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Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong
 
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Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong [Hardcover]

John D. Preston (Editor)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)


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Book Description

October 15, 1991
This important and searching book examines the full spectrum of the limitations and possibilities faced by today's gay men--both socially and sexually. More than two dozen writers contribute their experiences on the subjects of belonging, alienation, and community.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Less about geography than the need to belong, these essays by 28 gay writers about their sense of home elucidate the adolescent disenfranchisement of gay males. Many of the writers migrated from "little towns that were on the way to somewhere else," as George S. Snyder observes in "North East, Pennsylvania" to larger urban communities where, writes Philip Gambone in "Wakefield, Massachusetts," they can "put together lives and families in new and different ways." Stephen Saylor's need to give his own small town a pseudonym ("Amethyst, Texas") stands as a paradigm of the discomforts of gay identity. Locations range from cliched gay meccas to the prefabricated uranium processing town of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the ethnic ghettos of Mexican Gardenland in Sacramento and Cuban Little Miami, where, for writers of ethnic or religious minorities, being gay only compounds their lack of entitlement. These thoughtful, moving recollections about coming home rather than coming out offer readers guidance and affirmation. BOMC and QPB selections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Believing that "the context within which we grow up helps determine how we see the world," Preston asked 28 gay writers to consider their hometowns, either their birthplace, or the place they've chosen to live as adults. Among the wide-ranging essays are Michael Nava's recollection of his family dynamics in the poor Mexican community of Gardenland, Sacramento, California; Harlan Greene's bittersweet reminiscence of growing up Jewish in Charleston, South Carolina; and Lev Raphael's piece on establishing a home with his lover in Okemos, Michigan. Illustrating an increase over the last 30 years in the options of how and where gay men choose to live, these consistently powerful writings, poignantly personal, achieve a universality in their themes of alienation and community.
- James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 366 pages
  • Publisher: Dutton; 1st edition (October 15, 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0525933530
  • ISBN-13: 978-0525933533
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,439,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Les K Wright was awarded a four-year National Merit Scholarship and a New York State Regents Scholarship to attend the State University of New York at Albany, where he majored in Comparative Literature, with concentrations in German and Russian. He attended the Universities of Würzburg (1 year) and Tübingen (4 years), and completed his MA and PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. Co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California, and founder of the Bear History Project, Les K. Wright taught Humanities, English, and Film Studies at Mount Ida College, where he received tenure in 1999. He has also taught German and Russian (Hamilton College), and Human Sexuality (Worcester State).

He is the editor and co-author or two books, The Bear Book and The Beak Book II, and has contributed to several other anthologies, including Hometowns: Gay Men Write about Where They Belong and Bears on Bears, among others. He reviews film for CultureVulture.net. At present he lives with his husband in Humboldt County, California. He is featured in Dan Hunt's documentary video Bear Run. Also see: Les K. Wright Papers, Human Sexuality Collection, Cornell University.

 

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5.0 out of 5 stars Superb essays on gay writers' sense of where they are from, September 19, 2002
The late John Preston's collections of essays by American gay male writers about where they live now or lived when they were growing up is always interesting and often insightful. Among other things, it shows that the elite (creationist) discourse about social construction remains very far from the lived experience of even articulate and reflective natives. Michael Nava's memoir of Sacramento and Jesse Monteagudo's of Miami struck me tas the most poignant and insightful. The absence of any Asian-Americans was noticeable. It would be interesting to know if American lesbian writers have similar senses of place and to link these splendid accounts to theories of cognition of place, but these are both other projects.
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