Best of
Queer-Lit

1997

Beyond the Pale


Elana Dykewomon - 1997
    The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich’s odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York. Interwoven with her tale is that Chava Meyer, who was attended by Gurvich at her birth and grew up to survive the pogrom that took the lives of her parents. Throughout the book, historical background plays a large part: Jewish faith and traditions, the practice of midwifery, the horrific conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and New York sweatshops, and the determined work of labor unionists and suffragists.

The Merro Tree


Katie Waitman - 1997
    His sublime, ethereal performances were unforgettable, drawing on the most treasured traditions of every culture, every people, throughout inhabited space. His crowning achievement, and his obsession: the Somalite song dance, an art form that transcends both song and movement to become something greater and more spectacular . . . almost divine.When tragic events caused performance of the song dance to be proscribed, Mikk was devastated . . . until his strong sense of justice forced him to defy the ban. His trial will be the most sensational in the recent history of the galaxy; the sentence he faces is death. Now the greatest performance master must hope to become the greatest escape artist. Somehow Mikk must break the stranglehold of censorship and change the law . . . or die trying!

Anything We Love Can Be Saved


Alice Walker - 1997
    For she believes that the things we treasure, and the world we live in, can all be saved if only we will act. Beginning with an autobiographical essay about the roots of her own activism, Alice Walker then goes on to explore diverse public issues such as single parenthood, freedom of the press, civil rights and religion.

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde


Moisés Kaufman - 1997
    In doing so, England's reigning man of letters set in motion a series of events that would culminate in his ruin and imprisonment. For within a year the bewildered Wilde himself was on trial for acts of gross indecency and, implicitly--for a vision of art that outraged Victorian propriety. Expertly interweaving courtroom testimony with excerpts from Wilde's writings and the words of his contemporaries, Gross Indecency unveils its subject in all his genius and human frailty, his age in all its complacency and repression. The result is a play that will be read and studied for decades to come.

Does Your Mama Know?: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories


Lisa C. MooreDenise Moore - 1997
    These 49 short stories, poems, interviews and essays—fiction and nonfiction—make up a powerful collection of original and new writing by 41 women. does your mama know? is ready to take its place in the halls of literary African-American lesbian voices.

Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories


Patrick Merla - 1997
    Here are accounts of revealing one's sexual identity to parents, siblings, friends, co-workers and, in one notable instance, to a stockbroker. Men tell of their first sexual encounters from their preteens to their thirties, with childhood friends who rejected or tenderly embraced them, with professors, with neighbors, with a Broadway star. These are poignant, sometimes unexpectedly funny tales of romance and heartbreak, repression and liberation, rape and first love defining moments that shaped their authors' lives. Arranged chronologically from Manhattan in the Forties to San Francisco in the Nineties, these essays ultimately form a documentary of changing social and sexual mores in the United States--a literary, biographical, sociological and historical tour de force.

Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology (Revised and Updated Edition)


Evelyn Torton Beck - 1997
    With a new section on mother/daughter relationships, new and updated material on Israel, and new poetry and photographs.

What Are Big Girls Made Of?: Poems


Marge Piercy - 1997
    Opening with a powerful cycle of elegies for her long-distant, half-brother, this major new collection by one of our bestselling poets then goes on to include both serious and funny poems about women and poems about the precarious balance of nature, ending with the beautiful, life-affirming "The Art of Blessing the Day." 160 pp.

Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Lore


Randy P. Conner - 1997
    It contains articles on the world's spiritual traditions; entries on deities, symbols, spiritual teachers, spiritually focused artists; and related subjects.

Plays 1


Philip Ridley - 1997
    They resonate with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own. The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley's first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy.  This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling.  The Fastest Clock in the Universe is a multi-award-winning play which caused a sensation when it premiered at Hampstead Theatre in 1992.  An edgy and provocative drama, it is now regarded as a contemporary classic. Ghost from a Perfect Place is a scorchingly nasty blend of comedy, spectacle and terror where a monster from the past meets the monsters of the present.

Beautiful Twisted Night


Marc Almond - 1997
    'Prostitutes, hustlers, porn stars, strippers, gangsters, pimps, dominatrixes, transsexuals, madams, sub-culture celebrities, superstars...'He burst into prominence in the early 1980s with Dave Ball with the first successful British electro-duo -- Soft Cell. They mixed disco and northern soul with lyrics of melancholy stories of low-life characters, bedsit life and city survival, and thus set the blueprint for groups such as The Pet Shop Boys, Blur, Pulp and Suede.Marc spent the 1980s producing a range of albums, always surprising and taking his audience in new directions. Dirt and glitter continue to be common themes in his work, as are the love and romance and loneliness of city life and the hopes, dreams and unfulfilled aspirations of the city's inhabitants, from the bordello to the high-rise.

Naked Men : Pioneering Male Nudes 1935-1955


David Leddick - 1997
    Long before Stonewall and the gay pride movement, there was a small group of daring men--both photographers and the models who sat for them--who helped pave the way for male sexual liberation. Led by the photographer George Platt Lynes, the painter Paul Cadmus, and the arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, this group shattered taboos surrounding the artistic presentation of the male figure. The young subjects of these photographs--who often posed after-hours in studios officially used for fashion shoots--were in essence the first true male models. In a perfect complement to the intimacy of these early nudes, photographs are included of these men today. The pictures and stories in "Naked Men" are as relevant and evocative today as they were a half a century ago.