Title: Gay Culture in America - Essays from the Field Author: Gilbert Herdt Published by: Beacon Press, 1992 ISBN: 0-8070-7914-6 [Hardcover, 255 pages]
More than twenty years ago the famous stonewall riot sparked a cultural revolution that transformed gay lives. From the secretive bars emerged a community that now embraces not only a "gay" identity but also a system of rules, attitudes, and beliefs from which the culture of gay men is made.In this ground breaking anthology, contributors explore the diverse meanings and themes of "gay" in Amercan life. Across different ethnic, age, and regional groups, they record the new institutions, roles, symbols, and myths in gay culture.
Gil Herdt explores the coming out process of gay youth in Chicago; Martin Levine traces the effects of AIDS on the "clone" community in New York; Frederick Lynch looks at suburban gay men; and Joseph Carrier offers a portrait of a gay Mexican-American man. Other essays examine the relationship between younger and older gay men, and between gay men and the American values of individualism, freedom, and community.
While scholars in the past have been obsessed with the abuses of homosexuality, the contributors here ask instead what is authentic in gay men's lives. In all these essays they are interested in the legitimacy of the gay experience, in both its public and its personal dimensions, as they show how gay culture is a perspective not just on sexuality but on human nature and the world.
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