Summer Escapes: ‘Sanctuary’
THE IMPULSE for any minority to seek out safe spaces or sanctuaries exists in proportion to the oppression they suffer in their social world. From the Catacombs of Rome…More
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A Quarterly of One’s Own
DECADENT WOMEN Yellow Book Lives by Jad Adams Reaktion Books. 388 ages, $30. SET IN THE OFFICES of a Victorian magazine that he edited, many of Anthony Trollope’s later…More
An Exhibit to Revisit
A new catalogue for About Face published by Monacelli Press includes elucidating essays and texts by Julian Carter, Anthony Cianciolo, Amelia Jones, Ava L. J. Kim, Joshua Chambers-Letson, Christopher Reed, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Dagmawi Woubshet. This lushly designed book with 300 illustrations is proof of concept for Katz’ curatorial vision.
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Of Bars and Bookstores
FOR LESBIANS of a certain age, reading June Thomas’ A Place of Our Own may bring on a wave of nostalgia, especially the parts about the 1970s and ’80s. Thomas has written a breezy yet substantial history of six types of spaces that have been important to our culture: lesbian bars, feminist bookstores, the softball diamond, lesbian land, feminist sex-toy stores, and vacation destinations. Each sort of space has its own unique vibe, but they all share a history of lesbians trying, and often failing, to make it in a heteronormative capitalistic society while prioritizing lesbian feminist ideals. The efforts were often heroic and the results transformative in the lives of the women who spent time in these spaces.
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Readers’ thoughts.
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Christopher Durang, Satirist of Everything Holy
PLAYWRIGHT CHRISTOPHER DURANG, who passed away on April 2, 2024, at the age of 75, was one of the American theater’s most celebrated satirists. His plays could be hysterically funny and deeply disturbing, in a style he described as “absurdist comedy married to real feelings.” Among the targets of his Obie Award-winning works were religious dogma, psychoanalysis, and dysfunctional families, all critiqued from a distinctly queer perspective.
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‘Everybody Was Somebody There’
WE TEND TO FORGET that Andy Warhol was a writer, sort of. During his lifetime, he published several books, notably a: A Novel (1968), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A…More
Poet Sjohnna McCray Left Us Rapture
WHEN Cincinnati-born poet, essayist, and teacher Sjohnna McCray succumbed to diabetes last summer, barely making it into his fifties, he left behind a trove of remarkable work. Much of it is included in his award-winning book Rapture, a debut poetry collection that plumbed the complexities of growing up in a family with aliases—the studious son, the hardworking Vietnam veteran father, and the demure Asian mother: “In my family we all had our secret identities.” As someone who also grew up with secrets, McCray’s work speaks to me.
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Keith Haring in the Hands of Brad Gooch
This interview was conducted by telephone shortly before the release of Radiant.
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