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Category: books

  • Color them proud for Pride: Butch Lesbians of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s Coloring Book

    The Butch Lesbians of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s Coloring Book proved so popular a second edition is due just two months after the first print run.

    The sequel to The Butch Lesbians of the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s Coloring Book contains 40 pages to color, as well as profiles by editors Jon Macy and Avery Cassell of colorful butches who were activists, artists, gender outlaws and feminist warriors.

    The coloring book contains images and biographies of blues singer Gladys Bentley, author Jane Rule, powerboat racer Joe Carstairs, filmmaker Esther Eng, curator Adrienne Fuzee, photographer Honey Lee Cottress, singer Chavela Vargas, artist Margo Rivera-Weiss, anthropologist Esther Newton, actress Pat Bond, sex worker Frede Baulé, critic Butchy McCausland, activist Donna Burkett and more.

    Burkett, whose page was drawn by Ajuan Manch, should be a name known in Milwaukee’s LGBT community.

    Her profile reads, “Donna Burkett came out at age 7, ran away to join the Army at age 16, quit the army due to racism and joined the civil rights and gay movements. On October 1, 1971, she and her girlfriend Manonia Evans applied for a marriage license in Milwaukee, were rejected and went to federal court over their right to marry.”

    Note: This story was originally published in the Wisconsin Gazette.

  • Liesl Shurtliff writes Li’l Red into her fractured fairy tales

    Liesl Shurtliff writes Li’l Red into her fractured fairy tales

    Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to read Grimm’s Fairy Tales and play in the woods.

    This girl grew up to be a best-selling author who loved to tell variations on those classic fairy tales.

    (more…)

  • Little LGBT lessons: A history and activity book for kids

    A new LGBT history from Chicago Review Press is kid-friendly and mom-approved — make that two moms.

    Gay & Lesbian History for Kids: The Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights is stocked with stories, quotes, photographs and nearly two dozen activities.

    LGBT parents will be over the rainbow with the book by Jerome Pohlen, a former elementary school science teacher and the author of the well-received Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids. And so will their kids.

    WiG tested the book’s appeal with an informal book club of six: three parents, ages 24–57, and three kids, ages 7–14.

    The parents described the book as lively, engaging and informative. The timeline begins in 570 BC, with the death of the Greek poet Sappho and continues through 2015, concluding with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling for marriage equality in all 50 states. The 192 pages contain a condensed but comprehensive narrative about the movement and milestones, legends and the legendary. The story of Harvey Milk is told, but also those of lesser-known historical figures, like Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who served as George Washington’s chief of staff in the American Revolution.

    Chapters include the early history, the birth of a movement in the early 1900s, life in the shadows of the 1940s and 1950s, coming out in the 1960s, mobilizing in the streets in the 1970s, acting up in the 1980s, setbacks and advances in the 1990s, and the milestone achievements of this new century. The book opens with an introduction about “two moms” and concludes with an afterword about “everyday heroes.”

    “I think it has something for everyone,” said Chrissy Williams of Madison, a mother of two children. “I learned a few things. Well, actually, I learned a lot.”

    The kids focused more on the activities than the histories.

    “It didn’t feel like learning at all,” said Williams’ 12-year-old daughter, Amy.

    The book guides children through:

    • Writing a free verse poem after reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.”

    • Inventing a secret language after learning about Oscar Wilde and an era when green carnations and red neckties signaled “family.”

    • Singing the blues, with inspiration from the songs of Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey and Gladys Bentley.

    • Practicing “The Madison” after reading that same-sex couples would be arrested for touching on the dance floor, so they began line dancing instead.

    • Designing a flag, after reading about symbolism and the creation of the rainbow Pride flag.

    A favorite activity instructed kids to ask adults about the boycotts they joined and the results. The kids in WiG’s book club took the activity to another level and agreed to boycott “bad people like Donald Trump,” “kale” and “homework.”

    Perhaps the most unusual activity in the book involves conducting an inkblot test, using five sheets of construction paper, a jar of dark poster paint, a pen and a sheet of notebook paper.

    Readers learn that, in the 1950s, sex researcher and psychologist Evelyn Hooker gave her subjects the Rorschach Test, seeking clues about how they think by showing them a series of inkblots. Then the kids make and conduct the test — an activity guaranteed to prompt some laughs and occupy them for at least an hour this summer.

    Finalists for kids

    The 28th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, also known as Lammys, will be presented June 6.

    Finalists in the category for children’s and young adult books include:

    • Gay and Lesbian History for Kids: The Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights by Jerome Pohlen from Chicago Review Press.

    • About a Girl: A Novel by Sarah McCarry from St. Martin’s Griffin.

    • Anything Could Happen by Will Walton from Push.

    • George by Alex Gino from Scholastic Press.

    • The Marvels by Brian Selznick from Scholastic Press.

    • More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera from Soho Teen.

    • None of the Above by IW Gregorio from Balzer + Bray/ Harper Collins.

    • Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli from Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins.

    — Lisa Neff

  • Island of seduction

    Island of seduction

    The way a kid feels that day before the last day of school before summer vacation? That’s the way Fire Island fans feel before the long Memorial Day weekend. The way a kid feels that day before the first day of the new school year? That’s the way Fire Island fans feel about Labor Day weekend.

    You can read it in the tweets city-dwellers broadcast before Memorial Day weekend – the longing messages about catching the ferry to Fire Island, slipping into flip-flops, soaking up some sun, welcoming summer.

    “Beach-bound, baby,” read one tweet.

    “I heart Fire Island,” read another.

    And then “Missed you. #FireIsland,” “Can’t wait to get to #FireIsland,” “Tingling thinking about #FireIslandPines,” “Escape to #FireIsland.”

    The barrier island is about 5.5 miles across Great South Bay from Long Island and reached mostly by ferry. In the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 292 permanent residents, but the population swells in the summer, especially on the weekends, when thousands step off the ferry and head for a favorite spot on the seashore, a rendezvous at the lighthouse, a room at the Belvedere, an underwear party at The Ice Palace, a drag show at Cherries on the Bay, a Blanche Devereaux cocktail at the Blue Whale or a slice of cheese and pepperoni at Cherry Grove Pizza.

    The island is a summer retreat from NYC for many. And it has long been a paradise for the gay community, particularly in Cherry Grove and the Pines.

    In late May, after thousands of LGBT activists marched on Manhattan streets to protest a series of hate crimes, including the fatal shooting of a gay man on May 18, the serene seashore and peaceful pines beckoned with refuge and recreation.

    Visitors on Memorial Day saw how much the island – largely through the Fire Island Revive campaign – has rebounded after Superstorm Sandy’s high tides and strong surge damaged buildings and washed away much of the shore in October 2012.

    Visitors also saw the progress at the muscular Pavilion nightclub, the legendary Fire Island Pines dance club destroyed by fire in November 2011 and rebuilt for “high tea,” cabaret, theater, art exhibits and weddings.

    “Although the new building has the same envelope and mix of uses as its predecessor, the similarities end there,” said developer Matthew Blesso of FIP Ventures. “The new structure is modern and casual, bold and iconic. It is the first thing visitors seen when getting off the ferry, and we envision it to once again be the heart of the Pines community.”

    The Pavilion’s resurrection comes as the Pines marks its 60th anniversary, which explains why the island’s summer calendar is so crowded with events.

    Examining the island’s past

    Two newly published books explore the history and the culture of the community.

    In “Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction” from Metropolis Books, Christopher Bascom Rawlins writes how the overlooked gay architect’s beach houses transformed the landscape and the culture of Fire Island.

    Gifford grew up on the beaches of Florida and, in Rawlins’ telling, the architect’s deep connection to nature shows in the buildings he created for the shore just 50 minutes from the skyscrapers of New York.

    Rawlins was exploring the Pines – “an urban invention, possessing a rustic-chic aesthetic that only a city-dweller could conjure” – when he caught a glimpse of a seductive home through a tangle of holly trees, then saw another intriguing home and another.

    He began knocking on doors to inquire about the architect and, in each case, was told the designer was Gifford. Soon Rawlins rented what turned out to be Gifford’s residence and delved into a study of the architect’s life and work, which were so evocative of the Stonewall era – seductive, liberating, modern. The author describes seeing a slideshow of Gifford’s “ingenious homes flashed before me, tucked into lightly settled, utopian dunescapes. I was smitten, and determined to introduce this work to a broader public.”

    “Tom Bianchi: Fire Island Pines, Polaroids 1975-1983” from Damiani could serve as a companion to “Fire Island Modernist.” Bianchi photographs even appear in “Modernist” to strengthen the ties.

    Bianchi’s book – he provided the text and never-before published images, while Edmund White wrote the introduction – tells the story of sun, sex, camaraderie and reverie in the Pines.

    Bianchi first heard of Fire Island in the 1950s, when he purchased a 25-cent “physique” magazine at a newsstand in downtown Chicago that contained a photograph of bodybuilder Glenn Bishop on Fire Island. “Fire Island sounded exotic, perhaps a name made up by the photographer,” wrote Bianchi. “I had no idea it was a real place. Certainly I had no idea then that it was a place I would one day call home.”

    In 1970, Bianchi spent a weekend at Fire Island Pines, where he became a regular, got a beach house, found a community and made friends. He used an SX-70 Polaroid camera to lovingly celebrate the people – men mostly, bronzed and buff, in Speedos or faded Levi’s – in the Pines.

    The sunny Polaroids end in 1983, as HIV brought disaster. Bianchi boxed the photographs and stored them at his Palm Springs, Calif., home for decades. He said the Polaroids became a record of a lost time and a lost world too painful to visit.

    But when he opened the box years later, he found the lovers and friends, alive again, back on Fire Island.

  • Meanwhile in Mecca: an illustrated story of San Francisco

    Meanwhile in Mecca: an illustrated story of San Francisco

    The place “has always been a refuge for anyone to come to, whatever status in society. For people, intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, for lonely people. For every walk of life.”

    Wendy MacNaughton is referring to the San Francisco Public Library, maybe not a stop on every vacationer’s itinerary, but the population of the library “mirrors the population we have in SF” — from Arab-American to Vietnamese-American.

    People line up to enter before the library opens. It’s free, and inside there’s a cafe, a literacy center, an international center, a teen center, an environmental center, an arts center, and an unprecedented program for serving the homeless. Oh, and books.

    This generally is not the kind of information found in a tourism brochure from a chamber of commerce or visitors bureau. But it is the type of information found in Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in Its Own Words from Chronicle Books.

    Meanwhile is graphic journalism, an illustrated, street-smart collection from MacNaughton, a New York Times-bestselling artist. Readers might have seen her work in the Times or the Wall Street Journal or her other book, The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert.

    When Pride month comes around, we think of “Holy New York” and the Stonewall riots, but also of “Holy San Francisco,” where queer people from around the nation found something much more valuable than gold under that famous fog.

    How many of us already have been? But still we think of making a pilgrimage back to the bay.

    And we keep it in our hearts through literature.

    MacNaughton’s book, at just 176 pages and fully illustrated, is as delightful as a sunny afternoon on the Presidio. “The drawings are mine, but the words came from people living and working in San Francisco,” she says.

    She spent hours getting to know the drivers and the passengers on MUNI, studying Giants fans, visiting with the game players of Chinatown, figuring out the character of the lower Haight and the upper Haight, and appreciating the hard work of the vendors at the San Francisco Civic Center farmer’s market. Tourists might browse the market in 10 minutes, but for the vendors, the day begins as early as 2 a.m.

    Visitors might have heard about the great bison of the great Golden Gate Park, which first arrived in 1890, or thereabouts. Well, MacNaughton, in just two pages, introduces them with affection and humor, including “Unnamed Cow” or “UC” for short, who was a gift from Diane Feinstein’s husband about 30 years ago.

    The bison’s daily routine: “Graze, ruminate, eat grain, graze, sleep, retreat.”

    There is a map to Dolores Park at the western edge of the Mission District, useful for a visitor who wants to know the “cruising area” or the visitor who wants to avoid the bushes. The “truffle guy” is marked on the map, as is a “naked guy nearly,” “gay beach lite” and “lesbians — butch, femme, young, old, all checking out the endless line for the bathroom.”

    The book is not intended as a comprehensive portrayal of San Francisco. MacNaughton says, “It’s only a small handful of the huge number of communities to be found in The City, on every steep street, behind every gated door, in every grassy park. These are the stories of San Francisco daily life. This is what happens in the meanwhile.”

    The meanwhile, in our mecca.