A Queer Geography: Journeys Toward a Sexual SelfWhat makes up the gay identity? What part do upbringing, family tradition, and cultural "norms" play on the development of one's sense of self? In A Queer Geography, Frank Browning looks at the effect that geography - literally being in different places in the world - has on the definition of sexuality and sexual roles. From the streets of Brooklyn to the waterfront of Naples, from a small town in Kentucky to the lusty side of Capitol Hill, Browning explores the gay psyche. Interweaving the personal stories of individual men with his own reflections on gay life in Italy, France, Brazil, and New Guinea among other places, Browning argues that today's gay rights movement could have happened only in the United States. He discovers the roots of gay identity in a distinctly American experience, discussing such sure-to-be controversial subjects as how the Puritan compact led to the backroom bawdy house, how being "born again" is reenacted as "coming out", and how gay men's search for their own identity profoundly echoes America's relentless quest for a national identity of its own. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Three | 53 |
Outness Place and the Aesthetics of Desire | 99 |
Copyright | |
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activists aesthetic African-American American gay beauty become boat Bob Wingate body Bound & Gagged boyfriend boys called camorra Ciro Claudio closet coming cultural cum shots desire door dream erotic ethics experience fantasies feel femminielli fireplace Foucault Fred Hersch friends fuck gay identity gay movement Gene geography guys heterosexual homo homosexual human identity politics imagination inside Italian jazz lesbian lesbian and gay liberation lives look lover male Marcello Marcello D mean Mizzo mother move Naples Neapolitan never night ourselves passion play political Priapus Pulcinella Quartieri queer rainbow flag realize ritual sailing sailors Sambia San Francisco secret seems sense sex clubs sexual identity social spirit story straight streets sublime talk tambolella tell things tion told touch transvestite woman women writer York young Zeeland
References to this book
The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture David Bergman No preview available - 2004 |