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SOUTHERN VOICE • DECEMBER 29/1994
41
OUT IN PM
A GAY & LESBIAN READER
by GENE GABRIEL MOORE
Browsing the hits of 1994
Voracious book lovers, like
opera devotees and nocturnal tip
plers, tend to idolize their own fa
vorites. Therefore, putting together
a "year's best" list is a bit like com
ing upon one's diabolic nephew
putting a kitten in the microwave:
it's not for the faint of heart. Still,
. to a Southerner who grew up dur
ing the reign of Joseph McCarthy
and J. Edgar Hoover, the real blue-
ribbon aspect of these books with
gay or lesbian
themes the fact that
they exist, period.
Here are my
picks of the best of
the 1994 crop.
Skin: Talking
About Sex, Class
and Literature by
Dorothy Allison
(Firebrand, 261 pp,
$13.95). Essays and
autobiographical
narratives. Exem
plary writing and a
first-class mind.
Public Sex:
the Culture of
Radical by Pat
Califia (Cleis, 264 pp, $12.95). Pro
sex feminist's chronicle of essays
is electrifying.
A Sexual Tour of the Deep
South by Rosemary Daniell (Push
Button, 97 pp, $10). 20th anniver
sary edition of collected poems.
Lovely honesty by a fine poet and
Savannah-based novelist who, as
Tennessee Williams once put it, has
covered the waterfront.
Alternate Roots: Plays from
the South. Edited by Kathie
deNobriga and Valetta Anderson
(Heinemann, 340 pp, $17.95). Lan
guage gone glorious by, among
others, playwrights Rebecca
Ranson, Jo Carson, John O'Neal
and Jim Grimsley.
Queer and Loathing: Rants
and Raves of a Raging AIDS
Clone by David B. Feinberg (Vi
king, 275 pp, $22.95). Essays by the
author of "Eighty-Sixed," who
died last month at age 37. Dark wit,
gay valor.
How am I to be Heard? Let
ters of Lillian Smith. Edited by
Margaret Rose Gladney (North
Carolina, 384 pp, $34.95). Fearless
Georgia writer and civil rights ad
vocate who knew it's a terrible
sleep when you can't wake up.
Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley
(Algonquin, 252 pp, $18.95). A
topflight first novel by one of
North America's major dramatists.
What the Bible Really Says
About Homosexuality by Father
Daniel A. Helminiak (Alamo
Square, 128 pp, $9.95). Amen.
Two Friends and Other
Nineteenth-Century Lesbian
Stories by American Women.
Edited by Susan Koppelman (Me
ridian/Dutton, 288 pp, $10.95).
Anthology of 19th century writing
by women helps excavate our yes
terdays.
Angels in America:
Millenium Approaches and
Perestroika, by Tony Kushner
(TCG, boxed set, $20.95). Two epic
plays as Big Bard (or maybe Bertolt
Brecht) might have written them.
Chelsea Girls by Eileen
Myers (Black Sparrow, 276 pp,
$13). Alive, loudly.
Knowing When to Stop:A
Memoir by Ned Rorem (Simon &
Schuster, 647 pp, $30). Sardonic,
narcissistic composer-diarist is still
thriving and naming names at 70.
Memoir of a Race Traitor by
Mab Segrest (South End, 274 pp,
$15). Courageous Alabama-born
white activist's essays examine
who we really are down here.
The Burning Library by
Edmund White, edited by David
Bergman (Knopf, 385 pp, $25). The
collected essays of sometime expa
triate novelist White ("A Boy's
Own Story"). The "boy" grows up
and discovers it just will not do.
The Starwick Episodes by
Thomas Wolfe, edited and with an
introduction by Richard S.
Kennedy (LSU, 108 pp, $11.95).
Asheville's king of the adverb
treated lover Aline Bernstein like
dirt, so don't be dismayed by how
he dealt with his gay pal at
Harvard.
My Own Country: A
Doctor's Story of a Town and its
People in the Age of AIDS by
Abraham Verghese (Simon &
Schuster, 347 pp, $23). Fatalities
and overcoming fears in Johnson
City.
Gene Gabriel Moore created the
Townsend Fiction Prize in 1982,
which is given out every two years by
Georgia State University and orches
trated by Virginia Spencer Carr.
CONTINUES THROUGH
NEW YEAR'S DAY
- ;• • OPEN
■ . NEW YEAR'S EVE 10-6
NEW YEAR'S DAY 12-6
•• ' V > s
/IN
OUTWRITE
THANK YOU
ATLANTA!
Your donations
for signed-copy
books have raised
over $400 for
Project Open
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