A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture

From large cities to rural communities, gay men have long been impassioned pioneers as keepers of culture: rescuing and restoring decrepit buildings, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods, saving artifacts and documents of historical significance. A Passion to Preserve explores this authentic and complex dimension of gay men’s lives by profiling early and contemporary preservationists from throughout the United States, highlighting contributions to the larger culture that gays are exceptionally inclined to make.

Fellows turns his focus to a theme that emerged from the process of writing his first book, Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest—the involvement of gay men in historic preservation. Combining information about deceased and living preservationists of buildings, objects, family and community histories, the text recognizes some of the distinctive dimensions of gay male lives beyond sexual orientation. Using interview transcripts and autobiographical writings, Fellows shaped personal narratives of some 30 individuals from throughout the U.S., which are grouped by geographical region to reflect the unique cultural and historical backgrounds in which the individuals have engaged in preservative enterprises. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Will Fellows is the author of Farm Boys, which was honored as a best book of 1996 by Esquire Magazine and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 1997. He lives in Milwaukee.