January-February 2025
ALLEN BRATTON is an American writer whose first novel, Henry Henry, transfers Shakespeare’s “Prince Hal” (Henry V, 1386–1422) to the year 2014, when old Catholic families and a hereditary upper class still exist in England, but theology and rank seem increasingly irrelevant to the issues of the day.
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The gay community is quite right to claim Baldwin with pride, as we’d be hard-pressed to find a better symbol for our own stubborn unwillingness to be forgotten.
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McKinney does an admirable job of reframing much of the scandal and paying homage to the genius of Pee-wee Herman. The book celebrates that such a singular, queer, and transgressive character ever existed, and the author’s sadness at Reubens’ passing is palpable. It’s a fitting tribute, one that Reubens richly deserves.
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Funny, ultimately moving, smartly written, and insightful, In Tongues speaks a message well worth listening to, in the voice of a fine novelist.
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The Lilac People is a moving, carefully crafted novel with memorable characters trapped in the most inhumane circumstances.
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James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance celebrates the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth in 1924. The exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington is a small but radical combination of faces and events that focus on Baldwin’s Civil Rights activities during the 1960s along with the activists he knew and shared his politics with, including Martin Luther King, Jr., gay activist Bayard Rustin, playwright Lorraine Hansberry (who was largely closeted), singer Nina Simone, poet Langston Hughes, and many others.
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NOVELISTIC AND EPISODIC, Oliver Radclyffe’s memoir Frighten the Horses is written with verve, humor, and specificity. His story begins in an affluent British family, where Oliver was raised to take his state of privilege for granted. Later in life, however, he would have to contend with the social challenges of a different kind of status: his transmasculine identity.
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In her two new books, simultaneously published, Joy Ladin continues to engage us in both the depth of her experience and its expansiveness, offering us a reflecting mirror to our own queer selves in this intensely challenging time.
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Mama provides an unflinching look at the difficult circumstance of a Black family in struggle and of a young woman’s efforts to care for her half-brother in the midst of it all.
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Haring’s populism, his desire to bring art to the masses, serves as the most prominent theme in both shows. This is captured most succinctly in the title of the show Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody (which traveled from Los Angeles and Toronto to arrive in Minneapolis, and features an expansive catalogue).
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