The Gay & Lesbian Review

Olivia: Dorothy Strachey’s Sapphic Awakening Strachey’s depiction of Olivia’s sexual and erotic longings is what makes this novel remarkable. Olivia’s “thinly veiled passions” erupt into all that goes with first love: obsession, jealousy, idealization, longing, endless waiting, despair, disillusionment. Strachey takes the reader through all of these stations of the cross of first love.
How Vidal Slipped City Through In every edition of The City and the Pillar, there is a dedication page that reads: “For the memory of J.T.” The initials stand for Jimmy Trimble, and in Palimpsest Vidal reveals that Jimmy Trimble was the one great love of his life, the only person who had ever made him feel whole.
The Branding of ‘Oscar Wilde’ At age 24, he was already known for his Æsthetic affectations and pithy quips. Wilde was perhaps the first person to be famous for being famous.
Those Wilder Nights IN THESE FEVERED DAYS, Martha Ackmann has hit upon an ingenious method for retelling the extraordinarily well-documented yet maddeningly uncertain life of Emily Dickinson. Each of her ten chapters focuses on a significant decision that Dickinson made on a particular day, such as choosing to leave Mount Holyoke Female Academy rather than make the public commitment to Christ as her personal savior as required of all first-year students …
Photos Elegant and Elegiac When Rhein shows Brown his portraits—sinewy young men, sometimes with pierced ears, nipples, and penises—he calls them by name: “William, Jeffery, John, Andrew, Joe, Russell.” Some were lovers, some friends. Some are living, some are dead. Self-portraits show Rhein sitting or lying nude on a primitive wooden bench. At other times, he appears next to his subjects, kissing them in a rumpled bed, or helping to insert an IV.
Switched-On Bach Has a Back Story Before creating the music for Kubrick’s film, [Wendy] Carlos had released an album called Switched-On Bach that featured a number of Bach’s works “electrified” via synthesizer. To this day, it is still the bestselling classical album of all time.

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January 15, 2021

Rainbow LaGuardia Showcases LGBT Stories Beyond the Classroom

by Patricia Silva
Rainbow LaGuardia is a virtual exhibition featuring interviews with 27 LGBT members of the faculty and staff at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City. Organized as an interdisciplinary project combining oral history and photography, Rainbow LaGuardia’s participants share some of their most defining experiences and observations as LGBT people.

December 10, 2020

Transgender Visibility in Politics Key to Overall Well-Being of LGBT Community in 2021

by Dr. Sherman Leis
The growing number of transgender politicians elected and named to high-profile positions signals new opportunities to gain a voice in government in order to achieve more equitable legal protections and healthcare for the whole community, especially those who are not as visible…

December 9, 2020

Let’s all go to the John

Film director John Waters has donated his entire art collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art, and in return he required only that they name the museum’s restrooms after him.

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January 13, 2021

Three Dads and a Baby

by Ian Jenkins
Few parents have to go to court to win parental rights. Parentage is assumed for almost everyone—but if your kids are carried by a gestational surrogate, a judge has to grant you custody. The process usually goes so smoothly that the “intended parents” don’t need to appear in court. But we did…

January 8, 2021

The No-Shows at Our Wedding

by Eddy Boudel Tan
I married the man I love seven years ago in front of our friends. My parents chose not to be there…

January 6, 2021

Out at the Main Gate in Washington, DC

by Paul Genega
I WAS A FRESHMEN at Georgetown, America’s oldest Catholic university, when I realized I was gay, so it seems fitting that my coming out story should sound a lot like Saul of Tarsus on the road to becoming St. Paul—lightning bolt of recognition, life-altering epiphany…

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Book Reviews

Short Reviews

Brief reviews of Stories to Sing in the Dark, and You Will Love What you Have Killed.

Writing without the Filter

Myles has been called “the rock star of modern poetry.” For their many fans, this book will readily confirm that badge. Others may find For Now bewildering, a labyrinthine ramble with no real payoff. Myles is aware of the risks they’re taking. Literature, they say, “is not a moral project except in this profound aspect of wasting time.” Those who choose to “waste time” with this book should be ready for some surprising, even profound, literary adventures.

Photos Elegant and Elegiac

When Rhein shows Brown his portraits—sinewy young men, sometimes with pierced ears, nipples, and penises—he calls them by name: “William, Jeffery, John, Andrew, Joe, Russell.” Some were lovers, some friends. Some are living, some are dead. Self-portraits show Rhein sitting or lying nude on a primitive wooden bench. At other times, he appears next to his subjects, kissing them in a rumpled bed, or helping to insert an IV.

‘Perhaps I left my heart in too many places.’

Repackaged conference papers tend to make for dreadful books, readable only by specialists with magnifying glasses. Happily, Isherwood in Transit is much better than many collections and contains a number of chapters that will be of interest not only to gay readers but also to those interested in the milieux through which Isherwood passed, notably Germany and Japan.

Those Wilder Nights

THESE FEVERED DAYS Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann Norton. 278 pages, $26.95 IN THESE FEVERED DAYS, Martha Ackmann has hit upon an ingenious method for retelling the extraordinarily well-documented yet maddeningly uncertain life of Emily Dickinson. Each of her ten chapters focuses on a significantMore

Subcontinental Drift

In clear, easy prose, and with an engaging plot, A Burning dramatizes the many injustices suffered by so many Indian people who are too poor to afford reputable doctors, attorneys, or agents, and the connections and moral compromises needed to get ahead. In depicting the inequalities in Indian society, the book resembles Arundhati Roy’s novels, but also depicts the power of social media for good and ill.