Alexander’s book is the first full-length biography of Billie Holiday since Donald Clarke’s Wishing on the Moon (1994). Holiday herself wanted to title her autobiography “Bitter Crop,” the last two words of her signature song, the still shocking “Strange Fruit.” Focusing on the last year of her life as a unifying thread, Bitter Crop shifts backward and forward in time, moving briskly through the singer’s life.
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A new biography, Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta GarboI, by feminist historian Lois Banner—who’s the cofounder of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians—presents Greta Louisa Gustafson (1905–1990) as Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. So much has been written about the actress that the Hollywood dream factory exploited as a marketable commodity during the 1920s and ’30s, when Garbo was billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” that it’s a challenge to say something new. Banner’s book offers a feminist rehash of Garbo’s childhood and reprises the well-known struggles on her quest for cinematic fame and financial freedom.
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The title Fire Shut Up in My Bones is taken from the book of Jeremiah, and the prophet’s next words are: “and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
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Part One begins with an essay by John D’Emilio, one of the most distinguished scholars of LGBT history in America.
MoreEDWARD CARPENTER (1844-1929) was the most important early pioneer of gay liberation. Before him, writing in German, Heinrich Hössli had defended the “male love of the Greeks” (1836-38) and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had decried the persecution of “male-male love” (1864-1880).
MoreMY PARTNER in commitment claims he is straight, always has been straight, and could never imagine himself engaging in sexual activity other than with a woman. He says he did not choose his straightness, this is just the way things are.
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Reviews of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals around the World, Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way, High Pink: Tex-Mex Fairy Tales, and Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock.
MoreIT WAS SEEING the movie Kinsey that triggered a heated discussion about bisexuality between me and my girlfriend Meg, whom I had “accused” of being bisexual in light of her history of dating men several years earlier. She vehemently denied that this earlier life made her bisexual, giving rise to that age-old discussion of just what makes a person “bi”: …
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