Writing Desire: Sixty Years of Gay Autobiography
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007
eISBN: 978-0-299-22203-1 | Paper: 978-0-299-22204-8 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22200-0
Library of Congress Classification CT25.C64 2007
Dewey Decimal Classification 920
eISBN: 978-0-299-22203-1 | Paper: 978-0-299-22204-8 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22200-0
Library of Congress Classification CT25.C64 2007
Dewey Decimal Classification 920
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Exploring nearly sixty years of memoir and autobiography, Writing Desire examines the changing identity of gay men writing within a historical context. Distinguished scholar and psychoanalyst Bertram J. Cohler has carefully selected a diverse group of ten men, including historians, activists, journalists, poets, performance artists, and bloggers, whose life writing evokes the evolution of gay life in twentieth-century America.
By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden "disease." The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during of the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of BrYaN, who did the previously unthinkable: he "outed" himself to millions of people.
A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, Writing Desire distills the experience of three generations of gay America.
By contrasting the personal experience of these disparate writers, Cohler illustrates the social transformations that these men helped shape. Among Cohler's diverse subjects is Alan Helms, whose journey from Indiana to New York's gay society represents the passage of men who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when homosexuality was considered a hidden "disease." The liberating effects of Stonewall's aftermath are chronicled in the life of Arnie Kantrowitz, the prototypical activist for gay rights in the 1970s and the founder the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation. The artistic works of Tim Miller and Mark Doty evoke loss and shock during of the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cohler rounds out this collective group portrait by looking at the newest generation of writers in the Internet age via the blog of BrYaN, who did the previously unthinkable: he "outed" himself to millions of people.
A compelling mix of social history and personal biography, Writing Desire distills the experience of three generations of gay America.
Finalist, LGBT Studies, Lambda Literary Foundation
See other books on: Autobiography | Gay people | Gays | Gays' writings | Sixty Years
See other titles from University of Wisconsin Press
