I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore
"We have traded tales, my buddies and I; of affairs, encounters, secrets, fears, self-promotion-of fantasies that we make real in the telling." In this, the first volume in Ethan Mordden's acclaimed trilogy on Manhattan gay life, he introduces a small group of friends-Dennis Savage, Little Kiwi, Carlos, and the narrator, Bud-and chronicles their exploration of the new world of gay life and the new people they are in the process of becoming. In a voice at once ironic, wistful, witty, and profound, Mordden investigates his suspicion that all of gay life is stories and that, somehow or other, all these stories are about love.
Afrekete
Destined to become a classic in the tradition of the best-selling Black-Eyed Susans/Midnight Birds and Erotique Noire/ Black Erotica. Afrekete gives collective voice to the tradition of black lesbian writing. In the vast and proliferating area of both African-American and lesbian and gay writing, the work of black lesbians is most often excluded or relegated to the margins. Afrekete meshes these seemingly disparate traditions and celebrates black lesbian experiences in all their variety and depth. Elegant, timely, provocative, and inspiring, the fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in Afrekete -- written in a range of styles -- engage a variety of highly topical themes, placing them at the center of literary and social discourse. Beginning with "Tar Beach," an excerpt from Audre Lorde's celebrated memoir Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which introduces the character Afrekete, the collection also includes such prominent writers as Michelle Cliff, Carolivia Herron, Jewelle Gomez, and Alexis De Veaux. Other pieces are by Jacqueline Woodson, Sapphire, Essence editor Linda Villarosa, and filmmaker Michelle Parkerson, with other contributions by exciting new writers Cynthia Bond, Jocelyn Taylor, Jamika Ajalon, and Sharee Nash. Afrekete is a collection whose time has come. It is an extraordinary work, one of lasting value for all lovers of literature. A fresh, engaging journey, Afrekete will both inform and delight.
Annie Oakley's Girl
Obsession, jealousy, and thoughts of death are the essence of this surrealistic short story collection.
The Terrible Girls
The girls on the prowl in The Terrible Girls are indeed terrible--relentless in love, ruthless in betrayal. These thematically linked stories depict a contemporary Gothic world in which body parts are traded for love, wounds never heal, and self-sacrifice is often the only way out."In this brilliantly original work, Rebecca Brown gives us haunting parables of betrayal and love, of loss and resurrection, of loneliness and solidarity. Like a modern Djuna Barnes, Brown creates a language of telling that is fiercely beautiful and honest. This book is a love story unlike any you have read before. Its subversive and passionate transformation carry the lesbian literary voice onto the 21st century."--Joan Nestle"A dry, witty, graceful--if savage--gift."--Mary Gaitskill"The Terrible Girls comes from one of the fiercest, most potent, original writers around: a bloody flayer of skins, both other's and her own . . . a work of possessed and persuasive visionary power."--The Listener"The Terrible Girls is a powerful account of erotic love which exchanges the comforts of illusion for more complex and less certain rewards."--The Times Literary SupplementRebecca Brown is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award. Her books, which are all published by City Lights, include: The Haunted House, The Terrible Girls, The End of Youth, The Last Time I Saw You, The Dogs and Annie Oakley's Girl. She was awarded a Genius Award and grant from Seattle's weekly magazine, The Stranger.
Frisk
In Frisk, Dennis Cooper explores the ultimate meaning of the body, sex, and death. The novel's narrator, a thirteen-year-old boy, is stunned when he encounters photos of a mutilated boy; his imagination leads him on a journey in which sexual urges start to fuse with grisly fantasies and desires he doesn't understand.
Numbers
Book jacket/back: Johnny Rio, a handsome narcissist but no longer a pretty boy, travels to Los Angeles, the site of past sexual conquest and remembered youthful radiance, in a frenzied attempt to recreate his younger self. Johnny has ten precious days to draw the "numbers," the men who will confirm his desirability, and with the hungry focus of a man on borrowed time, he stalks the dark balconies of all-night theaters, the hot sands of gay beaches, and shady glens of city parks, attempting to attract shadowy sex-hunters in an obcessive battle against the passing of his youth.
