History of Homosexuality, Politics & Gay Rights, 20th Century American History - Social Aspects - Post World War II, Peoples & Cultures - American Anthologies, Gay & Lesbian Literature Anthologies

Come Out Fighting

Name: Come Out Fighting
Author: Chris Bull
ISBN: 9781560253259

by Chris Bull

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Overview

Gays and lesbians have spent much of the last 100 years as outcasts and pariahs in their own families, communities, and nation. In Come Out Fighting, Chris Bull — Washington correspondent for The Advocate magazine — has assembled a collection of the most important and influential writing, taken from both the gay and straight press, which forms the basis of the political movement which has reached its zenith only recently. Come Out Fighting contains essential writing on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues from U.S. independent and alternative progressive journals. From Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud, to Michael Foucault and Elizabeth Birch, this volume is a collection of the best and brightest authors on gay life, politics and culture, from the earliest days of the liberation movement. The essays provocatively illuminate the remaining obstacles to full gay and lesbian equality, and point the way toward a future where there will truly be liberty and justice for all, regardless of sexual orientation.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The title and subtitle of Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation may appear misleading, for the collection features essays not only by gay rights leaders (Adrienne Rich, Harvey Milk, etc.) but by fellow travelers (Justice Harry Blackmun), ambivalents (Freud, Havelock Ellis) and downright adversaries (William F. Buckley Jr.). In short, these are the works that, for better or for worse, galvanized the liberation movement. Collected by The Advocate correspondent Chris Bull, some selections are predictable, but many, like Michael Bronski's ("The Liberation of Pleasure") or David Wojnarowicz's, are not this is probably the only time Milk, Blackmun, Buckley and Audre Lorde will appear together in one anthology. ( Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Many observing the contemporary sociopolitical landscape might be inclined to wonder what became of gay liberation. In fact, articles in the gay press with titles such as "Is gay liberation dead?" are often answered affirmatively. An attentive reading of this compilation reveals that the issues of 100 years ago are still here today. Bull, Washington correspondent for the Advocate a national gay and lesbian news magazine has selected and carefully annotated many classics, beginning with Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud and continuing to major contemporary figures. Clearly, different editors with different purposes might have made other selections. Nonetheless, this is a worthwhile addition to any collection with even tangential interest in gay topics. It would also make a useful textbook supplement for university courses. David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A diversity of voices from "brave and useful souls," as Gore Vidal calls them in the foreword, that attest to the rich, and mostly recent, literature of gay and lesbian politics compiled here by Bull (Perfect Enemies, 1996, etc.). Each of these 46 pieces has the political crunch of a broadside. The material is arranged chronologically, starting with a great inclusive hug from Walt Whitman, jumping 52 years to Emma Goldman's recognition of "various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life," and proceeding through the clinical pathways of Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud until offerings start coming in thick and fast with the 1950s. Norman Mailer weighs in with an essay on homosexual rights that, "while honorable as a piece of work, is dressed in the gray of lugubrious caution," but which nonetheless "helped to blow up a log jam of accumulated timidities and restraints." After Susan Sontag stakes out the boundaries of "camp," a fistful of manifestos usher in the '70s, including a short but provocative item by Adrienne Rich on the power of literature to tether her lesbianism to the earth. Harvey Milk tenders warm urgings to seek political office; Michel Foucault holds forth on sex and the production of power; Vidal pours hot soup into the lap of Midge Dexter, whose essay on homosexuality in Commentary, "for sheer vim and vigor . . . outdoes its implicit model, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Joann Wypijewski closes the collection with an investigative report on the murder of Matthew Shepard, from which readers will exit knowing they have had revealed to them an unmistakable time, place, and people. Fertile minds at work, pulling the political out of thepersonal, challenging gay discrimination from every angle-a body of writing all movements ache for.