Hometowns : gay men write about where they belong /

Most of the memoirs in this collection are those of professionally published fiction writers. This ensures polished prose and proffers the allure of personal disclosures by admired authors. Not surprisingly, the personal depictions parallel at least parts of a writer's fictional world. Thus the superb mystery writer Michael Nava tells about the poor, Chicano neighborhood in which he, like his sleuth Henry Rios, grew up, and Philip Gambone, chronicler of comfortable middle-class Massachusetts gay men, tells of his youth in the comfortable, middle-class Boston suburb of Wakefield. Other contributors discuss where they live now or where they were happiest or had the most impressive experiences of their lives. So physician and poet Michael Palmer, originally a Floridian, discusses the pleasures of now living in Anchorage, Alaska, and gay liberation spokesperson Arnie Kantrowitz considers his off-and-on relationship with Greenwich Village. Although it's hard to read many of these essays, which all seem to be also their authors' coming-out stories, in succession, together they comprise a vital, often inspiring, certainly basic addition to popular gay studies. ~--Ray Olson

Less about geography than about the need to belong, these 28 gay writers' moving essays about their sense of home elucidate the adolescent disenfranchisement of gay males in small communities. BOMC and QPB selections in cloth. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Believing that ``the context within which we grow up helps determine how we see the world,'' Preston asked 28 gay writers to consider their hometowns, either their birthplace, or the place they've chosen to live as adults. Among the wide-ranging essays are Michael Nava's recollection of his family dynamics in the poor Mexican community of Gardenland, Sacramento, California; Harlan Greene's bittersweet reminiscence of growing up Jewish in Charleston, South Carolina; and Lev Raphael's piece on establishing a home with his lover in Okemos, Michigan. Illustrating an increase over the last 30 years in the options of how and where gay men choose to live, these consistently powerful writings, poignantly personal, achieve a universality in their themes of alienation and community.-- James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Nostalgia and dissociation are the main themes in this not-so- diverse collection of essays by gay men who either had to leave their old communities or have adopted new ones. Twenty-seven gay male writers (editor Preston, Mark Thompson, Christopher Wittkes, and Andrew Holleran among them) from such varied areas as New Mexico, Nova Scotia, Key West, and Greenwich Village discuss the need ``of being supported and of belonging'' in safe locales. Most of them share a nagging dissonance between self- styled urbanity and a longing for their folksy family origins. These are the viewpoints of people so alienated and displaced that physical geography often takes a backseat to ``a territory of dreams''--an intellectual ghetto erected by men constantly forced to redefine and analyze who and where they are. The local color of the various towns is, therefore, irrelevant amid such gay global- village semiotics as mail-order porno, seaside cottages, tea dances, glory holes, brunches, and Judy Garland, all of which are recurrent motifs. Preston (ed., Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS) has included numerous pieces in which the ``Anglo'' culture of suburbia, malls, and picket fences is trashed--e.g., Thompson's ``meat loaf and mashed potatoes'' upbringing in Carmel, Cal.; Wittkes's ``boring suburbia'' of Manchester, Conn.; and the ``old mills and shade trees'' of George S. Snyder's Methodist roots in northeast Pennsylvania. Only Jesse Monteagudo's piece seriously addresses how ethnic minority communities can be equally homophobic. But despite the lack of any true intellectual variety, the book reveals how the imposed melancholia these gay men suffer can be a blessing in disguise since it enables them to perfect Proustian narratives in which the mind can override the limitations of place. Those already familiar with gay testimonial journalism will probably find few surprises here; still, a valuable foray into the art of ``emotional geography.''