The Shape-Shifting Self
THE MEMOIR has become such a crowded genre these days that one has the right to ask if each addition to its growing shelf warrants the lost trees. Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book, I’m happy to report, passes this test.
MoreBrowsing: September-October 2008
September-October 2008
Blog Posts
Southie Burning
IF YOU LIKED the film Juno and its wise-cracking teen heroine, you’ll enjoy Ann Ahern, the teen protagonist in Stephanie Grant’s new novel. Map of Ireland is a story about a lesbian teen from South Boston and the things she learns about prejudice and love in 1974, the first year of the city’s school busing program to mix students from segregated neighborhoods.
MoreThis Critical Moment
FROM THE STANDPOINT of GLBT rights, it now seems likely—although by no
means certain—that 2008 will be the year in which the political system
caught up to the country. I do not always subscribe to the view that
the public is ahead of the politicians in terms of enlightenment, but
on the question of protecting people against discrimination based on
sexual orientation or gender identity, the voters have been ahead of
the politicians.
MoreGonads in History
IN HER NEW BOOK Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach reveals that the road to the birds and the bees wasn’t just paved with racy feathers and erotically-dripped honey. Over the years, many erroneous beliefs about erogenous zones have been held, including …
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The Emasculation of Henry James
Henry and William were enrolled at Harvard while Bob and Wilkie were sent off to fight in the Civil War.
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Short Reviews
Reviews of On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations about Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film; Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever; Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited; and The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems, 1969 – 2007.
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Shifting Sands
Review of The Ground Under My Feet
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Sibling Revelry
THE TWO oldest children of Thomas Mann, both born in the earliest years of the 20th century, were possessed of enormous intellect, charm, and charisma. They were openly gay in the case of Klaus, bisexual in the case of Erika; and they were decades ahead of their time.
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Back Story to a Life We’ve Read About
About My Life and the Kept Woman is divided into two parts. The first, which runs from his sister’s wedding in 1945 through Rechy’s discharge from the Army in the late 1950’s, contains the most personal writing he has ever published. … The second half of the book is quite different.
MoreA Presidential Election for the Ages
THE MODERN American civil rights movement began at the 1948 Philadelphia Democratic convention when a hitherto unknown Minneapolis mayor, Hubert Humphrey, rose to defend the platform committee’s minority report on civil rights.
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