THE TITLE of the first chapter in Jorge Olivares’ study of Reinaldo Arenas—“I Scream, Therefore I Am”—is taken from Before Night Falls, which may be, for many North American readers, the only book by Arenas they know, or know of, because they’ve seen the 2000 film starring Javier Bardem. But in Becoming Reinaldo Arenas we also look at novels like …

A FORMER ADMAN, an actor, a prolific writer, and—judging by the cover photo on his latest book—David Leddick is a remarkably well-preserved man in his eighties.

NO STRAIGHT LINES is not a book about Tom of Finland. While the erotic art of Finnish illustrator Touko Laaksonen makes a brief appearance in this book, Justin Hall is primarily concerned with the cultural underground that GLBT comics have documented—and the political alternatives that they have imagined—from the late 1960s to the present.

The End Of San Francisco is an episodic memoir in which readers are brought nose-to-page with a narrative mélange of childhood anorexia, sexual abuse, and present-day attempts at healing. Images cascade and collide with one another in an accomplished literary cadenza of salvation.

THIS THOUGHTFUL, unusual book is an absorbing memoir of gay Japanese poet Mutsuo Takahashi’s childhood years. It originally appeared in serialized form in 1969 and was published as a book the following year. In the twelve chapters, Takahashi looks over formative moments of his youth and examines the ripples they have had in his later life.