January – February, 2010
THE OTHERS is a trance-like excursion into contemporary Saudi Arabian life, where divisions between people inform every aspect of social behavior. Mysterious and commonplace, nationalist yet saturated with American popular culture, Saudi Arabia is a place that makes for a journey both sensuous and strange. And its exploration of lesbian sexuality places it instantly at odds with the extreme social conservatism of the Saudi regime.
MoreBORN on August 6, 1930, in New York City, Martin Duberman graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1952, and earned a masters and a doctorate in history from Harvard in 1953 and 1957. His first book, a biography of Charles Francis Adams, won the coveted Bancroft Prize in 1962, after which he spent nearly a decade teaching at Princeton, while also debuting his first play, In White America, which portrayed the Negro experience in the United States. It opened to critical acclaim and had over 500 performances Off Broadway.
MoreWITH HIS ANTI-WAR NOVEL ALF, from the year 1929, the Leipzig writer
Bruno Vogel (1898-1987) acquired a prominent place in gay literary
history. The novel, which Vogel himself subtitled “A sketch,” describes
the love between two high school students, which ends in tragedy. It is
the time of the First World War.
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THE HOUR BETWEEN turned into several hours of guilty pleasure. Sebastian Stuart’s coming-of-age story, set in a private, residential high school, brings together Arthur and Katrina, the Will and Grace of secondary education. (He’s gay and she’s flighty.) Their maturing process is set against the battle of administrators at the school.
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