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Overview
In this amazing, wide-ranging anthology of nonfiction essays, contributors write intimate and honest first-person accounts of queer experience, from coming out to “passing” as straight to growing old to living proud. These are the stories of contemporary gay and lesbian life—and by definition, are funny, sad, hopeful, and truthful. Representing a diversity of genders, ages, races, and orientations, and edited by two acclaimed writers and anthologists (who between them have written or edited almost one hundred books), First Person Queer puts the “personal” back into “queer.”
Synopsis
An anthology of first-person essays depicting the diversity, complexity, and experience of contemporary GLBTQ life.
Kirkus Reviews
Personal nonfiction accounts from every stripe in the rainbow and then some. In their second anthology, Labonte and Schimel (The Future is Queer, 2006) have assembled a plethora of Canadian and American authors who share the "satisfaction of a realized sexual self," a penchant for the pronoun "I" (though not all contributors prefer it in its upper case state) and little else. The collection winningly celebrates differences rooted in a variety of ways to the mutable boundaries of sexuality and gender. Nalo Hopkinson, who identifies herself as a "queer, poly woman," begins by discussing her difficulties in filling out a questionnaire on women's sexual fantasies; she found no boxes into which she "could have wedged my experience." Gregory Woods worries that his "queer membership" has lapsed because a transurethral prostate resection at age 50 has rendered him impotent. "I am a suburban, middle-aged, neo-virgin, luxuriating in regret," he movingly laments. "How queer is that?" Transgendered author and performance artist Kate Bornstein offers a touching, funny piece detailing the delicacy involved in describing to the "blue-haired" ladies at her mother's funeral her relation to the deceased. Her identity was less of an issue for Mom, Bornstein writes: "I told her that one of her two sons was about to become a dyke. She preferred the word lesbian. My son, the lesbian,' she would tell her close friends, with a deep sigh and a smile on her lips." Some selections are more successful than others, but individual snapshots matter less than the extraordinary queer panorama they collectively embody. Whether read in a couple of sittings or savored essay by essay, this is an eye-opening vista ondiversity.