In the small Greek village I grew up in, my father read poetry to me when I was too young to understand any of it, and likely because of this I was pulled to the sound of the words and to reading anything that came my way. In high school, I fell in love with Plato’s writings, and later, as an undergraduate, philosophy saved me from my official major: economics. I continued in my Psychology Master’s, with Paul Kline’s “exceptional abilities” course, a philosophy class about consciousness. I read tons of books and I am enticed by writers who search for life’s questions and self-awareness.
What's Left of the Night gives an imagined account of the young Cavafy's three-day visit to Paris in 1897. This trip proved to be an important journey for the then-unknown Greek poet who was in search of his poetic voice among other things.
The book is about the artist, as well as any ordinary human being, who yearns to reach his/her own higher potential or to live for something higher and for a moment he/she does. This literary work of genius is a hymn to the irremediable desire of the humble soul that reaches for the stars, despite the fact that in the majority, or almost all, of its life lives in the gutter.
"A perfect book."―Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and Genet: A Biography
WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARD
In June 1897, the young Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris on the last stop of a long European tour, a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic inclination. With this lyrical novel, tinged with a hallucinatory eroticism that unfolds over three unforgettable days, celebrated Greek author Ersi Sotiropoulos depicts Cavafy in the midst of a journey of self-discovery across a continent on the brink of massive change. He is by turns exhilarated and…
Maybe because I was raised by strong, independent women. Maybe because I went to an all-women’s college for a bit. Or maybe because I worked with so many powerful women in advertising. All those things combined to create my interest in fearless females in fiction. Women with natural ambition and power needs have many more obstacles put in their way than men do. For me, the character of Angela, the “angel” in Angel of Ambition, emerged naturally. She is part and parcel of the best and worst traits of the fearless females I’ve known in life and the fearless females in fiction that I’ve sometimes loathed and, in the end, always loved.
Mildred starts out trying to fulfill all the traditional roles society expects of women as a wife and mother. But she discovers, through travails, that she is too smart, too talented, and too natively ambitious to settle for those limitations. As Mildred gains success in the “man’s world,” she becomes the provider for everyone around her. She learns the bitterest lessons imaginable as her men and her daughter, first use her, then betray her. Against her will, Mildred Pierce becomes a fearless female in a cold cruel world. She triumphs in the end as a woman of courage, relying not on the unreliable love of others, but on her own independent spirit.
In Mildred Pierce, noir master James M. Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devasting emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men, and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter.
When I was young and just figuring out the whole gay thing, I had to cross state lines to see the one gay movie and smuggle out the one library book I was too afraid to check out. In the 1970s and 80s I grew up knowing I was part of a group that was rarely talked about, aside from jokes. I've enjoyed so many stories that didn't represent me. If the struggle is real, I want to see, hear, and feel the whole messy bunch of it. I like the uncomfortable process of writing, and make promises that I later break: I can always tone this part down later…and then I never do.
Groundbreaking at the time, simply because it featured a happy ending between two women…what a concept! Seems like this should not have been a tall order, yet, in 1952, it was a revolutionary idea that a lesbian love story would not end with tragedy which was the recipe of the day if a writer dared to write about forbidden love.
If you are addicted to push/pull in romance stories where the stakes are high but the characters are willing to jump higher, you may fall in love with this book.
The novel was mesmerizing and lovingly translated into film. Hollywood learned that if you want a straight audience to easily imagine how a woman who had been living a straight life previously (though not authentically) could fall for another woman, simply cast Cate Blanchett in the film and, boom, everyone gets it.
Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn't love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol's world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to…
Years ago, I wrote mystery novels featuring women investigators when that was new in the genre. Now, I discover stories of real-life women whose lives have a natural story arc that can engage the reader from start to finish. Like gambling and prostitution, abortion, when it was illegal in the US, as it is now again in many places, was simultaneously in your face and undercover. It was also largely practiced by women, which is why I’m fascinated by books about it.
This book has a permanent place on my nightstand, where I reach for it whenever I need a pithy, brilliant reminder of how the US completed its late-nineteenth-century transformation from a country with no abortion laws to a place where abortion was banned everywhere at every stage.
I’m amazed that a book first published in 1978, long before the advent of the Internet, managed to marshal evidence from newspaper classified ads and forgotten trials to present a portrait of America where abortion was widespread but seldom dared to speak its name.
'The history of how abortion came to be banned and how women lost--for the century between approximately 1870 and 1970--rights previously thought to be natural and inherent over their own bodies is a fascinating and infuriating one.
Jeffrey H. Jackson is a prolific author and award-winning Professor of History at Rhodes College. He has written several books about the history of Europe including Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910, and Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, CNN.com, TheHill.com, HistoryNewsNetwork.com, and in numerous other publications.
Hitler had ambivalent feelings about gay men, but Heinrich Himmler did not. The SS leader spearheaded the Nazi persecution of homosexuality in an effort to root out a perceived corruption that he believed was incompatible with the hyper-masculine doctrine of Nazism. A direct response to a flourishing gay culture in the 1920s and the medical study of “sexology,” gay men were rounded up and forced to wear the pink triangle as a sign of what the Nazis called their “degeneracy.”
This is the first comprehensive book in English on the fate of the homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The author, a German refugee, examines the climate and conditions that gave rise to a vicious campaign against Germany's gays, as directed by Himmler and his SS--persecution that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths.
In this Nazi crusade, homosexual prisoners were confined to death camps where, forced to wear pink triangles, they constituted the lowest rung in the camp hierarchy. The horror of camp life is described through diaries, previously untranslated documents, and interviews with and letters from…
Thanks to my mother, I grew up immersed in English literature. I was educated in Delhi and co-founded the first nationwide feminist magazine, but same-sex love was never mentioned either in the classroom or in the women’s movement. I educated myself in Indian literature and discovered that same-sex sexuality had been practiced and written about until the British criminalized it. I wrote several books about same-sex unions in Indian literature and history and translated poetry and fiction from Hindi and Urdu to English. My first novel, Memory of Light, is a love story between two courtesans, based in pre-colonial India, where poets freely wrote about same-sex, as well as cross-sex love.
I love this book for its humour, magical qualities, deceptively simple language, and the way it weaves together Hindu and Western ideas of transformation.
I have taught it in many different types of classes and my students also loved its unique portrait of the artist as a young Indian woman, a lesbian living in the West. It was a great way to introduce them to India. I am an admirer of Suniti Namjoshi, and this is my favourite among her works.
I’m an author and a college writing professor with an MFA in Creative Writing. Additionally, I am involved in and teach other art forms and the humanities including music, film, and literature. I enjoy researching and writing about literary figures, musicians, and other creatives, all of which have been a focus in my children’s books.
Monica Brown’s picture book biography of Pablo Neruda is a wonderfully written account of his life and the creation of his beautiful writing and poems that sing, even under the weight of tremendous struggles. The lyrical text soars on the page while Julie Paschkis’ colorful illustrations capture the heart and soul of the poet of the people. This is a must-read!
A stunning picture book biography from Monica Brown and illustrator Julie Paschkis about one of the world's most enduring and popular poets, Pablo Neruda
Once there was a little boy named Neftalí who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly. From the moment he could talk, he surrounded himself with words. Neftalí discovered the magic between the pages of books. When he was sixteen, he began publishing his poems as Pablo Neruda.
Pablo wrote poems about the things he loved―things made by his friends in the café, things found at the marketplace, and things he saw in nature. He…
I have known that I was gay since I was in second grade and kissed a boy on the playground. But that wasn’t the only way that I knew. Coaches, bullies, religion, and family warned me by namecalling, violence, and intimidation. It wasn’t until I was in college that I heard homosexuality portrayed in a positive light. Thank you, Walt Whitman. Then I saw The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert, and knew that I had to go on my own adventure in search of my gay tribe. Novels can be a tribe. I hope the books on my list give you a place to find acceptance and love.
Two Boys Kissing is a book about the culture and “inherited memory” of LGBTQ+ people. It is a crucial contribution because it bridges the generation of gay men living (and dying) through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s with the younger, modern LGTBQ+ generation who share similar challenges but haven’t connected to the wisdom of LGBTQ history.
The story and characters affirmed my identity, named my pain, and brought it within the collective history of those who have carried the same burdens of shame, fear, and self-loathing.
From the New York Times best-selling author of Every Day, comes a touching, thoughtful and deeply romantic look at love and discovering your true self.
The two boys kissing are Craig and Harry. They're hoping to set the world record for the longest kiss. They're not a couple, but they used to be.
Peter and Neil are a couple. Their kisses are different. Avery and Ryan have only just met and are trying to figure out what happens next. Cooper is alone. He's not sure how he feels.
As the marathon progresses, these boys, their friends and families evaluate the…
Incarceration is a gigantic problem in the US, especially because of its connection to racial injustice. I have no firsthand experience with prison or the system, and yet it looms large in my imagination and my deepest fears. That should not be the case merely because I’m a Black gay American, but here we are. I feel that with the help of my mother and others, I have managed to sidestep a lot of the potential pitfalls of people’s misguided perception of my identity, but I have an active, paranoid imagination and profound survivor guilt, so I gravitate toward stories about people at who are odds with our society in ways that reflect that precarious status which allows me to explore a wide range of human experiences.
Genet’s prose really kicks a lot of others to the curb, even
in translation, and the curb is where he is most comfortable. To paraphrase Wilde, he was definitely in the gutter but looking at the stars.
His
visionary, unabashed grit, queer defiance, and uncanny lyrical ability really
should make him required reading for everyone. But if you’re a defiant freak,
you get mixed up in the prison system, and you need a North Star, you can’t do
much better than Genet, a beautiful, wild thinker about all things related to
the place of punishment and jails in society.
He truly lived the life he
described, which people love nowadays. The Thief’s Journal is shockingly
countercultural and exhilarating even now.
Jean Genet, French playwright, novelist and poet, turned the experiences in his life amongst pimps, whores, thugs and other fellow social outcasts into a poetic literature, with an honesty and explicitness unprecedented at the time. Widely considered an outstanding and unique figure in French literature, Genet wrote five novels between 1942 and 1947, now being republished by Faber & Faber in beautiful new paperback editions.
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such…
Following mysterious trails and uncovering esoteric stories: it’s what I love to do, and it’s also what I love to read about. Before I released Extreme Music, I wrote extensively about unusual music subcultures and audiological anomalies, for example artists who put out hourlong blocks of unchanging white noise. I’ve learned that the most interesting ideas – and tales – exist in these outer fringes.
Tony Parker was a British writer dedicated to telling the stories of marginalized members of society. Many of his books took the form of transcripts of interviews with murders, career criminals, lighthouse keepers, and occupants of social housing. This book was his most controversial: interviews with institutionalized sex offenders, who tell their stories in their own words. Parker was skilled at getting people to broach shameful topics and talk candidly about their lives, and this book is no exception. His transcripts capture each speaker’s unique parlance, as well as the offenders’ varying levels of self-reflection. Published in 1969, there is even the sad story of a man who was imprisoned for homosexuality.
Few crimes provoke such outrage and upset as the sex offence, making the subject - including the problems it poses to our society and criminal justice system - a natural one for sociologist Tony Parker, whose work consistently shed light into dark corners of human behaviour.
The Twisting Lane, first published in 1969, presents the testimonies of eight men aged between 20 and 70 who had been convicted - most of them repeatedly - for eight different types of offence, from assault or rape of adults or minors, to indecent exposure and 'living on immoral earnings'. Each man offers, in…
