THE DEDICATION PAGE of Voices Rising bears a quotation from James Baldwin’s 1979 novel Just Above My Head. “Our history is each other. That is our only guide.” The book goes on to provide the raw material out of which such history is formed …

… Laura Dillon wanted to be man when she grew up. Laura always felt that she was born in the wrong body, and in The First Man-Made Man, by Pagan Kennedy, we learn that Laura got what she wanted-and a whole lot more. …

THIS ACCOMPLISHED FIRST NOVEL by a bibliographer of Canadian lesbian fiction is classified by the publisher as a “lesbian mystery.” However, it could as well be described as a black comedy of manners, a road-trip novel, a study of grief in various forms, a realistic lesbian love story, or a novel of development.

… This case sets the stage for Cristian Berco’s fine study of homosexual sodomy in Spain from the 1500’s to the 1700’s. Working from 500 Inquisition trial proceedings involving homosexual sodomy in Aragon, Spain, Berco situates these court cases within the complexities of the period’s social landscape.

THE 1970’s was the golden age of gay bar guides, those little publications with pictures, personal ads, and, week after week, articles by local activists and commentators. Those articles, now mostly lost, helped form GLBT communities in towns all over America. Jack Nichols wrote hundreds of such pieces.

IN 1955, Rose Bamberger, a Filipina lesbian, brought together four couples to form a “secret society of lesbians” in San Francisco. She wanted to be able to dance, drink, and socialize without the fear of harassment or arrest that homosexuals risked at the bars. At the first meeting someone suggested that the group be called the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) (bil-EE-tis).

ONE HUNDRED YEARS after the death of Oscar Wilde in 1900, all of his known surviving letters-1,562 of them-were published, edited by his grandson, Merlin Holland (with the late Rupert Hart-Davis). Now Holland has edited a selection of those letters …