Book picks similar to
Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS by David Roman
lgbt
aids
nonfiction
hiv-aids
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Samuel R. Delany - 1999
Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.
Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender
Mia McKenzie - 2014
Her nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other. "One of the most provocative and insightful writers of our generation." -Aura Bogado, Colorlines "A fierce voice among a generation of queer and trans folk of color." -Janet Mock, New York Times Bestselling Author of "Redefining Realness" "Tough-love activism at its best-straightforward, challenging, whip-smart, and uncompromising." -Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine
Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics
Jennifer Baumgardner - 2007
Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out. With intimacy and humor, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she's undergone to reconcile the privilege she's garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she's derived from her relationships with women. Part memoir, part pop-culture study, "Look Both Ways "connects the prominent dots of a bisexual community (Alix Kates Shulman, Ani DiFranco, Rebecca Walker, and, of course, Anne Heche) that Baumgardner argues have bridged feminist aims with those of the gay rights movement. "Look Both Ways "is a compelling and current study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.
Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin
Mel Gordon - 2006
Anticipating the expanded edition, Feral House placed Voluptuous Panic out of print, and for the past year buyers paid as much as $460 to online sellers for a used copy.This sourcebook of hundreds of rare visual delights from pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring hip clubgoers, filmmakers, gay historians, graphic designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson.Voluptuous Panic’s expanded edition includes the new illustrated chapter, “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.” The deluxe hardcover edition also includes sensational accounts of hypno-erotic cabaret acts, Berlin Fetish prostitution (“The Boot Girl Visit”), gay life (“A Wild-Boy Initiation!”), descriptions and illustrations of Aleister Crowley’s Berlin OTO Secret Society, and sex crime (“the Curious Career and Untimely Death of Fritz Ulbrich”).
The Children Are Free: Re-Examining the Biblical Evidence on Same-Sex Relationships
Jeff Miner - 2002
Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley offer a comprehensive yet easy-to-read examination of the biblical evidence regarding loving same-sex relationships and God's attitude toward them. In Chapter One, the authors lead the reader through a discussion of each of the six passages traditionally used against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. In their friendly and authoritative style, they demonstrate how an anti-gay interpretation is a misapplication of these scriptures. Then, in Chapter Two, Miner and Connoley turn our attention to the biblical stories and passages that affirm loving same-sex relationships. Did you know Jesus once met a gay person? Jesus' loving response is just one of the well-researched stories presented in this chapter. Chapter Three asks readers to take seriously the call of Jesus to think more deeply about biblical rules. And Chapter Four calls Christians to action, making a connection between the conflicts in the early Church and those occurring within the Church today. This book belongs in the library of any Christian questioning the role of Scripture in the lives of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, or the role of GLB people in the Church.
Uncle Mame: The Life Of Patrick Dennis
Eric Myers - 2000
Tanner made millions, became the toast of Manhattan society, and had his works adapted into wildly successful plays, musicals, TV shows, and films. But he also spent every cent he made, worked incognito as a butler to the wealthy, and constructed a persona so elaborate that not even his wife and children ever quite knew the real Pat. Based on extensive interviews with coworkers, friends, and relatives, Uncle Mame is a revealing, intimate portrait of the man who brought camp to the American mainstream and even in his lowest moments personified—even in his lowest moments— the glamour and wit he captured on the page.
Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era
Paul B. Preciado - 2008
Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity are formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado's diaristic account of his own use of testosterone every day for one year, and its mesmerizing impact on his body as well as his imagination.
Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out
Loraine Hutchins - 1991
In this groundbreaking anthology, more than seventy women and men from all walks of life describe their lives as bisexuals in prose, poetry, art, and essays
A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me
Jason Schmidt - 2015
Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier.Jason’s life with Mark was full of secrets—about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights—people with normal lives—ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason’s home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything.A List of Things That Didn’t Kill Me is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?
Virtually Normal
Andrew Sullivan - 1995
No subject has divided contemporary America more bitterly than homosexuality. Addressing the full range of the debate in this pathbreaking book, Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of The New Republic, restores both reason and humanity to the discussion over how a predominantly heterosexual society should deal with its homosexual citizens.Sympathetically yet relentlessly, Sullivan assesses the prevailing public positions on homosexuality--from prohibitionist to liberationist and from conservative to liberal. In their place, he calls for a politics of homosexuality that would guarantee the rights of gays and lesbians without imposing tolerance. At once deeply personal and impeccably reasoned, written with elegance and wit, Virtually Normal will challenge readers of every persuasion; no book is more likely to transform out sexual politics in the coming decades.
First Person Plural
Andrew W.M. Beierle - 2007
Beierle brings to life characters at once unthinkably foreign and utterly real. Frank and fearless, sexy and witty, First Person Plural is a masterfully rendered, powerfully imaginative work, as complex and as extraordinary as the bonds of love. Owen and Porter Jamison are conjoined twins inhabiting one body with two heads, one torso, and two very different hearts. As children, they're seen as a single entity--Owenandporter, or more often, Porterandowen. As they grow to adulthood, their differences become more pronounced: Porter is outgoing and charismatic while Owen is cerebral and artistic. When Porter becomes a high school jock hero, complete with cheerleader girlfriend, a greater distinction emerges, as Owen gradually comes to realize that he's gay.Owen, a reluctant romantic, is content at first to settle for unrequited crushes. Porter's unease with his brother's sexuality leaves Owen feeling increasingly alienated from his twin, especially when Porter falls in love with Faith, and Owen becomes the unwilling third side of a complicated love triangle. When Owen finally begins to explore his own desires, the rift grows deeper.As Porter and Owen's carefully balanced arrangement of give-and-take, sacrifice and selfishness, is irrevocably shattered, each twin is left fighting for his relationship--and his future--in a battle of wills where winning seems impossible, and losing unthinkable. . .Andrew W. M. Beierle has been a journalist for more than thirty years. He has studied at the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Napa Valley, and Kenyon Review writers' workshops.
A Private Life
Michael Kirby - 2011
Speaking in his own voice, he opens up as never before in a beautifully written, reflective and generous memoir - one that Michael Kirby's many admirers have been waiting for.Michael Kirby is one of Australia's most admired public figures. In times of spin and obfuscation, he speaks out passionately and straightforwardly on the issues that are important to him. Even those who disagree with him have been moved by the courage required of him to come out as a high-profile gay man, which at times has caused him to be subjected to outrageous assaults on his character.This is a collection of reminiscences in which we discover the private Michael Kirby speaking in his own voice. He opens up as never before about his early life, about being gay, about his forty-two year relationship with Johan van Vloten, about his religious beliefs and even about his youthful infatuation with James Dean, which sent him on a sentimental journey to Dean's home town in the year 2000, an adventure he here wryly recalls.Beautifully written, reflective and generous, in that warm and gently self-deprecating voice that is so characteristic of him, this is a memoir that Michael Kirby's many admirers have been waiting for.
Wild Animals I Have Known: Polk Street Diaries and After
Kevin Bentley - 2002
In passages that are arousing, thoughtful, and funny, he details a scene of unrivaled sexual hedonism. First and foremost an erotic record, Wild Animals I Have Known is also the diary of a bookish, terrified, exuberantly promiscuous, and laughably romantic gay man’s exploits during the heyday of San Francisco’s gay bohemia. “[Bentley’s] writing is direct, intelligent, savagely funny, and very, very erotic.” — Kevin Dax, author of D.O.C. Lust Letters
A Horse Named Sorrow
Trebor Healey - 2012
But the ensuing romance proves short-lived as Jimmy dies of an AIDS-related illness. The grieving Seamus is obliged to keep a promise to Jimmy: “Take me back the way I came.” And so Seamus sets out by bicycle on a picaresque journey with the ashes, hoping to bring them back to Buffalo. He meets truck drivers, waitresses, college kids, farmers, ranchers, Marines, and other travelers—each one giving him a new perspective on his own life and on Jimmy’s death. When he meets and becomes involved with a young Native American man whose mother has recently died, Seamus’s grief and his story become universal and redemptive.
Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey through the AIDS Crisis
Ross A. Slotten - 2020
Ross A. Slotten signed more death certificates in Chicago—and, by inference, the state of Illinois—than anyone else. As a family physician, he was trained to care for patients from birth to death, but when he completed his residency in 1984, he had no idea that many of his future patients would be cut down in the prime of their lives. Among those patients were friends, colleagues, and lovers, shunned by most of the medical community because they were gay and HIV positive. Slotten wasn’t an infectious disease specialist, but because of his unique position as both a gay man and a young physician, he became an unlikely pioneer, swept up in one of the worst epidemics in modern history.Plague Years is an unprecedented first-person account of that epidemic, spanning not just the city of Chicago but four continents as well. Slotten provides an intimate yet comprehensive view of the disease’s spread alongside heartfelt portraits of his patients and his own conflicted feelings as a medical professional, drawn from more than thirty years of personal notebooks. In telling the story of someone who was as much a potential patient as a doctor, Plague Years sheds light on the darkest hours in the history of the LGBT community in ways that no previous medical memoir has.