Best Gay Stories 2011 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590212266 ISBN 13: 9781590212264

Publisher: Lethe Press, 2011

Synopsis

Editor Peter Dube questions the representations of gay men's lives found in the general media that present gay life and culture as some monolithic structure--that we all go to the same bars, shop in the same stores, eat in the same restaurants, hold the same kinds of political opinions, have similar backgrounds, and work the same kinds of jobs (more often than not urban, and vaguely white-collar.) He has collected authors who have stepped up the proverbial microphone to tell stories that are different through unique voices. Proof that we have moved well past the sentimental coming out story, the boy-meets-boy romance, the dangers and pleasures of sexual adventure, and we have done it without having to abandon them--because those things still happen and are still important. But we have found new ways of thinking about them, and have more experience to share, a deeper understanding of them, and we have added an array of other stories, from other parts of our lives, and dreams, and troubles to them. We have moved past the "gay story" and towards "gay stories." In these pages are a magnificent assortment of narratives and an equally fabulous range of ways of narrating them. The book includes experimental work and traditional tales, fantasy and realism, and as many different perspectives as one might hope to find.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Dubé is a writer working primarily in fiction, hybrid or intergenre forms, and the essay. His work - informed by surrealism, queer and "popular" cultures, as well as a whole host of heretical and apocalyptic visions - deploys dense verbal surfaces to investigate the narrative construction of experience, particularly at the points where imagination, desire and the body politic intersect. In other words, his writing is often weird, sweaty and lush.

Review:

''Collections such as this also invariably bring up the question, 'What is a 'gay story,' anyway?' Is it simply a story that a gay person has written? Something that features gay characters prominently? How much focus needs to be on the uniqueness of gay life, or can the protagonist be someone who 'just happens to be gay?' Does the author have to be gay or male to do it justice? With this anthology, Peter Dube makes the case for stories that show gay men as people, not a stereotyped 'sassy gay friend' appendage to someone straight without an interior life of their own. In these stories characters get up, walk around, and speak to the reader as flesh and blood people would. The men portrayed in Best Gay Stories 2011 are wounded, real and above all very human. It is a valuable family portrait, a snapshot of our many different stories and many different lives.'' - Lambda Literary Foundation

About this edition

• Publisher: Lethe Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1590212266
• ISBN 13: 9781590212264
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Dubé Peter