Customer Reviews

Gay. Lesbian. Bisexual. and Transgender Myths from the Arapaho to the Zuñi (American Indian Studies, V. 13)

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You may want to read this alongside other books on Two Spirits and LGBT Native Americans. The author compiles stories and myths pertaining to this group.

Too many books and documentaries say "LGBT" and then just focus on one or two of the four groups in that term. This book is different. All four groups come up within these stories.

I think a scholar named Dover wrote an article saying there was homophobia in Ancient Greece and that the modern perception that Ancient Greece was support of male homosexuality may be overblown. Here too, not every tale is what we would call gay-friendly. For example, one man kills his wife for getting busy with a woman. Men who turn in to women, in some tales, are sad and commit suicide due to it. This work does not just include the accepting and feel-good stories; it includes those myths that could make many progressive readers cringe.

This book felt like a scrapbook. Scrapbooks may be great, but they tend not to have beginnings, middles, and endings that tie everything into a nice package. Here, two-spirit tales are often hacked out of larger tales. Some things don't translate well. Many myths start in the middle of action, rather than the beginning.

The front cover has a photo of Osch-Tisch and many readers should try to find out facts about him/her. It provides visual proof of the myths and verifies that there were accepting tribes pre-colonialism.