Lavender Mansions: 40 Contemporary Lesbian And Gay Short Stories

by Irene Zahava

Overview

George Stambolian, Terri de la Peña, Audre Lorde, Paul Monette, Edmund White, and Jaime Manrique are just six of the writers represented in this collection of forty contemporary lesbian and gay short stories. Gathered together for the first time in one volume are writings by both lesbians and gay men who represent a multiplicity of ethnic and racial backgrounds. Irene Zahava has compiled a unique and necessary collection, selecting stories for their artistic power and for their treatment of topics that are significant in lesbian and gay life and politics today. An alternative thematic table of contents allows the reader to understand lesbian and gay life according to its most culturally and politically significant themes: childhood/growing up; coming out/finding community; families; oppression/resistance; bisexuality; relationships/friendships; AIDS; and aging/dying.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367009496
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/07/2019
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Credits — Introduction — Childhood/Growing Up — From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name — My Mother’s Clothes: The School of Beauty and Shame — Ben’s Eyes — Myths — Buddies — Ceremonies — Sacred Ups of the Bronx — Coming Out/Finding Community — Sister Safety Pin — Growing in Defiance — Letter to Mama — Shouts of Joy — Mujeres Morenas — Don’t Explain — Families — Cultural Revolution — Mothers Know — Enrollment — In My Father’s Car — River of Names — Oppression/Resistance — A Letter to Harvey Milk — Fruitstand II: Honeydew Moon — Country People — Public Display — Kissing Doesn’t Kill — Bisexuality — Humming — Meeting Imelda Marcos — The Juliette Low Legacy — Relationships/Friendships — Is this Enough for you? — When you Grow to Adultery — Trespassing — The Day Carmen Maura Kissed me — The Dress — Deer Out of Season — Aids — Despair: August 1987 — Halfway Home — The Angel of Death on the Provincetown Ferry — Portland, Maine: An Essay — Running on Empty — A Good Man — Aging/Dying — D.O.M — In the Life

Editorial Reviews

In this anthology of mostly very recent (late 1980s to 1992) stories compiled for classroom use but mercifully lacking textbook impedimenta (study questions, etc.), editor Zahava strives to reflect the diversity of gay and lesbian lives. Overall, the contents are organized to mirror the human lifeline, beginning with the childhood fantasies of Audre Lorde and ending with Donald Vining's autobiographical protagonist in a nursing home and Becky Birtha's aged character, Jinx, still communing with her Gracie, gone some 15 years. The contributors include authors who have gained some mainstream recognition, such as Lorde, Edmund White, Dorothy Allison, and Paul Monette, as well as those who have broad small press and academic followings, such as Barbara Wilson, Louie Crew, Judith McDaniel, and the late John Preston. Novelist Valerie Miner's introduction adequately surveys the gay and lesbian American writers of an earlier day. Although prepared to aid such academic pursuits as Sapphic modernism, biomythography, gender studies, and anti-Semitism, the ambitious volume's contents are entertaining enough to reward the nonstudent reader.

Marie Kuda