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The Dictionnaire is devoted to the meanings of just 12 words over 900 years, from “sodomite” to “queer.”

IN MAINSTREAM LGBT CULTURE, a person’s identity is often defined by the act of “coming out” to family, friends, and others. Many Native Americans who identify as Two-Spirit see it differently. Cree Two-Spirit scholar Alex Wilson describes the Two-Spirit journey as one of “coming in,” a reframing that shifts the focus from public disclosure toMore

Today, African LGBT activists are reclaiming these legacies. In Angola, organizations like Iris, an LGBT rights group, draw on chibado traditions to advocate for trans rights, hosting cultural festivals that echo ancient rituals.

Gender fluidity is deeply embedded in African spirituality, which included androgynous and intersex deities.

EDMUND WHITE AND I met at a gay party in Greenwich Village in 1966. Ed had brought his friend Marilyn Schaefer, and I was with my soon-to-be-wife Ann Jones, both of us doing graduate work at Columbia. We exchanged contact info, and within a week Ed and I met again—just me, not Ann. There wasMore

            Now more than ever, it is crucial for queer people to see themselves reflected in public spaces as valued members of society—past, present, and future. Equally important is the broader society’s need to understand that gender and sexual diversity are not “woke” concepts but essential parts of our shared history and humanity. I cannotMore

I FIRST LEARNED of Max Ewing while researching gay photographer George Platt Lynes. Ewing makes several appearances in the Lynes narrative, both as a young man who moved alongside Lynes in New York’s bohemian circles and as a fellow artist. Ewing used portrait photos to create his own pantheon of artists, movie stars, personalities, andMore

GAY POET Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) has been called the greatest Greek poet of the 20th century, a serious statement about a nation that produced Yiannis Ritsos and Nobel laureates Odysseus Elytis and George Seferis. Cavafy did not actually visit Greece until his late thirties ...

THERE REALLY IS no point in trying to separate Christopher Isherwood’s writing from the details of his life. His prolific use of those details has led critics to classify his works as examples of “autofiction.”

Short reviews of The Paris Express, The Art Spy, Memoir of a Reluctant Giant, Julian’s Debut, The Portable Feminist Reader, and Love in the Lav

THE IMAGE beckoned: a closely shaved head in profile, double hoop earrings, handwritten neck tattoo above a crisp Oxford collar, typography following the curve of the cranium: Love Me Tender. It was French writer Constance Debré featured on the cover of her first novel translated into English. While the graphics grabbed me, it was theMore

JAMES BALDWIN The Life Album by Magdalena J. Zaborowska Yale Univ. Press. 320 pages, $28.   IN HER NEW BIOGRAPHY of James Baldwin, Magdalena J. Zaborowska is hopelessly in love with her subject, but this doesn’t distract her from probing deep into the messy complexities and vulnerabilities that shadowed Baldwin throughout his life. She admitsMore

Desire as Praxis was based on Dubé’s doctoral dissertation at Montréal’s Concordia University. The book includes significant amounts of academic language but also lots of interesting information and ideas that a general reader can appreciate.

I could recommend Erica Rutherford based solely for the book’s wealth of vibrant photos. However, it’s the story of Rutherford’s life and the analysis of her works that make the book so worthwhile. I suspect ...

The author traces his admiration for the legendary singer-songwriter to his solitary childhood in New Jersey.

MIDNIGHT AT THE CINEMA PALACE, Christopher Tradowsky’s debut novel, showcases a love triangle between a gay man and a couple whose sexuality is harder to define, especially given its 1993 setting.

PART MEMOIR, part travelog, and part journalistic inquiry, Gaar Adams’ Guest Privileges embraces multiple genres.

THEATER KID is a touching memoir of Jeffrey Seller’s journey from poverty to success as the producer of award-winning but unconventional musicals, offering an entertaining, informative recounting of meetings with colorful investors and theater personalities and discussing lesser-known aspects of producing shows, including advertising and ticketing. He also describes his first gay relationship and, havingMore

STEPPE OPENS with a description of the great Russian sea of grass as seen from the window of an airplane, but most of this short but haunting novel takes place on a highway—a highway the narrator, a young lesbian poet, shares with her father as he drives a load of pipe in his truck fromMore

In his new memoir, Where the Pulse Lives, John Loughery has captured what it was like for him to come out just as the Stonewall riots cracked open the oppression of LGBT people.

MUCH LIKE her four-decade careers in literature and activism, Sarah Schulman’s The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity is an act of radical compassion.

THE EXHILARATION of visiting Queer Lens: A History of Photography at Los Angeles’ Getty Center begins at the museum’s front steps, which have been painted in rainbow stripes with the words “Celebrate Love” sweeping across them.

AS A CLOSETED TEENAGER in the late 1960s, I came across a glossy 50¢ magazine at a Boston newsstand that spoke to me in a coded language I intuitively understood. It was called After Dark and marketed itself as “the national entertainment magazine.” It could just as well have been labeled “the national gay entertainmentMore

Many of Vilanch’s vivid anecdotes are almost surreal, and he acknowledges that most of the shows would have been forgotten had they not been granted new life on YouTube. Along with his stinging wit, Vilanch is a tremendous raconteur. His new memoir is essential reading for any retro TV enthusiast.

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Discrimination against Dalit trans people dates back to the colonial era, when the Raj criminalized gender-nonconforming people from marginalized castes.

  WHAT FOLLOW are “ethnographic journeys” not only in the sense that they transport us to non-Western cultures, but also because they represent a personal journey for writers in search of gender identities that were extinguished by colonial powers. In a half-dozen articles, we hear from scholars and members of these cultures about what wasMore

IN THE BUSTLING Kathmandu Valley, nestled among ancient shrines and crumbling stupas, lie quiet but potent testaments to a forgotten truth. Long before the rise of Western gender vocabularies or activist hashtags, Nepal recognized not two, but six—or even seven—distinct gender identities.

Poems by Shanley Smith-Poole, Jonathan Bracker, and Patrick Kindig.