Hearing Us Out: Voices from the Gay and Lesbian Community - Softcover

Sutton, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316823139 ISBN 13: 9780316823135

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1997

Synopsis

Profiles fifteen people, from a high school student to a gay minister, who explain what being gay has meant in their own lives

About this title

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-An eloquent foreword by M.E. Kerr sets the tone for 15 short interviews in which gays, lesbians, and their advocates speak about the perils and joys of being sexually different from mainstream culture-how they approach straight society and how it reacts to them. The book documents a wide range of experiences, including a young man who was hounded out of high school; lesbian partners who adopted Peruvian children; a minister; a drag queen who attended the 1984 Democratic convention as a presidential candidate; and a police officer who wants her lover to be treated with care and respect in the event she is injured or killed in the line of duty. This lively title both demystifies a minority group demonized by much of the media and shows teens that there is "something to look forward to" in spite of the discrimination and loneliness they feel. It succeeds largely because the narrators' words bespeak qualities such as humor, honesty, generosity, and commitment despite, as Kerr says, "the prejudice or rigidity of others." Clear black-and-white photographs illustrate each interview. This book shows a wider range of experience than Ann Heron's Two Teenagers in Twenty (Alyson, 1994). Eric Marcus's Is It a Choice? (HarperCollins, 1993) is comparable in scope, but provides information in a question-and-answer format.
Claudia Morrow, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 8-12. In this collection of interviews, 15 people reflect on their experiences growing up gay or lesbian and living in that community as well as in the larger society. The interviews are not written in question-and-answer form but, rather, as first-person narratives, bringing out a wide diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and points of view. To Sutton's credit, the people do not all sound the same. Each speaks in an individual voice, discussing the experience of coming out or being gay or lesbian as a student, soldier, lawyer, minister, drag queen, police officer. Some of the subjects are teenagers, but most are adults because as Sutton states in his introduction, "I thought it was important to show teenage gays and lesbians . . . that life goes on past junior-high humiliation and high-school ostracism." In the foreword, M. E. Kerr (see the Focus review of her latest novel on p.125) reflects on her own experiences and wonders "what this book might have meant to me, growing up gay, but also to a parent like my mother." Readers wondering about what it means to be gay or lesbian will find this an intriguing and informative book of personal reflections. An annotated bibliography and a list of organizations are appended. To be illustrated with photographs of the subjects. Carolyn Phelan

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0316823139
• ISBN 13: 9780316823135
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128
• Illustrator: Ebright Lisa