A Time for Speed
“YES, ABSOLUTELY, this was the greatest day of my life,” declares Trisha Driscoll, the fourteen-year-old outer suburbanite narrator of Michelle Tea’s latest whirlwind street-girl adventure, Rose of No Man’s Land. …
MoreBrowsing: Return Trips
July – August, 2006
Merrily We Roll Along
FUNNY, MOVING, FURIOUS, and dazzling, Eleanor Lerman’s Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (Sarabande, 2005) sounds the note of the times, the era of American Imperialism, the days of our Bush-filled lives. Lerman is able to capture brilliantly the wacky and weary sense of stymied idealism of a generation that grew up hoping for better things for America.
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Short Reviews
Reviews of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals around the World, Bi Men: Coming Out Every Which Way, High Pink: Tex-Mex Fairy Tales, and Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock.
MoreMapping (Bi)Sexual Desire
MY PARTNER in commitment claims he is straight, always has been straight, and could never imagine himself engaging in sexual activity other than with a woman. He says he did not choose his straightness, this is just the way things are.
MoreI Am the Movie
FOLLOWING OUR FLING with the faraway world of gay cowboys, Boy Culture returns us to the more familiar turf of contemporary urban gay lives-and thus to a movie that’s likely to have none of the “crossover” appeal of Brokeback Mountain. But it’s a fine and fascinating movie that explores the complexities of gay life using a suitably complicated storytelling technique.
MorePoland: Gay Pride Parade Is Attacked in Kraków
ON APRIL 28, 2006, “March of Toleration,” a gay parade, was attacked in Kraków. Youth activists of the parliamentary party League of Polish Families threw stones, eggs, bottles, and slurs at peaceful GLBT marchers. …
MoreA Hetero Heartthrob Onscreen…
THE NAME “Ivor Novello” is perhaps only recognized on these shores by those Robert Altman movie fans who saw the director’s stylish British manor house whodunit Gosford Park (2001).
MoreEquality Riders Challenge Campus Homophobia
On April 25th at 7:00 p.m., I arrived at the Hasted-Hunt Gallery in New York City’s gay ghetto, Chelsea, where a robust reception for the youthful participants of Soulforce’s Equality Ride was being held. The Equality Riders, some of whom have been the victims of hate crimes and expelled from Christian colleges because of their sexual orientation, are a bold band of young activists who have traveled across the country …
MoreWhat Ode to Billy Joe (the Movie) Disclosed in ’76
Can three decades have passed since I sat in a darkened Manhattan cinema transfixed by the cherubic-faced Robby Benson giving the performance of a lifetime as the innocent and emotionally troubled Billy Joe in the movie Ode to Billy Joe? Any gay person watching that landmark flick could immediately identify with the conflicted protagonist and both sympathize and empathize with his plight.
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Becoming a Man (it’s harder than it looks)
FROM SHAKESPEARE to Mrs. Doubtfire, gender deception as a plot device usually has a predictable trajectory. The elaborate subterfuge, no matter how it’s initially conceived, ends up revealing more to the deceiver than s/he ever anticipated. After much hand-wringing, not to mention comedy, the costume comes off, the truth comes out, hearts are (perhaps) broken and mended, and valuable lessons are learned. Much of the same can be said for Norah Vincent’s unique book, Self-Made Man …
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