reviews_and_ramblings | Rainbow Awards: Best Overall Non Fiction

And the Rainbow Award goes to:

1) Drewey Wayne Gunn - The Golden Age of Gay Fiction (MLR Press)

This book is such a treasure. I have had several “histories” over the years, and have yearned for a new one. Seeing the covers that proceed each entry is like seeing old friends. Each entry is given a thorough treatment-giving the reader a wealth of information about the book, the author, it’s time and place. Every collection should have this book. It is a bit pricy, but it is so worth it. Bravo Drewey --Robert

It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all, they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolution that occurred several years before Stonewall! Their characters were mostly out or struggling to get out. The books were definitely out -- out on the revolving paperback bookracks in grocery stores, dime stores, drugstores, magazine agencies, and transportation terminals across the nation for youths and senior citizens, in the cities and the rural areas alike, to find and to devour. Here 19 writers take you on a tour of this Golden Age of Gay Fiction -- roughly the period between the first Kinsey Report and the first collection of Tales of the City -- paying attention to touchstone novels from the period but, even more, highlighting works of fiction that have been left unjustly to gather dust on literary shelves. Written by authors, scholars, collectors, and one of the publishers, their essays will inform you. They will sometimes amuse you. They will take you into literary corridors you only suspected were there. And the some 200 illustrations, chosen for their historical as well as their artistic interest, provide a visual record of why this was the golden age. It is guaranteed that you will emerge from reading this book with a long list of good reads to request from your favorite booksellers!

2) Donald H. Clark - Loving Someone Gay (Lethe Press)

Updated classic of gay self-help, seems to cover all the bases, so a comprehensive, mostly well-written book. Some typos and a couple bits where I thought “hang on” – such as when he asserts that gays on average are more attractive than heterosexuals – but otherwise a decent enough book. It could have used dome addresses and contact details for gay self-help groups/websites of organization, so still pretty low tech/less than completely modern/updated. --Aleks

I think it helped a lot of people, not to mention it may be very mind-broading. --Caroline

For more than three decades, clinical psychologist, Don Clark, has been speaking to the hearts and minds of gay people, their families, friends, teachers and helpers in the many editions of Loving Someone Gay. With compassion he has promoted communication across generations as well as revealing a path of understanding and reconciliation for parents, siblings, husbands and wives—as well as among religious leaders, teachers, librarians, legislators, judges, and law enforcement agencies. Most important he has provided vital insight into the psychodynamics and sociology of individuals, the gay men and lesbians who have been and continue to be misunderstood and abused in societies around the world.

3) Andrew Ramer - Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories (Lethe Press)

This book is a remarkable blending of ancient stories and inserting them into modern LGBT situations. --Kris

It IS mostly fiction—rewritten legend – but it's gorgeous. --Lee R.

Andrew Ramer's new book, Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories , grapples with traditional midrashim, plays with homoerotic love poems from medieval Spain , and envisions alternate versions of the present. Inspired by the pioneering work of Jewish feminists, using the same narrative tools as the rabbis of old, Ramer has crafted stories that anchor LGBT lives in the three thousand year old history of the Jewish people. ''The universe is made up of stories, not atoms,'' wrote poet Muriel Ruckeyser. The stories in this book will transport you to a new universe the one we are striving to create, right here and now.

Honorable Mention:

4) David Jedeikin - Wander The Rainbow (Holistic Ideas Press)
5) Tom Cardamone - The Lost Library (Haiduk Press)