She’s Got the Look
Unsuitable is likely to surprise and enlighten even readers with an extensive knowledge of the history of women-loving women. It would make a great basis for a documentary film.
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Lady Day of the Night
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 Singular Man
Isherwood’s early life resembles a Masterpiece Theatre period drama.
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The Fall of the House of Wilde
The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts, focuses on Oscar Wilde’s long-suffering wife Constance and their two young boys, Cyril and Vyvyan, as they cope with Oscar’s philandering and the aftermath of his trials and exile.
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Who’s Left on the Right?
Coming Out Republican ends with a brief vignette about Donald Trump’s lack of more than a pro forma interest in the anti-gay agenda. There is little conservative about Mr. Trump, whose blaring, elephantine ruckus conserves nothing and damages institutions as old as the nation. We are left wondering whether most of today’s Republicans are in fact conservative.
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A Film of Its Time, or Way Ahead of It
Winter Kept Us Warm is long overdue for a reassessment. As Canadian film historian, critic, and gay rights activist Thomas Waugh told Dupuis: “It’s so important for a film like this to be preserved, because it really speaks to what it was like to be gay in this time and place. It’s a way to pass on to future generations who have no other way to access it.” Happily, you can judge for yourself: the film is available for viewing on YouTube and on Internet Archive.
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Fruit of the Syrian Diaspora
THREE NEW BOOKS, two novels and a memoir, help reveal the struggles and victories of LGBT Syrians. For all the beauty of the country, Syria is a land of horrific oppression, where gay men in particular, fearing exposure from the police and informers, must find secret places for sexual encounters or social interaction. They remind us of the promise of the Arab Spring and the crackdown and refugee crisis that followed, which affected so many people’s lives.
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Putting Broadway on the Silver Screen
Maya Cantu’s meticulously researched biography, Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes, reveals the extent to which Ropes based his backstage novels on his own Broadway experiences.
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Poems of Age and Loss
PERHAPS there is no one as romantic, or as wistful, as a poet in old age. Likewise there is nothing that spurs a poet’s ruminations so profoundly as loss. Three new collections explore old age and loss in various ways (one in an almost uncategorizable way), each with varying degrees of effectiveness.
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Muses of the Boudoir
Esther Pressoir is both an engrossing biography, with its roots in serious research, and a beautifully illustrated art book. It showcases the many modes in which Pressoir worked: lithography, etchings, linocuts, scratchboard, watercolors, oils, and more.
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