Acting Gay

Clum (English and theater, Duke U.) examines 20th-century American and British plays that revolve around gay men, including those by Noel Coward, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Peter Shaffer. He considers the representation of bodies and acts, the closet dramas between 1930 and 1968, and recent works portraying a culture that has to do with more than sex.--Annotation © Book News, Inc., Portland, Ore.

Still Acting Gay is a revision and expansion of Clum's celebrated book, Acting Gay. The book focuses on the relationship between American and British dramas written by and about gay men and the changing gay culture those plays reflect, from the carefully enforced closet to liberation politics to AIDS to the qualified security of the present. Still Acting Gay chronicles the transition of the gay man as subject for sensational melodrama to creator of many of the most powerful and celebrated plays of the late 20th century.

No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as a truth. David Halperin, a pioneer of LGBTQ studies, dares to suggest that gayness is a specific way of being that gay men must learn from one another in order to become who they are. Inspired by the notorious undergraduate course of the same title that Halperin taught at the University of Michigan, provoking cries of outrage from both the right-wing media and the gay press, How To Be Gay traces gay men's cultural difference to the social meaning of style. Far from being deterred by stereotypes, Halperin concludes that the genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised features: its aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoration of glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers. The insights, impertinence, and unfazed critical intelligence displayed by gay culture, Halperin argues, have much to offer the heterosexual mainstream.

Finalist, CCBC Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award Finalist, Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children's and Young Adult Literature Sydney and his friends gather outside to play, transforming one by one to climb, leap, lumber and soar into a shared jungle of their imagination. Hanging upside down in a tree, Sydney imagines he is a sleepy, sun-bathing sloth. And that's where Sami finds him. Sami thinks sloths are too slow, so she scampers up the tree and becomes a spider monkey. “Fast is fun!” she chatters. “Fast is best!” And that’s where Edward finds them... One after another, the neighborhood kids wander by and slip into a shared imaginative world where leaves and giant flowers unfurl, playing, laughing, teasing and bickering, until Edward the elephant fills up his trunk and—WHOOSH!—sends the children “galloping home like a herd of small wet animals.” As always, Marie-Louise Gay’s writing and artwork are wonderfully pitched to young readers, capturing the effortless way that children travel back and forth between the worlds of real life and make believe. With its sun-dappled watercolors, depiction of time spent outdoors with friends, and quiet, wistful ending, I’m Not Sydney perfectly illustrates the slow-moving magic of a childhood summer. Key Text Features illustrations Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.4 Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

Fed up with the fact that men have a shorter shelf life than sushi? Finding, let alone building, a strong relationship can still be challenging for gay men. The reason? Masculinity. All men, gay or straight, have been socialized to believe that to be overtly gay is unmanly and shameful. To compensate, many gay men adopt a macho, "straight acting" pose that blocks them from being their full selves, expressing their true feelings and forging real, lasting connections. In Straight Acting, Angelo Pezzote (AskAngelo.com) encourages readers to go beyond limiting ideas of how "real" men should behave, and leave behind out-dated ways of being that create stumbling blocks to deeper intimacy. Drawing on his years of experience as a gay psychotherapist and advice columnist, he offers practical and thoughtful relationship strategies, with tips on subjects that include coming out, dating, how to avoid falling for a player, how to maintain a sizzling, satisfying sex life, navigating open relationships, and much more. Most of all, he delivers crucial insights on the importance of ditching the macho act and learning to be true to yourself. Whether you're single and sick of it, wanting to move closer to your partner, or wondering how to meet someone for the very first time, let Angelo show you how to get real and get him. Put yourself out there to get--and keep--the love you want.

Winner of a 2015 Catholic Press Award: Gender Issues Category (First Place). In this first book from an openly lesbian and celibate Catholic, widely published writer and blogger Eve Tushnet recounts her spiritual and intellectual journey from liberal atheism to faithful Catholicism and shows how gay Catholics can love and be loved while adhering to Church teaching. Eve Tushnet was among the unlikeliest of converts. The only child of two atheist academics, Tushnet was a typical Yale undergraduate until the day she went out to poke fun at a gathering of philosophical debaters, who happened also to be Catholic. Instead of enjoying mocking what she termed the “zoo animals,” she found herself engaged in intellectual conversation with them and, in a move that surprised even her, she soon converted to Catholicism. Already self-identifying as a lesbian, Tushnet searched for a third way in the seeming two-option system available to gay Catholics: reject Church teaching on homosexuality or reject the truth of your sexuality. Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith is the fruit of Tushnet’s searching: what she learned in studying Christian history and theology and her articulation of how gay Catholics can pour their love and need for connection into friendships, community, service, and artistic creation.

Acts of Intervention traces the ways in which performance and theatre have participated in and informed the larger cultural politics of race, sexuality, citizenship and AIDS in the United States in the last fifteen years.

A collection of ten contemporary plays, by writers who reflect a range of cultural origins, about male homosexuality.