The following piece, which appeared in our Fall 1999 issue, reviewed a book by Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet, a new edition of which has just been published by Little, Brown Book Group. This review of Waters’ debut novel seems prescient in light of this writers’ subsequent critical and popular success as a lesbian novelist. The GLR would go on to review three more of her novels in subsequent issues. Reviving this review is also a way to thank its author, Martha E. Stone, for her extraordinary service to the GLR over the years.

… One reads Love, Christopher Street to see how other people, like and unlike yourself, encountered and endured and learned from New York, and that’s why this extremely varied anthology is always interesting, even when tangential, and why it’s often moving. …

… Charles Molesworth’s book is an important addition to the scholarship on Countee Cullen. The publication of the latter’s collected letters, which are being edited by Thomas Wirth, will shed more light on Cullen’s personal and public lives.

… Stewart’s book is novelistic, artfully non-chronological, and it captures its subject matter vividly. Indeed, in his foreword he pointedly assures the reader: ‘Everything written here really happened.’ One soon learns why this assurance is necessary. …

THERE ARE FANS, and then there are fanatics. … each with its own set of divas and devotional practices. Less well known are the many gay men who are devotees of gospel music. These so-called gospel sissies are no less committed to their music and no less central to its existence, but their relationship to their music has always been much more complicated. This fraught fandom is the organizing focus of Anthony Heilbut’s new book, The Fan Who Knew Too Much. …

… In One Person is certainly as intelligent as Irving’s earlier work, and thematically as serious. …

THE WRITINGS of Abdellah Taïa, who positions himself as the ‘first openly gay autobiographical writer”; published in Morocco, clearly transgress the religious customs of his native country. An Arab Melancholia forms part of this larger project as it traces several unrequited love affairs spanning three countries on two continents. …

THIS FIRST NOVEL by Julian E. Farris captures the anti-homosexual hysteria of the 1950’s and early 60’s. The activities of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC), whose mandate was to find “subversives,” including “homosexuals,” form the backdrop for this dramatic story about persecution. …

READING THIS BOOK, which compares the methods and results used by the evangelical Christian weight loss program First Place with those of ex-gay ministries such as Exodus International, I kept thinking about Tina Fey’s adaptation of the book Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002) into the screenplay for Mean Girls. …