Travel literature can offer a delicious way of anticipating, enhancing, and savoring your travels, especially if the theme coincides with your own experiences. In Gay Travels: A Literary Companion, Lucy Jane Bledsoe has compiled 17 travel stories by some great contemporary gay writers, wherein they explore Russia and Tangier, India and Israel, Central Africa, Indiana, and a multitude of gay travel experiences. Philip Gambone goes to China, "determined to find gay life in Beijing"; Achim Nowak meets an Indian boy in Tobago whose "eyes shine so impossibly black, like bursting embers as he speaks"; and Andrew Holleran, "passing" for straight in Mexico, says "Mexico is where foreigners come when their own masks are coming apart." This is not a guide to gay-friendly accommodations and entertainments. Rather, it's a beautiful companion set that invites you to enrich your own travels, contemplate, compare, and enjoy a lot of good literature.
From Library Journal
This collection of 17 essays by contemporary gay writers takes the reader to foreign and domestic destinations, revealing travel moments so intimate it feels as though one were stealing glimpses of personal diaries. Whether it's Brian Bouldrey's tale of walking into Spain without a single peseta, Edmund White's reflections on the mementos he and his partner bought on their journeys, or Philip Gambone's visit to a bathhouse in China, the theme throughout these narratives is crossing borders?geographic, linguistic, and sexual. This spectrum of literary pieces, many in print for the first time, makes a fine literary companion for the gay traveler, proving that small discoveries, both personal and cultural, are the most memorable. A volume of lesbian travel essays is forthcoming from the publisher in the near future. Highly recommended for libraries with strong gay collections.?Pamela W. Bellows, Northwestern Connecticut Community Technical Coll. Lib., Winstead
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