Tag
Gay
-
Queer Joy Is Earned—and Requires Earnest Care
To view “I Kissed a Girl” as predominantly upbeat is to miss why it’s representation of bad feelings is important.
-
“You Could Have Changed Everything”
One may as well begin with George Merrill’s touch to E. M. Forster’s backside (“gently, and just above the buttocks,” Forster recalls). It was 1913 …
-
The World of Gay World Lit
Contemporary gay life is characterized by a curious paradox: visibility and acceptance have made life better for many—especially but not only for white gay men—but at the cost of community and identity. Gay visibility, with its attendant politics of respectability, has occurred at the expense of the gay bar, the bathhouse, the piano bar, and…
-
The Book That Made Me: Gay
A professor of English and gender studies reveals how one’s identity can be transformed from the most unexpected sources—in this case, sports memoir …
-
Americans in Bulgaria
Loving Eastern Europe is a tricky business. In theory, the term “Eastern Europe” is reductive and clumsy. In reality, it often feels deeply and self-evidently true. This puts those who document the region in a tough spot: how does one convey its idiosyncrasies to the Western eye without lapsing into Soviet caricature? As Anita Starosta declares in…
-
All Ireland in a Grave
A hanged man was never more popular. One hundred years ago, the British government executed Roger Casement for his participation in a rebellion in Ireland, the Easter Rising of 1916. This year, schoolchildren and tourists by the thousands have visited Casement’s gravesite in Dublin. It is part of a centennial pilgrimage in honor of the…
