LBGTQ Arts

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This first critical biography of Arturo Islas (1938­ 1991) brings to life the complex and overlapping worlds inhabited by the gay Chicano poet, novelist, scholar, and professor. Gracefully written and deeply researched, "Dancing with Ghosts "considers both the larger questions of Islas's life--his sexuality, racial identification, and political personality--and the events of his everyday existence, from his childhood in the borderlands of El Paso to his adulthood in San Francisco and at Stanford University. Frederick Aldama portrays the many facets of Islas's engaging and often contradictory personality. He also explores Islas's coming into the craft of poetry and fiction--his extraordinary struggle to publish his novels, "The Rain God, La Mollie and the King of Tears, "and "Migrant Souls"--as well as his pivotal role in paving the way for a new generation of Chicano/a scholars and writers.

Through a skillful interweaving of life history, criticism, and literary theory, Aldama paints an unusually rich and wide-ranging portrait of both the man and the eventful times in which he lived. He describes Islas's struggle with polio as a child, his near-death experience and ileostomy as a thirty-year-old beginning to explore his queer sexuality in San Francisco in the 1970s, and his fatal struggle with AIDS in the late 1980s. Drawing from hundreds of unpublished letters, lecture notes, drafts of essays, novels, and poetry archived at Stanford University, Aldama also deals frankly with the controversies that swirled around Islas's impassioned love life, his drug addictions, and his scholarly and professional career as one of the first Chicano/a professors in the United States. Hediscusses the importance of Islas's pioneering role in bridging Anglo, Latin American, Chicano/a, and European storytelling styles and voices. "Dancing with Ghosts "succeeds brilliantly both as an account of a fascinating life that embraced many different worlds and as a chronicle of the grand historical shifts that transformed the late-twentieth-century American cultural landscape.

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David Weissman and Bill Weber's 2002 documentary, "The Cockettes," wowed audiences at the Sundance Film Festival and shined a bright new light on the Cockettes. Now one of the founding members of the legendary troupe takes us inside this flamboyant ensemble of countercultural radicals, who decked themselves out in drag and glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. Arriving in San Francisco in 1969 from suburban Detroit, Pam Tent had dropped out of college to join the come-as-you-are party that was going on in San Francisco. There she met Hibiscus, a member of a commune called KaliFlower that was dedicated to distributing free food and to creating free art and theater. One night, in burst of LSD-fueled spontaneity, Sweet Pam took to the stage in a cellophane hula skirt, when Hibiscus and a group of friends commandeered the stage of the Palace during The Nocturnal Dream Shows, a weekly midnight eclectic film series, to perform a chorus line dance to "Honky Tonk Woman." The Cockettes were born! In their 2 1/2 year existence, The Cockettes created 20 exuberantly chaotic shows that had titles like "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma" and "Pearls over Shanghai" and featured elaborate costumes and rebellious, gender-bending sexuality. Pam Tent's account recalls the heyday of the troupe, the inevitable infighting that accompanied fame, and finally how a Rex Reed column raving about the Cockette's led to a series of disastrous New York shows. At one show the opening-night audience--which included John Lennon, Gore Vidal, Angela Lansbury, and Anthony Perkins--walked out in droves. The Cockettes gave their last performance in the autumn of 1972. But despite their short life, the Cockette's unique burst of cultural experimentation and artistic outrageousness continues to influence the worlds of theater, music, fashion, gay politics, gay spirituality, and urban club life.

The Last Sunday in June
by Jamel Shabazz
 

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On the last Sunday in June, New York celebrates gay pride in style! This book showcases an extraordinary collection of photographs.

Drawing from an enormous cast of eye-catching characters, Shabazz showcases an extraordinary collection of luscious lesbians, tasteful transsexuals, and dramatic drag queens done up in their Sunday best to celebrate Gay Pride