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Books on Homosexuality

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DogEar

New Member
Can anyone recommend some good books (fictional or non-fiction) that have to do with homosexuality? Weird question I know, but I just read Prayers for Bobby by Leroy Aarons and it was incredibly moving, and I’m wondering if there are others of its caliber and subject matter that anyone would recommend?
 
DogEar said:
Can anyone recommend some good books (fictional or non-fiction) that have to do with homosexuality? Weird question I know, but I just read Prayers for Bobby by Leroy Aarons and it was incredibly moving, and I’m wondering if there are others of its caliber and subject matter that anyone would recommend?
Click to expand...

There is a movie coming out also I think,Sigourney Weaver plays Bobby's mother.
 
Havelock Ellis wrote a remarkable series of in-depth, no pun intended, sexual studies at the start of the last century, much of which deals with all aspects of homosexuality- second on the list would be Kraft-Ebbing's work.
 
Some great fiction involving homosexuality is written by Michael Cunningham (focus on male homosexuality) or Jeanette Winterson (dealing more with fluidity/androgyny/lesbianism). Michelle Tea is a writer from San Francisco and publishes through small presses, but writes on the subject as well.
 
Quentin Crisp - The Naked Civil Servant.

It's mostly set before homosexuality was legalized. Great book, and the fim with John Hurt as Quentin is excellent.
 
Mel White - Stranger at the Gate was another great read... Not as good as Prayers for Bobby though... That was one of the biggest life changing books I ever read.
 
Don't have a reccomendation for you, but the first book store that I ever saw a "gay interest" section was a Super Crown in La Jolla CA. It was probably back in the mid 90's when I first found it, and it was a pretty well stocked section. Once while browsing in it I kept noticing a beady eyed short man trying to act like he was going to accidently go down the aisle there, but he seemed to keep losing his nerve. He made about four or five attempts before giving up.

EDIT TO ADD: Actually, I do have a reccomendation for you. I have a photo book called Gay Pride by Fred McDarrah. It's a chronological LGBT history book, it even has photos from the night of the Stonewall riots.
 
Biographies of Oscar Wilde and Thomas Mann (in the case of the latter, Anthony Heilbut's excellent book). Death in Venice, then by Mann (although it's not just about sexuality).

The Naked Civil Servant, as already mentioned, is super – very funny in places.

Colm Tóibín's Love in a Dark Time: Gay lives from Wilde to Almodovar, plus the novel, The Blackwater Lightship by the same author.

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books, which are very light and funny, and very humane.

Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a novel with autobiographical elements.

Thom Gunn's poetry – certainly the volume, Man With the Night Sweats, which is very, very moving.

Kiss of the Spiderwoman by Manuel Puig.
 
Trash - Dorothy Allison

Not exactly a book "on" homosexuality or anything attempting to encompass the lifestyle, but it's a collection of short stories about her life growing up as a lesbian after moving away from her incredibly dysfunctional family.
 
I totally agree with the Armistead Maupin recommendation above, I adore his Tales of the City series about Barbary Lane! The Night Listener was a little weird for me but his book Maybe the Moon is also incredible and supposedly a great and funny description of what it is like being a little person.
David Sedaris write hilarious short stories, quite a few of them about being gay.
Unicorn Mountain by Michael Bishop
An Underground Life by Gad Beck (a gay Holocaust survivor)
Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg
Blanche McCrary Boyd- The Revolution of Little Girls
Audre Lorde…The Black Unicorn
I haven't read the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler in years but they may be of some interest.
This is on my to-read shelf: Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked A Revolution by David Carter
 
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