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reviews_and_ramblings
Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America by Christopher BramHardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Twelve; 1 edition (February 2, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0446563137
ISBN-13: 978-0446563130
Amazon: Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
In the years following World War II, a small group of gay writers established themselves as literary power players, fueling cultural changes that would resonate for decades to come, and transforming the American literary landscape forever.
In EMINENT OUTLAWS, novelist Christopher Bram brilliantly chronicles the rise of gay consciousness in American writing. Beginning with a first wave of major gay literary figures-Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, and James Baldwin-he shows how (despite criticism and occasional setbacks) these pioneers set the stage for new generations of gay writers to build on what they had begun: Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, Tony Kushner, and Edward Albee among them.
Weaving together the crosscurrents, feuds, and subversive energies that provoked these writers to greatness, EMINENT OUTLAWS is a rich and essential work. With keen insights, it takes readers through fifty years of momentous change: from a time when being a homosexual was a crime in forty-nine states and into an age of same-sex marriage and the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America by Lillian FadermanPaperback: 373 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press; Reprint edition (February 14, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231074891
ISBN-13: 978-0231074896
Amazon: Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
Amazon Kindle: Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
As Lillian Faderman writes, there are "no constants with regard to lesbianism," except that lesbians prefer women. In this groundbreaking book, she reclaims the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles. She draws from journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, media accounts, novels, medical literature, pop culture artifacts, and oral histories by lesbians of all ages and backgrounds, uncovering a narrative of uncommon depth and originality.
The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah SchulmanHardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (February 6, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520264770
ISBN-13: 978-0520264779
Amazon: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
Amazon Kindle: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981-1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation's imagination and the consequences of that loss.
