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Farm Boys
Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest
by Will Fellows
"Farm Boys" is a superb work of American oral history and sociology.
Author Will Fellows spoke to rural gay Midwestern men of all ages,
to draw out, record and give shape to their life stories. The result
is a poignant and revealing mosaic-portrait that shows the rich
intersections of farm life, gay culture and the American twentieth
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Major Conflict :
One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military
by JEFFREY MAJ USA (RET) MCGOWAN
A Desert Storm veteran looks back on the years he sacrificed his
identity to his career. Growing up in Queens, McGowan always wanted
to be a soldier, but he "couldn't be gay because soldiers aren't
gay." That rationale tortured him as he enrolled in Fordham
University's ROTC program and felt agonizing longing for Greg, a
co-worker at a bookstore. When McGowan joined the army in the late
1980s, "the military was like a college football player, pumped up
and ripped on steroids, " and he had "somehow managed to stuff the
genie that Greg had nearly succeeded in freeing forcefully back into
the proverbial bottle of my own denial." (This genie should get
overtime for all its play in this memoir.) McGowan served first in
Germany; during Desert Storm, he tried to sublimate his crush on a
gorgeous fellow officer. But the "don't ask don't tell" policy
created an inadvertent pogrom, he says, as sexual conservatives in
the service played dirty to smoke out the hidden "perverts." Though
McGowan was not implicated, the double-dealing and cowardice of
others sickened him, and he retired in 1998. McGowan is not always a
graceful writer ("the only anecdote [sic]," he tells us, "for this
strain of senseless tragedy that so often infects the world, is
love, family"), but his style is familiar and easy, as if he's
confiding his experiences to a trusted friend
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Just Add Hormones:
An Insider's Guide to the Transsexual Experience
by Matt Kailey
Matt Kailey lived as a straight woman for the first forty-two years
of his life, and then he changed. With the help of a good therapist,
chest surgery, and some strong doses of testosterone, Kailey began
living life as the man he'd always wanted to be. Now, in Just Add
Hormones, Kailey uses humor and humility to explain his journey
toward accepting himself as neither a woman nor someone born male. |
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