< Caught Running > M. L. Rhodes

Hearts&Bones...
Finally a couple in every way, Will and Ethan are savoring the pleasures of being together at last. But only a few short weeks into domestic bliss, their hard-won peace and contentment is put to the test. Someone from Ethan's dark and dangerous past has returned to settle a vindictive score, luring the lovers into a deadly game. When Will's caught in the crossfire and his very life is at stake, will Ethan be strong enough to overcome his debilitating fears and face down his old enemy? Or will this shadow from his past destroy the only man he's ever loved?
Rerations
< Always > < The Broken H > < No Going Home > < My Fair Captain > < The Tin Star > freaks

< GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary > Leslie Feinberg

Read this book, then reflect, then challenge both it and yourself.
Leslie Feinberg has been a leader in the transgender rights movement as long as such a movement has existed. This book is both deeply personal and widely researched. Feinberg examines perceptions of the body, the status of clothing, and the structures of societies that welcome or are threatened by gender variance. The portrait gallery that closes the book contains photographs and capsule biographies of contemporary transgendered people.
With a New Afterword by the Author

In this fascinating, personal journey hrough history, Leslie Feinberg uncovers persuasive evidence that there have always been people who crossed the cultural boundaries of gender. Transgender Warriors is an eye-opening jaunt through the history of gender expression and a powerful testament to the rebellious spirit.
Rerations
< Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman > < Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue > < Stone Butch Blues: A Novel > < Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us > < Drag King Dreams > freaks

< Machinal (Royal National Theatre) > Paula Vogel

Both plays are great reads - especially when taken in this one-two punch of a book. And, if you have a chance to see them on the stage, don't miss out.
I love these two plays. I can't wait untill I can see them performed
The two plays in this volume have been performed recently in New England, and were among the best new plays I've seen recently. Particularly, How I Learned to Drive, as performed by the American Repertory Theater, was funny, touching, disquieting, and completely absorbing. There's more in both of these plays than I could absorb seeing them only once, however. Without question, How I Learned to Drive, which presents two complex major characters and asks us to question who has the power in their relationship and who is the victim, is the richer play. But Vogel's satire on extremism in the poltics and life-styles of Baby-boomers, The Mineola Twins, is a fitting complement to How I Learned to Drive. In both plays Vogel succeeds in disquieting us, urging us to see past black and white judgements and to understand that life in the human family (both plays contain the refrain"family is family") is complicated by many cross-currents. Consider reading these plays, even if you've seen them. (In both plays I discovered essential details I'd misunderstood when I saw the plays on the stage.) If you missed the chance to see these plays, do read them, particularly How I Learned to Drive. This is more than a story about sexual abuse; it's an extreme example of what can be true in any family, though we may be slow to admit it--that those who hurt us may also give us much love. Perhaps one sign of Vogel's sense of perspective is that this play--about the grimmest of subjects, child abuse--is as funny, at times, as it is touching.
This play does a wonderful job of bringing to life a situation often avoided in literature: sexual abuse. The author, Paula Vogel, creates the character of Li'l Bit so clearly that the reader has no trouble identifying with her. Vogel also uses Peck, the infatuated uncle, as a foil character for Li'l Bit by creating him in such a manner that forces the reader to find fault easily in him. This leads the reader to the conclusion that Li'l Bit is innocent in the horrendous acts her uncle continuously performs with and on her, which is very true. Since the acts of sexual abuse began when she was only a small child, she has grown up with this most of her life. To her it seems normal what is going on between her and her uncle, but when she finally leaves and goes on to college, she realizes how wrong it really is and finally gains enough courage to tell her uncle to stop. It is courage like this that most people, females especially, can relate to, whether they have found it for themselves or are hoping to find it in the future. This play brings that courage to life for them and makes it seem that much more attainable.
Rerations
< The Mammary Plays : How I Learned to Drive and The Mineola Twins > < The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays > < The Clean House and Other Plays > < Sarah Kane: Complete Plays > < Topdog/underdog > freaks

< The Transgender Reader >

< My Fair Captain >

< Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People > Lisa Duggan

David Rehak
author of"A Young Girl's Crimes"
Duggan seeks to combine the Memphis lynchings which launched the national career of Ida B. Wells and the sensational"sapphic slasher"murder of Freda Ward by Alice Mitchell. Both events occurred in Memphis in 1892, both should offer tremendous possibilities for exploring race and gender in fin de siecle America.

Unfortunately, Duggan cannot report or comment with any clarity or purpose. The book is a dense, indigestible mass of"post-modern"verbiage, laden with accounts of 'appropriated narratives,' 'priviliging,' 'othering,' etc. Especially quaint is the use of the word 'binary' as a noun.
On a winter day in 1892, in the broad daylight of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, a middle class woman named Alice Mitchell slashed the throat of her lover, Freda Ward, killing her instantly. Local, national, and international newspapers, medical and scientific publications, and popular fiction writers all clamored to cover the ensuing“girl lovers” murder trial. Lisa Duggan locates in this sensationalized event the emergence of the lesbian in U.S. mass culture and shows how newly“modern” notions of normality and morality that arose from such cases still haunt and distort lesbian and gay politics to the present day.
Situating this story alongside simultaneously circulating lynching narratives (and its resistant versions, such as those of Memphis antilynching activist Ida B. Wells) Duggan reveals how stories of sex and violence were crucial to the development of American modernity. While careful to point out the differences between the public reigns of terror that led to many lynchings and the rarer instances of the murder of one woman by another privately motivated woman, Duggan asserts that dominant versions of both sets of stories contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and women while solidifying a distinctly white, male, heterosexual form of American citizenship. Having explored the role of turn-of-the-century print media—and in particular their tendency toward sensationalism—Duggan moves next to a review of sexology literature and to novels, most notably Radclyffe Hall’sThe Well of Loneliness.Sapphic Slashersconcludes with two appendices, one of which presents a detailed summary of Ward’s murder, the trial, and Mitchell’s eventual institutionalization. The other presents transcriptions of letters exchanged between the two women prior to the crime.
Combining cultural history, feminist and queer theory, narrative analysis, and compelling storytelling,Sapphic Slashersprovides the first history of the emergence of the lesbian in twentieth-century mass culture.


Rerations
< Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity > < Stone Butch Blues: A Novel > < Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale Historical Publications Series) > < Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self > < Plessy v. Ferguson > freaks

< The Transgender Reader > Riki Wilchins