BORN THIS WAYScience, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movementby Joanna WuestUniv. of Chicago. 293 pages, $32.50 The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-August 2024 LGBT activism has a longstanding relationship with the illiberal notion of being “Born This Way” (as gay, lesbian, etc.)—illiberal, because it argues that the sexualities behind the queer alphabet soup are…
It’s Love versus Sex in White’s Latest The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June 2012 Jack Holmes and His Friend: A Novel by Edmund White Bloomsbury. 400 pages, $26. TRUST EDMUND WHITE not to shy away from sex. Now, in his latest novel Jack Holmes and his Friend, the master of the queer eye directs…
What Was Forster Thinking? The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-Aug. 2015 “ARCTIC SUMMER,” the title of an unfinished novel by E. M. Forster, well suits this fictional biography of the English writer. It’s hard to imagine a writer further away from the romantic image of the struggling, mercurial artist. Forster was born in 1879 and…
The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June, 2015 The bisexual’s dilemma Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow Houghton Mifflin. 240 pages, $27. The American Dream is not one but rather a kaleidoscope of dreams; this is the rural Southern version. Charles Blow’s life to date can be comfortably divided into two roughly equal…
Legally Male The Gay and Lesbian Review, March-April 2015 MASCULINITY is a flexible enough concept, and America is a large enough country, that the essays in this collection cannot be reduced to a single dimension or formula. American Guy, edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, grew out of an academic conference of the law…
Homo Politicus The Gay and Lesbian Review, Sep.- Oct. 2015 Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank Farrar, Straus and Giroux 400 pages, $28. GAY, JEWISH, and left-handed, Barney Frank likes to say that he’s a natural advocate for minorities. At the same time, had he not been…
What Makes an Economist Great? The Gay and Lesbian Review, Nov.-Dec. 2015 Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes by Richard Davenport-Hines Basic Books, 432 pages, $29.99 JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES would not make a great Hollywood protagonist, at least based on Richard Davenport-Hines’ biography. It’s hard to identify a breakthrough moment, any dramatic shift,…
Review of Male Sex Work and Society Edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott Harrington Park Press. 512 pages, $50. The Gay and Lesbian Review, Jan.-Feb., 2015 ANY BOOK about male prostitution is bound to call to mind the classic 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, in which Joe Buck, a dishwasher-cum-gigolo from Texas played by Jon…
The Gay and Lesbian Review, July-August, 2013 The freedom fighters’ historian The Martin Duberman Reader: The Essential Historical, Biographical, and Autobiographical Writings New Press. 384 pages, $21.95 THIS COMPENDIUM of Martin Duberman’s published writings has funneled into a single volume samples from an oeuvre that includes some twenty books and numerous essays written over a…
Strange Man in a Strange Land The Gay & Lesbian Review, Sep.-Oct. 2013 Review of Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America by Roy Morris Jr. Belknap Press. 264 pages, $26.95 THE TITLE of Declaring His Genius refers to Oscar Wilde’s notorious remark upon landing in New York in 1882 (“I have nothing to…