Kaplin, Danny
Brothers and Others in
Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units
New York: (Southern Tier Editions) Haworth Press, 2003
One of the current favorite gay movies is “Yossi
& Jagger” (Strand Releasing, 2003), an Israeli love story
between two high-ranking and highly respected gay Israeli solders who
are serving hazardous duty on the Israeli-Lebanese border. “Yossi &
Jagger” was directed by Eytan Fox originally for Israeli television and
is in Hebrew with English subtitles. (The film, starring Ohad Knoller
as the Company Commander Yossi and Yehuda Levi as the Platoon Leader
Jagger was expertly reviewed by Cheri
Rosenberg in the Independent Gay
Writer, Volume 2, Issue 5, p. 12.) “Yossi & Jagger” is
presumably based
upon a true gay love story and has become a surprise-hit film in Israel
and has gained many admirers among audiences in North America.
Fans of the movie who desire a much more comprehensive and intellectual
examination of homosexuality in the Israeli military will discover that
Danny Kaplan of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Israel’s
Ben-Gurion University has written a college textbook version of “Yossi
& Jagger” with his exceptionally learned Brother and Others in
Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units.
Kaplin’s book
is not light summer reading for the beach. Indeed, it is a erudite
sociology volume that is fascinating, cerebral, and highly informative.
Despite Kaplan’s scholarship, Brothers
and Others in Arms remains
inviting reading fare, especially owing to the first half of the work
that is filled with faithful transcripts of captivating in-depth
interviews conducted with gay and bisexual men in the Israeli Defense
Forces (IDF).
From a scholarly point of view, the author’s study falls into the
category of qualitative research. The first half of Kaplan’s work draws
upon material from lengthy interviews with nine soldiers. Altogether,
his total number of subjects equaled 90 men who described themselves as
being either gay or bisexual and who were interviewed in the years
between 1980 until 1998. All the subjects had served a minimum of three
to four years in the IDF and many had in addition spent time as
reservists. All had had some combat experience. A significant number of
the men served in the war with Lebanon. The subjects represented
virtually all IDF divisions from infantrymen, tank commanders,
paratroopers, medics, trainer pilots, reconnaissance officers and men
aboard combat vessels. The comprehensive responses from his subjects
create a varied set of case studies with each soldier having a unique
story to tell. The primary subjects include Yaniv from a paratroop
brigade, Nimrod, who served on a missile boat, and Tom, a pilot cadet.
In his prologue, Kaplan discusses his own homosexuality as well as his
IDF career including his initial military service, his university
studies resulting in a subsequent interest in gay men in the military,
and of his return to the IDF as a reservist in a secret camp where only
those men with the highest possible security clearance were stationed.
(So much for the U.S. military establishment argument that gays
represent a defense security risk!) The second half of the book is
devoted to Kaplan’s analysis of the answers his IDF subjects provided
via the interviews.
North American citizens may require some important history of gays in
the IDF in order to fully appreciate Kaplan’s research. All males in
Israel must serve a term of military service that begins at age18 and
generally lasts for three years. The draft is also followed by annual
reserve duty. Israel is the only nation in the world that also
conscripts women for military service, although their terms of duty
generally last for a shorter period of time, usually between one year
and 18 months and they are not called back for reservist duty.
Homosexuals have been allowed to serve in the military since the
foundation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948. More recent
legislation in the 1990s has expanded the rights of gays in the IDF.
Kaplan is a fine researcher and a skillful inquirer. A sample of his
interview schedule of questions that follows provides some idea of
depths that he went to in order to uncover the information he needed to
truly analyze the position of gays in the IDF.
Did you have sexual experiences before the army?
How do you deal with the desire to be with guys
while you’re on duty?
Did any of your buddies know about your
homosexuality?
How about the idea of lovers and warriors being
together? What do
you think of that?
How did you feel when you were with other guys in
the showers or in
the barracks?
How did you feel socially in the company?
Were there any other soldiers in your unit that you suspected of being
gay?
How did the military service shape the development
of your gay
identity?
Perhaps the most poignant and most pertinent question is the final one
that Kaplan asked deeply religious Israeli soldiers. This is because
the religious right in the U.S. more often than not employs Old
Testament wording in their arsenal of weapons to keep gays from service
in the American nation’s military forces.
Do you know the verse in the Bible about David and Jonathan, who loved
and were faithful to each other? Does it ring true to something you
felt in the bonds between warriors?
Virtually all the respondents answered Kaplan’s Biblical question in
the affirmative. On the whole, the answers to Kaplan’s probes are as
varied and as diverse as the men he interviewed who not only
represented very different divisions of the IDF, but came from every
walk of life as Israeli male citizens.
One of the strongest impressions that readers will come away with from
their reading of Brothers and Others
in Arms is not so much how
gay-straight issues play out in the Israeli military but rather the
greater universal issue of danger and fear that ALL Israeli youths and
adults live with as citizens of a nation that is in a unvarying state
of conflict and real or potential warfare. The youths in this book have
never known peace in the same way that the majority of their
counterparts in North America and much of Europe have experienced it.
Israeli youths must be unceasingly vigilant. Rather than learning how
to dance and play soccer, they spend their young lives learning how to
kill and avoid being killed.
Yet another unfamiliar concept or term that is likely to be foreign to
non-Israeli readers is the IDF phenomenon known as “masculitary.” In a
nation constantly at war or on the brink of war, being a “Jewish
warrior” is reinforced as a national institution and cultural position.
As Kaplan points out, “The ultimate test of manhood is the test of
battle.” (p.115) Thus, one of the differences readers will no doubt
note between gay and bisexual men in Israel and North America and
elsewhere in the world is the universal attitude of homosexuals that
they must appear to be hyper or super masculine during their initial
military service and later in their lives while on reserve duty. This
extreme masculine posture is referred to as “masculitary.” As one of
the author’s subjects reflects, “masculitary” is even taken to the
level of being narcissistic. Effeminate gay men are apparently never
seen in the IDF. Gay and bisexual men are combat warriors and they bear
that posture and attitude at all times during their service. They often
challenge straight men to be as rugged and daring as they are in
physical training and even combat. When they return to their homes,
they often show off their masculinity and military deportment to family
and friends. To refer back to the film “Yossi & Jagger,” viewers
may well recall that the character of Jagger wants to publicly declare
their gay love, but it is simply socially and emotionally impossible
for Yossi to do so due to his own personal devotion to the code of the
“masculitary” culture.
In the second half of the book, Kaplan examines the interview
transcripts through lens provided by two outstanding sociologists. The
first is provided by Vivian Cass and is a progression of six stages or
patterns homosexual men and women go through in the formulation of
their gay identity. The first stage is confusion of one’s sexual
identity followed by comparison to feedback shared by others. These two
stages are followed by tolerance of being homosexual, tracked closely
by acceptance and pride, and ultimately a complete synthesis is
achieved when homosexuality is accepted as being just one component of
a person’s total self-identity. (p. 127)
Although Cass’s model of the six stages gay people move through had
relevance for his research, especially in relation to the acceptance
and accommodation of soldier’s gay self-identity, Kaplan finally
elected to utilize an alternative model to analyze his findings. In
essence, he chose to look at the organization, in this case the
military institution or IDF, and how it impacts the lives of
individuals who are gay and bisexual rather than to put the spotlight
solely on the subjects themselves.
Theoretician and researcher Joanne Martin created a paradigm for
understanding organizational cultures. Martin’s model consists of three
possible frameworks that apply to all people regardless of age,
sexuality, race, or other differentiating factors that are part of an
organization of any kind or type. Martin states that organizations fit
somewhere amid three dynamics: integration, differentiation, and
fragmentation. Kaplan believes that the manner in which gay and
bisexual men fit into the Israeli military institution can be best
understood in view of their lives from Martin’s archetypes. Martin
claims that any organization can be understood from her identified
three governing perspectives and Kaplan maintains that Martin’s
insightful model helped him the most in exploring gayness and the IDF
“masculitary” culture. (pp. 219-221)
The key to integration is the sense of belonging that occurs in any
organization. Integration occurs when all people in an organization
feel a true sense of belonging and are committed to the goals of a
group to which they feel a sense of belonging. The opposite of this
positive stance is differentiation where there is a lack of consistency
in the way organization members are treated that results in a lack of
commitment on the part of its members. The structure of the
organization is lax with the result being the presence of competition
and contradiction. The third possible organizational structure is
fragmentation. In this case, the group is filled with members who feel
disconnected and who experience a multiplicity of detached
relationships.
Kaplan believes integration is the dominant mode of thinking and
behaving in the IDF. Brotherhood is more important to both gay and
straight soldiers than sexual identity. Even if individual soldiers and
officers do not especially like or respect gay and bisexual men in the
military, they accept their presence as a forgone conclusion and do not
fight the organization or cultural system, in this case the nation’s
military establishment.
At this vital juncture, Kaplan shares an insightful and fascinating
observation. The world is never an ideal place and he honestly admits
that there is both resistance to the IDF’s open homosexual policy and a
degree of prejudice by some of the military establishment against
homosexuals. Nevertheless, he makes a particularly attention-grabbing
comparison between Israel’s acceptance and integration of gay soldiers
into military service versus the current U.S. military practice or
doctrine of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The Israeli policy is
inclusive and accepts everyone without any soldier having to explain or
defend his sexual orientation whatever it may be. In the United State
military with its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy every soldier must
prove, even if only for ten minutes, that he is not gay. From Kaplan’s
perspective this difference in condition leads to suspicion and
paranoia. Moreover, while there may be prejudice in the IDF, it cannot
be used as a weapon against gay or bisexual soldiers because the laws
of the State prohibit such action. On the other hand, Kaplan reasons,
the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy adopted in the U.S.A. is an open
invitation for witch hunts for homosexuals, real or merely imagined or
suspected.
Kaplan provides extensive reference notes for each chapter that provide
both explanations of his research procedures and that offer interested
readers resources they may use to follow up his citations such as the
discussions of sociological models provided by Vivian Cass and Joanne
Martin. He also provides a highly useful glossary that is particularly
valuable given the two different languages, Hebrew and English that are
utilized in formulating, conducting, analyzing, and reporting the
research. Kaplan defines such terms as “yeshiva,” “Shabbat,” “kibbutz,”
and “Bnei Akiva.” The book is also well indexed.
Brothers and Others in
Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli
Combat Units offers vital and important scholarship on a topic
of
interest that has been ignored far too long, especially when important
national debates are held in countries such as the United States about
the fitness of homosexuals to serve in defense of their nation. Danny
Kaplan is an outstanding researcher and his findings should be known
and shared far and wide. They are fascinating, significant, and vital.
Indeed, it probably even more important for the non-gay general public
to read this admirable volume than it is as a prerequisite for GLBT
citizens who already know its essential truths.
Jerry Flack, University of
Colorado
|
Craig, Michael D.
The Ice Sculptures: A
Novel of Hollywood
New York: Southern Tier Editions / Haworth Press,
2004
The Ice Sculptures: A
Novel of Hollywood may well be this year’s hit
summer beach read, but booklovers would be wise to think twice before
spending their hard-earned cash on this dismal novelization of what
life is supposed to be like for a Leonardo DiCaprio- or Ben Affleck- or
Brad Pitt-style Hollywood top gun who is hiding the big, bad secret
that he is gay! The core of The Ice
Sculptures is that the deep and
dark clandestine life of fabulous hunk Tim Race must remain a secret at
all costs. This particularly untalented super star appears out of
nowhere and instantaneously rises to mega-stardom to become a major
name in Tinsel Town despite his true sexual identity. Of course, he is
surrounded by a cadre of villainous Hollywood sorts who protect his
image as he is their primary commodity investment. Keeping Rice’s
secret becomes an increasingly difficult task as he is woefully stupid
in his behavior choices and unbelievably inept at using even the
remotest common sense in protecting his reputation and the big fat lie
he lives.
The cover publicity blurb for The
Ice Sculptures attempts to sell
Craig’s first fictional outing as a present-day Jacqueline Susann-type
novelization of what supposedly goes on behind the scenes of Hollywood
life, especially for those at the top of the heap. Unfortunately, Craig
is not even as good a novelist as Susann was. There was a sort of campy
good humor to her characters and scandalous plots. The Ice Sculptures
fails to have any real resemblance to interesting characterization. His
“characters” are merely stereotypes who appear primarily to add human
dynamics that pass for a plot that seems to have been conceived solely
for the purpose of presenting hot sex scenes.
Ben Tyler covered the same back-stabbing terrain far better two years
ago with Tricks of the Trade
(Kensington, 2002), a Hollywood-based,
tell-all novel about gays in the film industry that has far more
likeable characters, especially Rusty and Bart, plus a plot that is far
more enjoyable (and despicable) as it unfolds. Moreover, Tricks of the
Trade has a charmingly sweet, if hardly believable,
denouement
that finds its heroes in love and the villains appropriately and
humorously receiving their comeuppances in spades. While Tyler’s book
is also jam-packed with steamy gay sex, it was written with wit and
remains genuinely fun to read even if it was not a serious contender
for the National Book Award for fiction in the year of its debut.
The Ice Sculptures
attempts to tell a convincing story of a handsome and
muscular youth, Timothy Gividend (Tim Race being a stage name), who
boards a bus destined for Hollywood the very first day that he can. In
the Tim’s case the big day just happens to coincide with his graduation
as the high school valedictorian. (He must have been a member of an
extremely dim-witted and intellectually challenged class since his
later indiscretions indicate that Rice possesses nothing remotely akin
to a lick of sense or intelligence.)
Almost instantly, and without any apparent talent other than his
ability to have steamy sex with other men, the future movie star Tim
Race hooks up with David who is a predatory, in-the-closet, Hollywood
star manager whose sole aptitude appears to be taking sexual advantage
of handsome male youths who are willing to make it big in Tinsel Town
at all costs.
The David and Tim scenario points to one of the key problems with the
novel. The characters are no more than Hollywood stereotypes. There is
the beautiful and sexy actress Raina Hawthorne who serves as the beard
for Tim and provides the cover that helps him maintain his true
sexuality a secret especially from the Hollywood press and the
international paparazzi. In addition to David, the sexually rapacious
and greedy manager, there is an over-sexed and in-the-closet producer,
and other grasping and evil film-land types all lined up as so many
cardboard cut-out models for a mock set design. The stereotypical
characters lack depth and certainly possess no charm. Sadly, the sole
character with a modicum of humanity is the Mexican illegal immigrant
youth Jaime who is treated shamefully.
The plot is even weaker than the characterization. Tim Race wins an
Oscar, but there is no explanation of why he is so honored, save for
the apparent purpose of dropping the names of real-life famous actors
such as Tom Hanks, Nicolas Cage, Brad Pitt, and Ben Affleck, all of
whom purportedly turned down the role that Tim parlays into a surprise
portrayal that gains him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Equally
unsatisfactory is the protagonist’s sudden and inexplicable spiral into
drug addiction that seems especially contrived. Tim Rice, the super man
of Hollywood, turns out to be a real baby when it comes to going to the
dentist; he cannot tolerate any pain. He has the misfortune to be
treated by a dentist who violates his professional oath and ethics, not
to mention the law, with his unrestrained prescriptions of Vicodin for
Rice. Worst of all is the denouement that is a total sell out and is in
reality an insult to gay men regardless of wealth, position, or
fashionable addresses. It could well be that the biggest problem with
purchasing The Ice Sculptures
as beach reading will be pollution. The
final episode in this lackluster book will justifiably tempt angry
readers to hurl it into the sea from sheer disgust.
The Ice Sculptures
appears to have been published for one reason and
that is to sell a book that is chock-a-block filled with explicit sex
scenes. Alas, a well articulated plot and realistic characters are not
tolerably described, but the sexual scenes are written with a lusty
pen.
The sad reality of The Ice Sculptures
is that it will most likely far
outsell truly excellent novels with gay themes, plots and characters
such as C. Jay Cox’s novelization of the film "Latter Days," Aaron
Krach’s Half-Life,Tim
Ashley’s The Island of Mending Hearts,
Tom
Dolby’s Trouble Boy or
classics such as Ronald L. Donaghe’s Uncle
Sean
and Jim Grimsley’s Comfort and Joy
that deserve large audiences while
too many gay men will be purchasing the sexy but otherwise feeble The
Ice Sculptures: A Novel of Hollywood.
Readers who seek a fun and imagined treatment of the back-stabbing,
sex-saturated Hollywood will have far more fun by checking out a
library copy of Ben Tyler’s Tricks
of the Trade, or if they truly
desire a factual account of a gay actor living lies and masquerading as
a straight man, then they will be far better served with a well-written
biography of Rock Hudson.
Sadly, The Ice Sculptures
melts far too fast
and all that remains is stale water.
Jerry Flack, Denver,
Colorado
|
Boyer,
David
Kings & Queens:
Queers at the Prom
Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004
Paper 160 pp. $24.95.
Receiving a driver’s license is cool and high school graduation is a
necessity, but the penultimate rite of passage for adolescents
(especially high school seniors) all across the United States is the
prom. It takes on a significance nearly as glorified as a wedding
ceremony. There are ball gowns, tuxedos, stretch limos, expensive
pre-dance dinners at exclusive restaurants, unique dance venues such as
decorated school gymnasiums or hotel ballrooms—(Remember when Susan
Ford’s senior prom was held in the White House in 1975?)—the
crowning of the prom king and queen, the grand promenade or the last
dance, and the after-prom parties, sober and otherwise.
The prom experience, however, has not been an event of equal euphoria
or nostalgia for all students. This is a key point David Boyer makes in
his engrossing Kings and Queens:
Queers at the Prom, a colorful oral
history of the tradition high school prom and queer students. He
commences Kings and Queens
with a recounting of his own dismal prom
experience more than fifteen years ago when he was still closeted and
“passed” for straight. He observes that proms in the United States
focus the spotlight on “coupling and romance, forcing queer teens to
publicly confront an attraction that until very recently, society
basically condemned.” (p. 3) In his introduction, Boyer also briefly
provides a history of proms from the centuries old French word
promenade to the English formal balls of the nineteenth century to the
high school prom that became a significant twentieth century USA right
of passage, especially beginning in the 1930s. His social history
marches forward to such wide-ranging focal points as all-gay proms in
the 2000s to the now-popular and brand-new Cinderella conveyance to the
prom -- the stretch SUV!
One of the surprise facts of Boyer’s book is the longevity of proms in
American culture. Long before Stonewall, even before World War II,
there were high school proms and they were just as significant in the
past as they are today. One particularly telling comment is shared by
Theresa Iorio who attended her high school prom more than a
half-century ago. “Prom was like an obligation. If people didn’t
go…there was something wrong with them, you know?” (p. 3)
Even though the book is not a complete gay history of the past century,
Boyer does illustrate how growing up gay has changed over the decades.
Moreover, the first-person stories throughout this fascinating book,
from the 1930s to 2003 reveal how with the passage of years and
decades, attitudes and conditions for queers in general have changed
largely for the better.
Boyer works backwards from the Queer Proms of the 2000s to the “Sunset
in Paradise” or “Evening in Paris” grand nights in the 1940s and 1950s.
The chapters are, in fact, labeled Freshman (proms after 1990),
Sophomores (proms after the ‘80s), Juniors (proms of the ‘60s and
‘70s), and Seniors (proms before 1960). Additionally, Boyer provides
occasional time lines across bottom pages highlighting gay history from
Illinois becoming the first state to decriminalize homosexuality in
1962 to the 1969 Stonewall Riots to the 1987 founding of Act Up. More
broadly he incorporates generalized history that includes the coining
of the term “teenager” in 1940, the inaugural issue of Seventeen
magazine in 1944, and the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.
First and foremost, Kings and Queens
is a collection of 22 remembrances
from very recent times when it has been both legal and acceptable for
same-sex couples to attend proms to reminiscences of GLBT persons who
are now in their seventies and eighties and attended “straight” proms
long ago. Boyer uses the same format throughout to share the personal
histories of GLBT persons of all ages and locations who communicate
what their prom experiences meant to them regardless of whether the
event was filled with joy and exhilaration, or agony and isolation.
Postscripts reveal the present-day lives of the subjects.
The stories range from Marinska Dolnar’s prom memory of 1935, held
during The Great Depression, when she spent an unheard of $10 on all
her prom regalia, including a gown, to the very different prom memory
of Arthur Larsen who was the 2003 class valedictorian of the Harvey
Milk High School, New York, New York, the world’s first fully-qualified
and publicly funded senior high school specifically created for queer
youths. Arthur took his best male friend as his date to the prom that
was also attended by Oscar-winning Best Actress Hillary Swank who won
her Academy Award for her portrayal of Brandon Teena, the murdered
transgendered youth.
One fascinating profile is that of Dan Stewart who grew up as an
“All-American” conservative youth in Cumberland, Rhode Island and
graduated with the class of 1980. He attended the same high school as
Aaron Fricke who went to court and sued his school principal to secure
the right to take his boyfriend, Paul Guilbert, to his senior prom.
Later, Fricke wrote Reflections of a
Rock Lobster, a popular memoir
about the experience. Dan Stewart was incensed with the actions of his
gay classmate and went on television and radio as a conservative
Republican youth to condemn Fricke and his prom date for their sin as
well as for supposedly ruining the prom for all their fellow
classmates. Stewart was the eye of the storm of the anti-gay prom date
media hurricane. Amazingly, seventeen years later, Stewart himself
became the first openly gay man to win an election of city mayor in the
state of New York. Still a Republican, he upset the incumbent
Democratic Plattsburgh mayor and went on to be re-elected. But, perhaps
most importantly, seventeen years after his avowed animosity to Fricke
and Guilbert, Dan Stewart made a special pilgrimage to Providence,
Rhode Island at the request of Gay Pride organizers where he gave a
tearful speech begging for the forgiveness of not just Fricke and
Guilbert, but of all of the GLBT people in Cumberland and in Rhode
Island who had suffered from his internalized homophobia nearly two
decades earlier.
One of the most colorful and poignant stories of Kings and Queens is
the story of Margaret Manson, “The Gay Mom,” who married, had three
sons, and did not come out as a lesbian until she was in her fifties
and after her son Steven, then a student at Stanford University, came
out as a gay man to her. Now, both she and Steven are reconciled
happily with everyone in their large family and “The Gay Mom” lives as
contentedly as she has ever been with her partner, Sandy.
A final story is especially inspiring from both personal and social
perspectives. Krystal Bennett of Ferndale, Washington was recognized as
a high school senior girl, but she rebelled, dressed as a young man,
and took her girlfriend Connie to the prom. Little did Krystal or
Connie dream of the surprise that awaited them that night. The
highlight of the prom was the coronation of the student voted 2001 prom
king and queen. The queen chosen was as expected, a petite, popular and
pretty cheerleader named Kara Johnson, but the announcement of the prom
king was a bombshell. The students had elected Krystal Bennett as king.
The prom king is currently going through the process of transitioning,
shifting from being female to male, from Krystal to just plain Krys. It
was a night fit for a queen to be a king and the majority of the
Ferndale seniors enjoyed a great coronation.
More evidence of the enduring popularity of high school proms is found
in a colorfully designed insert section entitled the “Mini Bag” that
features glossy photographs from Seventeen
magazine prom style guides
from 1955 onward. Other segments of the “Mini Bag” that are pleasurable
include highlights from today’s Internet prom site for GLBT youth: www.gayprom.com
created so that today’s youth need not feel the
isolation that some of Boyer’s subjects relate in telling their
poignant and lonely stories in the core pages of the book. There is
also foreign exchange, a world map revealing prom fever from Finland to
Australia, and a terrific timeline of comparisons of such prom topics
as men’s and women’s fashions, music, after prom activities, flowers,
vices of choice, and even queer couples, decade by decade, from the
1940s to the 2000s. Boyer’s “Mini Bag” also speaks to other groups for
whom the prom presents conflict including youth who are Muslim young
women, home schooled, Jewish, and Mormon students as well as the poor
and youth of color. One of the truly disturbing contemporary actions
Boyer observes is the return to separate “white” and “black” proms in
high schools in deeply southern states such as Mississippi and Alabama
after more than three decades of integrated proms. At the same time,
one of the genuine virtues of Boyer’s book is his inclusion of many
minority prom-experience stories, especially as related by
African-American subjects.
One of the sad and ironic observations that Boyer makes is the fact
that often young gay men, particularly those noted for their decorator
flair, are in charge of the all-important ornamentation for the prom –
magically turning an old basketball gymnasium into a tropical isle of
splendor or the City of Paris for one glorious night, while at the same
time they are being ridiculed by straight students for being effeminate
and/or they have no date with whom they can truly enjoy their
miraculous handiwork.
Kings and Queens
is apt to bring out more varied feelings among the
GLBT than any recent book in memory. That is because the famous or
infamous prom has meant something different to everyone who is queer.
For Dan Stewart it was self-loathing disguised as homophobia and the
inability to accept that he could possibly be gay. For others, the
event meant lying to themselves, their friends (often a best friend of
the opposite gender), or just staying home and feeling alone and
different from everyone else, or in the 2000s proudly going to the prom
JUST THE WAY GOD MADE YOU.
Boyer provides a glossary that is both extensive and excellent in
helping readers of all ages fully enjoy the text. It includes
descriptions of musicians from Glenn Miller to John Coltrane, prom
events such as the “grand march,” brief profiles of the names of both
celebrities as well as victims that include Jerry Springer, Emmett
Till, Hilary Swank, and Aaron Fricke to prom-based movies such as
“Carrie” and “Pretty In Pink.”
Kings & Queens:
Queers at the Prom is filled with enlightening
stories. It is a fast and fascinating read, even if the occasion of
your own school prom was painful or a time when you remained home alone
still firmly “in the closet” and therefore nonexistent. The personal
histories range from funny to poignant stories, but there are also some
exceedingly personal chronicles such as that of the triumphant “King”
Krystal Bennett that may touch your heart and bring a genuine smile to
your face.
Jerry Flack, Denver, CO
|