September-October 2007
SARAH SCHULMAN’S latest novel, The Child, is a complex story about people who are caught in the clutches of our society’s systems. The novel follows the lives of two characters, Eva and Stew, whose lives intersect briefly. The plot is advanced in vignettes. Multiple viewpoints, from secondary as well as primary characters, create a sense of ironic distance as the reader watches powerlessly while the characters are propelled headlong into disaster.
MoreThe male nude has been an iconic subject for artists since Classical times, and it remains so today. Few people understand the power and beauty of the male figure better than Douglas Simonson, who has made male nudes the pillar of a successful, three-decades-long painting career. …
More… Mary Coble is a Washington, D.C.-based performance artist. This latest work, Aversion, was performed live, including a live webcast, at Conner Contemporary Art (a D.C. gallery) to a full house. Its purpose was to address the history-and, apparently, ongoing use-of electric shock therapy administered to gays and lesbians as a means of changing their sexual orientation. …
MoreOn May 1, 1991, three same-sex couples in Hawaii asked the court to strike down that state’s marriage licensing law on the grounds that it discriminated against them in violation of the state constitution. They prevailed in the courts but it became an empty victory when the people amended the Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
MoreThe following is adapted from a speech delivered by the author in acceptance of the annual leadership award given for outstanding service to the GLBT community by the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus … The author is the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network … As part of his speech, Mr. Jennings announced that he and his partner … were funding the creation of the Eugene Cummings Prize, to be given for the best paper on LGBT issues at Harvard College each year.
More“I WANT to kill myself sometimes when I think I’m the only person in the world and the part of me that feels that way is trapped inside this body that only bumps into other bodies without ever connecting with the only person in the world trapped inside of them,” Johnny agonizes in Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune (1987). “We gotta connect. We just have to. Or we die.”
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short reviews
MoreFANS of Armistead Maupin’s magnificent “Tales of the City” series have a reading treat awaiting them. As the title of Maupin’s new novel reveals, Michael Tolliver-“Mouse”-is alive.
MoreIn this memoir, which is also a cookbook, [Marusya Bociurkiw] covers some well-traveled territory in lesbian literature-a mildly dysfunctional family that was “full of ghosts,” the struggle of coming out, lesbian love affairs gone wrong, progressive politics-yet her lovely prose style elevates the mundane.
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WITHOUT APOLOGY, without frills-brought to you by Scapegoat Publishing, whose motto is “Blame Us”-Jack Malebranche hacks away at longstanding myths about the gay community in this new book. These myths as he sees them are embedded in the full title of his book, whose four elements I propose to analyze by way of review.
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