Current Issue

Stars Seen in Person is a good start toward reviving Wieners. Another step in this direction was the publication last year of a collection titled Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books).
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In Cursed Legacy, Spotts does an impressive job of capturing Klaus Mann’s legacy as a novelist, essayist, editor, playwright, journalist, political activist, gay rights activist, war correspondent, and American soldier. He also offers considerable insight into the emotions, the suffering, and the dreams of this multi-faceted individual. While he gained some renown for his accomplishmentsMore
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  Same-Sex Sexuality in Later Medieval English Culture by Tom Linkinen Amsterdam University Press 334 pages, $99.     IN 1394, according to London court records, one John “Eleanor” Rykener was arrested after being caught cross-dressing and having sex with a man in a public stall. Rykener admitted to other acts of prostitution. He described livingMore
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Short Reviews
Reviews of the books: Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution, Dog Men, and Some Go Hungry and the film: Clambake : 30 Years of Women’s Week in Provincetown.
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THIS three-part literary portrait of the renowned poet Amy Lowell in light of her lesbian relationship with Ada Russell, her lifetime companion, lover, supporter, and muse—whom Lowell lovingly called “the lady of the moon”—breathes new life into Amy Lowell’s stature and significance.
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  Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934 by Laura Horak Rutgers. 311 pages, $29.95     EVEN IN ITS TITLE, Girls Will Be Boys sets out to correct past takes on cinematic representations of cross-dressing. Most of the writing about the issue has focused on men dressed as women. Laura Horak’sMore
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Brazilian Bombshells  Padlock Icon
Gregory Mitchell’s study of male sex workers in Brazil, the muscular machos for rent in certain saunas in Rio de Janeiro really are putting on an act, trying to match themselves to the fantasy that tourists from America and Europe have of Brazilian men.
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Cracks in the Last Bastion  Padlock Icon
Cyd Zeigler, founder of Outsports magazine, argues that a decade and a half after a spate of homophobic incidents on the courts, on the fields, and in the locker rooms of American sports— LGBT athletes are beginning to enjoy a certain amount of acceptance.
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The WOW of Theater  Padlock Icon
These two books on overlapping topics are a pleasure to hold and to look at. Memories of the Revolution is a standard-sized paperback with a collection of photos in the center, and The Only Way Home Is through the Show is a large paperback art book, lavishly illustrated throughout.
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Hide is a wonderful first novel. Full of humor and tragedy, the book reveals the sacrifices that people are often willing to make to keep their love, even if they must hide it from the world.
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IN THIS MEMOIR, Castillo writes about her childhood in Chicago when it was the crucible of the Civil Rights movement, about motherhood and the complications it inspires, and about life as a bisexual Chicana feminist author. Black Dove is stunning in its range of interests and subversive for its linkage of the intimately personal withMore
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Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera features more than eighty of Tseng’s large-format black-and-white landscape photographs, as well as color portraits of artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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  Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond Edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford & MaryLouise Patterson University of California Press. 440 pages, $27.95     THROUGHOUT his prolific career Langston Hughes addressed volatile issues of racism, poverty, and war. Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red ScareMore
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Firefighters were met by a grisly, horrific scene. The lifeless body of Bill Larson, pastor of the newly formed local Metropolitan Community Church, was wedged in a window, his face and right arm protruding stiffly over the street. Several bodies were huddled in a corner, burned and fused to each other. Many of the deadMore
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  The Judas Kiss A play by David Hare Directed by Neil Armfield Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto, March 22–May 1 Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC, May 11–June 12     THE MOST POPULAR playwright of his day, Oscar Wilde’s professional reputation was temporarily overshadowed at the end of his life by his private notoriety—as eitherMore
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In fact, Bacon tells Peppiatt in Francis Bacon in Your Blood, Dyer simply saw the painter and his pals in a club in London and introduced himself, because they seemed to be having a good time.
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  PIER PAOLO PASOLINI (1922–1975) did not actively do much for gay rights in Italy, and yet he contributed to progress inadvertently by appearing in headlines over and over again as the country’s most controversial gay person. One reason that he didn’t do much for gay rights is that he was personally homophobic. He sawMore
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A STORY often repeated in film history places Groucho Marx at the premiere of the 1949 Cecil B. DeMille epic Samson and Delilah. Posters of the massive, bare-chested Victor Mature served as the visual backdrop for anyone entering the theater that evening. After the movie’s debut, DeMille asked Groucho what he thought of the film.More
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BTW
They’re Back!  Over the years we’ve covered our share of anti-gay clergymen and politicians who were caught engaging in just the kind of activities that they habitually railed against in sermons and speeches. But such stories have fallen off in recent years. It was almost as if these guys were finally getting the message thatMore
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Readers’ Thoughts
  Gay Trauma Is Real: A Rebuttal To the Editor: I was deeply disturbed by what I experienced as the anti-psychological attitude of Ty Geltmaker and James Rosen’s letter in the March-April 2016 issue in response to Douglas Sadownick’s recent letter. In my opinion, Sadownick’s message was centered on how to acknowledge and heal the toxic gayMore
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AT THE PEAK of his vitality, age 38, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was sojourning in Genoa, Italy. He cruised the sandy shores in white slacks, a healthy tan, and a Panama hat. Back in his hotel, he wrote in his notebook: “[I am] experiencing a menacing, heart-rending attack of desire and savage, pent-up surges ofMore
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Later in the 19th century, the first open polemics would be published, and in 1897 the first activist organization would be founded. This brings us to the recently published Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex, by Robert Deam Tobin, Professor of German at Clark University. This is by no means the first book toMore
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[Boswell] argued that the Bible is not hostile to modern understandings of homosexuality, having been misinterpreted by modern readings, and claimed that it wasn’t until the 12th or 13th century that any real hostility toward gay people emerged ...
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I HAVE LONG MARVELED that my hero, the subject of my dissertation and book, Frances Kellor (1873–1952), is not as famous as her contemporary Jane Addams. You’ve probably heard of Addams, who started settlement houses for immigrants, most famously Hull House in Chicago. Kellor worked with immigrants at the same time. And yet, Addams isMore
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  FROM THE STONEWALL INN to the public restroom—what a long, strange trip it has been. It was only a year ago that the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling was handed down. But the ruling did more than give of lesbians and gay men the right to marry; it tacitly condoned sexual practicesMore
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  IN NOVEMBER 2011, an undercover news crew ambushed me and my wife outside an organic butcher’s shop where we were picking up our Thanksgiving turkey. At the time, I was a respected English teacher and rowing coach with more than two decades of teaching experience under my belt. But the only thing the newsMore
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  ON A COLD and drizzly day in San Francisco, Jewelle Gomez, recipient of a Lambda Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the San Francisco Arts Commission, bubbles with lightness and luminescence. The same compassion that drives her work infuses her interactions: she’s concerned about aMore
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