About Time : Exploring the Gay Past - Tapa blanda

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The experimental attitude toward sex shared by two young gay men in South Carolina in the 1820s may have paralleled mainstream homosexual mores, as one document in this remarkable survey reveals. Historian-playwright Duberman has pulled together source materials that record the largely uncharted private lives of gay men and women in 19th and 20th century America, while also mirroring the straight world's fear, hostility and misunderstanding of homosexuals. Ranging from the disturbing and profound to the inadvertently hilarious, the documents include a 1951 report on "the H problem" from a national conference of therapists, psychiatrists' notes on gay patients, a 1913 pamphlet on Walt Whitman's homosexuality, gay diaries and memoirs and firsthand accounts of Hopi and Zuni erotic rituals. The second half of the volume reprints Duberman's own essays, reviews and speeches. He writes trenchantly about racism in the gay male world, scientists' pretensions about knowing what "causes" homosexuality, the risks of coming out, Anita Bryant and bisexuality in the ancient world. (December 15
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The history of gay men and lesbians has been all but lost because important papers have been destroyed, hidden, altered, or "translated" to remove the homosexual significance. Duberman, a historian, is interested in reconstructing the past by bringing to light previously unpublished documents. Part 1 includes documents from the 1820s to 1965 relevant to the history of gay sexuality, which appeared in his column in the New York Native in 1981-83. Part 2 focuses on "events, theoretical disputes, and organizational beginnings" in which he participated. These essays appeared in the New York Times, New Republic, etc., in 1972-83. Part 3 includes Duberman's diary excerpts from 1956-57 and his thoughts on them in 1981. Following in the tradition of Jonathan Katz's Gay American History (LJ 12/15/76), this is a significant event in documenting gay culture.James E. Van Buskirk, Acad. of Art Coll. Lib., San Francisco
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.