, John Giorno and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. None was touched more profoundly than William S. Burroughs, who said admiringly of Gysin: "There was something dangerous about what he was doing."It was Gysin who introduced the Rolling Stones to the exotica of Morocco and took Stones' guitarist Brian Jones to Jajouka where he recorded the tribal musicians performing the Pipes of Pan. It was Gysin who provided the hashish fudge recipe published in Alice B. Toklas' cookbook, promising "ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes." It was Gysin who introduced Burroughs to an automatic writing method called the cutup, a literary progenitor to sampling. And it was Gysin who developed--with Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine--a device that allowed people, with the flick of a switch, to access altered states of consciousness without drugs.Working with the authorization of Gysin's literary executor, William S. Burroughs, John Geiger has produced the firstever biography of the painter, poet, piper Brion Gysin.

With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn


Amber Dawn - 2005
    Starting off where other lesbian erotic anthologies end, these are not your typically delicate, lace-and-feathers kind of stories; instead, they’re blunt and hard-hitting and challenge traditional notions of gender roles when it comes to getting off.The anthologists argue that good, clean lesbian smut is difficult to come by these days, overwhelmed by political correctness and authorial self-censorship. Unabashedly raunchy, these stories prove that femme porn can be sexy and smart at the same time.Includes stories by Nalo Hopkinson (author of The Salt Roads and co-editor of So Long Been Dreaming), Anna Camilleri (author of I Am a Red Dress and editor of Red Light), Rachel Kramer Bussel, Daphne Gottlieb, Ducky Doolittle, Zoe Whittall, and many more.Amber Dawn is a writer and poetry editor of PRISM international magazine. Trish Kelly is a writer and festival organizer who has been published in numerous anthologies. They both live in Vancouver.

Grimoire Dehara Book One: Kiamana


Storm Constantine - 2005
    It is the rehuna's own breath. It is thought, emotion, the elements, the stuff of creation. The flesh of the dehara is wrought of agmara; it is their blood, their sinew, their essence. Agmara is the force that works magic. It is the current between possibilities and possibility itself. Its colour is generally a radiant greenish white, but occasionally it might be visualised in different hues for particular purposes. Agmara is moved with the will, which is part of it. When the rehuna summons agmara, they should feel its flood throughout their being. It is with them always but when the attention is turned elsewhere they do not feel it. Beneath the light of the rehuna's awareness, agmara grows stronger within them.

Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics In India


Arvind Narrain - 2005
    What is most impressive, however, is that it confronts the unquestioned, “compulsory” nature of heterosexuality in India, in a language that is not restricted to the academic.

Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel


Theodore W. Jennings Jr. - 2005
    The apparent prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus and the story of Sodom from Genesis have been made to speak for the whole Hebrew Bible. The oddity of this situation has not been lost on some interpreters who have recognized that the story of Sodom tells us no more about attitudes toward what we call homosexuality than the story of the rape of Dina tells us about attitudes toward heterosexuality.Prof. Jennings says that the well-known eroticism of the Hebrew Bible is not confined to heterosexuality but also includes an astonishing diversity of material that lends itself to homoerotic interpretation. In Part one, Jennings examines saga materials associated with David. It is no innovation to detect in the David and Jonathan's relationship at least the outline of a remarkable love story between two men. What becomes clear, however, is that the tale is far more complex than this since it involves Saul and is set within a context of a warrior society that takes for granted that male heroes will be accompanied by younger or lower status males. Thus the complex erotic connections between David and Saul and David and Jonathan play out against the backdrop of a context of "heroes and pals." The second type of same sex relationship explored has to do with shamanistic forms of eroticism in which the sacral power of the holy man is both a product of same sex relationship and expressed through same sex practice. This section deals with Samuel and Saul and Elijah and Elisha. These are not warriors but persons whose sacral power is also erotic power that may find expression in erotic practices with persons of the same sex.The third type of same sex relationship discusses we now call transgendered persons, especially males, and their erotic relationship to (other) males. Here the book explores the transgendering of Israel by several prophets who use this device to explore the adultery and promiscuity that they wish to attribute to Israel, as well as the story of Joseph.

Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent


Thomas Glave - 2005
    Exposing the hypocrisies of liberal multiculturalism, Glave offers instead a politics of heterogeneity in which difference informs the theory and practice of democracy. At the same time, he experiments with language to provide a model of creative writing as a tool for social change. From the death of black gay poet Essex Hemphill to the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib, Glave puts forth an ethical understanding of human rights to make vital connections across nations, races, genders, and sexualities.Thomas Glave is assistant professor of English at SUNY Binghamton. He is author of Whose Song? and Other Stories.

Lockpick Pornography


Joey Comeau - 2005
    I want to make bumper stickers for politicians and gay rights advocates. They'll read "My other pro-tolerance message is also condescending." I want to destroy something.I'm tired of the moral high ground. We've already got more than our share of gay Gandhis. We need a General Patton.No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. I feel the way bank robbers must feel just before they go out on that last big job that ends up getting them all killed. That is to say, optimistic.

Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men


Robert Weiss - 2005
    A timely and important contribution to the body of recovery literature, Cruise Control provides understanding, empathy and encouragement to gay men seeking healthy sexual expression.

Casa Susanna


Michel Hurst - 2005
    The inhabitants, visitors, guests, and hosts used it as a weekend headquarters for a regular “girl’s life.” Someone—probably “Susanna” or the matriarch—nailed a wonder board on a tree proclaiming it “Casa Susanna,” and thus a Queendom was born. Through these wonderfully intimate shots—perhaps never intended to see the light of day outside the sanctum of the “house”—Susanna and her gorgeous friends styled era-specific fashion shows and dress-up Christmas and tea parties. As gloriously primped as these documentary snaps are, it is in the more private and intimate life at Casa Susanna, where the girls sweep the front porch, cook, knit, play Scrabble, relax at the nearby lake and, of course, dress for the occasion, that the stunning insight to a very private club becomes nothing less than brilliant and awe inspiring in its pre-glam, pre-drag-pose ordinariness and nascent preening and posturing in new identities. It is not glamour for the stage but for each other, like other women who dress up to spend time with friends, flaunting their own sense of style. There is an evident pleasure of being here, at Casa Susanna, that is a liberation, a simplification of the conflicts inherent in a double life.

Quality of Mercy


Maya Mistful - 2005
    The story's title comes from a poem by William Shakespeare.Quality of Mercy was written as Maya's version of Book 7. The events directly follow the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and feature Harry's quest to find and destroy Lord Voldemort's horcruxes.

Lawrence of Arabia: The Life, the Legend


Malcolm Brown - 2005
    A visual biography of Lawrence of Arabia, this work is told through his own photographs, desert paintings, drawings and ephemera, all supported by quotations from his own first-hand account of his experiences.

Bondi Urban


Paul Freeman - 2005
    At Bondi in Sydney, Australia, the eastward growth of the city is halted by the Pacific Ocean. Despite the unappealing architecture of the area, it has developed among the warm climate and natural wonders a free-spirited subculture of young men. It is a mecca for young men from all over the world. Paul Freeman's work captures that free-wheeling and devil-may-care attitude of this current youth culture.

What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?


David L. Eng - 2005
    The mainstreaming of gay and lesbian identity—as a mass-mediated consumer lifestyle and an embattled legal category—demands a renewal of queer studies that also considers the global crises of the late twentieth century. These crises, which are shaping national manifestations of sexual, racial, and gendered hierarchies, include the ascendance and triumph of neoliberalism; the clash of religious fundamentalisms, nationalisms, and patriotisms; and the return to “moral values” and “family values” as deterrents to political debate, economic redistribution, and cultural dissent. In sixteen timely essays, the contributors map out an urgent intellectual and political terrain for queer studies and the contemporary politics of identity, family, and kinship. Collectively, these essays examine the limits of queer epistemology, the potentials of queer diasporas, and the emergence of queer liberalism. They rethink queer critique in relation to the war on terrorism and the escalation of U.S. imperialism; the devolution of civil rights and the rise of the prison-industrial complex; the continued dismantling of the welfare state; the recoding of freedom in terms of secularization, domesticity, and marriage; and the politics of citizenship, migration, and asylum in a putatively postracial and postidentity age.Contributors. Michael Cobb, David L. Eng, Roderick A. Ferguson, Elizabeth Freeman, Gayatri Gopinath, Judith Halberstam, Janet R. Jakobsen, Joon Oluchi Lee, Martin F. Manalansan IV, José Esteban Muñoz, Tavia Nyong'o, Hiram Perez, Jasbir K. Puar, Chandan Reddy, Teemu Ruskola, Nayan Shah, Karen Tongson, Amy Villarejo

Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation


Glenn D. Wilson - 2005
    But the science they employ in their arguments is not merely outmoded but often fallacious. Since the ground-breaking work of Simon LeVay and Dean Hamer in the early ?90s, a tremendous amount of new research has been carried out by scientists who now understand a great deal more about the biology of sexual attraction. How much does the non-scientific community really know about this research or understand the far-reaching implications of it? Wilson and Rahman show that attempts to find a sociological cause for homosexuality have little foundation and argue that popular efforts to blame parents or teachers for a child's homosexuality are futile and unjust.

Hear Me Out: True Stories Of Teens Educating And Confronting Homophobia


Planned Parenthood of Toronto - 2005
    These heartfelt memoirs, originally presented orally in schools, speak poignantly about the lives of young gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and transsexual people today.

In The Game: Gay Athletes And The Cult Of Masculinity


Eric Anderson - 2005
    By detailing individual experiences, Anderson shows how these athletes are emerging from their athletic closets and contesting the dominant norms of masculinity. From the locker rooms of high school sports, where the atmosphere of don't ask, don't tell often exists, to the unique circumstances that gay athletes encounter in professional team sports, this book analyzes the agency that openly gay athletes possess to change their environments.

Sarah Lucas: A Catalog Raisonn�: Catalogue Raisonn�


Sarah Lucas - 2005
    That was the title of Sarah Lucas's last show in New York, in which the pun-prone artist assembled an array of sculptures constructed from cast concrete forms, tacky beige nylon stockings and random metal objects. These typically abject art pieces fit right into the body of work Lucas has been building since the early 1990s from apparently banal, everyday materials. Old, worn furniture, clothing, food, newspapers, cigarettes, cars, resin, plaster, neon lamps and light fixtures combine to form grungy assemblages whose appearance belies the serious and complex subject matter they address. Through the slyly anthropomorphic character of her sculptures, Lucas makes constant reference to the human body, questioning gender definitions and challenging male-dominated culture, especially that espoused by the sensationalist British press. She subverts sexual stereotypes in her appropriations of the tabloid vernacular and by making unexpected juxtapositions of objects, often employing visual wit and a defiant, bawdy humor. Her most iconic work, "Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab," which was included in the landmark Sensation exhibition in 1999, bears this out with a nasty wink: The title, which precisely describes the materials from which the piece was made, is slang for, well... just look it up. This extensive, large-format catalogue comprehensively tracks the career of one of the leading figures in an outstanding generation of British artists. Lucas, who first came to attention as a YBA (Young British Artist) in the 1990s, is here granted her first major exhibition survey. Included in this accompanying publication is documentation of key works, plus new work made especially for the Tate Liverpool. It is the most comprehensive publication on the artist to date.

Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way


Ron Jackson Suresha - 2005
    Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way confronts head-on the limiting views that bisexuality is a transitional phase of sexual evolution or a simple refusal to accept being either homosexual or straight. This pioneering collection of moving personal essays by bisexual men and those who love them explores what it means to be bisexual in today's monosexually oriented society.The millennial shift in sexual perspectives draws more and more men to come out as being attracted to both women and men. Bisexual and bi-curious men will find comfort and camaraderie in these stories about coming out, its impact on family and marriage, evolving perspectives on bisexuals within the LGBT community, and the building of acceptance and affirmation for bisexuality and polyamory.The nearly three dozen essays in Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way are told in the honest words of bisexuals, confirming the validity of their place in the world while illustrating that there are more bi men than anyone ever realized. These diverse and pioneering men's stories reveal a long-disguised and unconventional truththat bisexuality is a valid lifestyle that does not threaten either sexual camp. Each contributor to this collection affirms the innate fluidity of self, sexuality, family, and community, and proclaims that sexuality is truly diverse in its predispositions and creativity.Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way separates its essays into four parts: coming out and personal realization of bisexual nature bisexuality's effects on family and marriage an examination of the shifting viewpoints of bisexuality within gay communities ways in which bisexuals can affirm and respect their own desires and celebrate their sexual selves These intimate stories address:biphobia monosexual prejudice the impact on marriage family issues coming out to self, spouse, and family political and community issues religious and spiritual concerns Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way is a vibrant, reassuring call to bisexuals, the bi-curious, or anybody who knows and loves a bisexual/bi-curious man, to read and more completely understand the unique issues of being bisexual while providing the ultimate affirmation of bisexuality's existence.

Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story


Kaitlyn Taylor Considine - 2005
    Follow along as Emma gets in trouble trying to play with Meesha Kitty and cheer as she learns to treat him with care.

Storm Constantine's Wraeththu Mythos 'Terzah's Sons'


Victoria Copus - 2005
    Terzah has recently had a harling, and is far from happy with Zen's posting. Terzah despises humans and has nothing but contempt for those around him. However, when tragedy strikes the small community, and a human who Terzah realises was actually a friend to him dies unexpectedly, Terzah is moved to take in the woman's orphaned sons. Not every human agrees with this, as they feel humans should be raised by humans. Terzah finds himself fighting prejudice as keen as his own. Gradually, Terzah realises his attitude to humanity must change, as hara and humans are forced to work together to overcome common threats and dilemmas, so that the settlement will succeed and become a real community. Conflicts within his own family and dark secrets kept by his consort add intrigue and drama to the tale. Terzah's Sons gives a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of hara, far from the courts of the high ranking and mighty. These are hara who get their hands dirty, coping with life's problems as best they can in primitive conditions. Author Victoria Copus has captured the character of Terzah, the customs of the shamanic Kheops and the complexities of intertribal politics with a deft hand. This story is a skilful and insightful addition to the canon of the Wraeththu Mythos.

Joy Is So Exhausting


Susan Holbrook - 2005
    Punch lines become sucker punches, line breaks slip into breakdowns, the serious plays comical and the comical turns deadly serious. Holbrook’s poems don’t use humour as much as they deconstruct the comic impulse, exposing its roots in the political, the psychological and the emotional life of the mind. Many of these poems import shapes and source texts from elsewhere – home inspection reports, tampon instructions, poems by Lorca – in a series of translations, transpositions and transgressions that invite a more intimate and critical rapport with the written word. This is not merely a book, it is a chocolate-covered artificially intelligent virus with an impish sense of humour that will continue to replicate in your mind long after initial exposure.

.45 Dangerous Minds: The Most Intense Interviews from Seconds Magazine


Steven Blush - 2005
    Interviewees include Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, JG Ballard, Henry Rollins, Allen Ginsberg, Anton LaVey, Joe Coleman, Peter Sotos, Joe D'Allesandro, Ron Jeremy, Wayne Kramer, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, John Waters, Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson, Ed Sanders and Robert Williams.Contributors include Michael Moynihan, Carlo McCormick, Boyd Rice, David Aaron Clarke, Art Deco and John Aes-Nihil.Steven Blush is the author of "American Hardcore. He lives in New York.

Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800


Khaled El-Rouayheb - 2005
    Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.

Expressway


Sina Queyras - 2005
    This poem resembles the freedom to charge a fee. The fee occurs in the gaps. It is an event. It is not without precedent. It is a moment in which you pay money. It is a tribute to freedom of choice.Reality is a parking lot in Qatar. Reality is an airstrip in Malawi.Meanwhile the expressway encloses, the expressway round and around the perimeters like wagon trains circling the bonfire, all of them, guns pointed, Busby Berkeley in the night sky.Echoing the pastoral and elegiac modes of the Romantic poets, whose reverence for nature never prevented them from addressing it with all the ideas and sensibilities their times allowed, Sina Queyras's stunning collection explores the infrastructures and means of modern mobility. Addressing the human project not so much as something imposed on nature but as an increasingly disturbing activity within it, Expressway exposes the paradox of modern mobility: the more roads and connections we build, the more separate we feel. 'Cleanse the doors of perception,' Blake urged, and with that in mind, Queyras has written a bravely lyrical critique of our ethical and ecological imprint, a legacy easily blamed on corporations and commerce, but one we've allowed, through our tacit acquiescence, to overwhelm us. Every brush stroke, every bolt and nut, every form and curve in our networks of oil and rubber, every thought and its material outcome — each decision can make or unmake us.