JerryflackJerry Flack reviews three more books this issue and, as we have come to expect from him, they are an eclectic choice...

Bio: Jerry is a retired professor of education from the University of Colorado. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his partner of fourteen years, who is also a retired educator. He loves reading, especially gay literature, and watching gay cinema (current favorites are "ROAD TRIP" and "GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN"), and traveling throughout the glorious Southwest, especially in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, and the Colorado Rockies.
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Brothers-OthersKaplin, 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

Ice-SculpturesCraig, 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

Kings-QueensBoyer, 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


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