Blog Posts by Subject: Gay and Lesbian Studies

I cataloged a couple of gay libraries in Dublin, Ireland and Albany, NY, and there has been much in the news media lately about LGBT rights since New York State began recognizing gay and lesbian marriages in 2011. I think it is awesome and terrific that people are now able to legally marry who they love regardless of the gender of the spouses. Below are some LGBT libraries and museums that I found.

Special Libraries

from the Directory of Special Libraries 

To commemorate the the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969, this month has been proclaimed as LGBT Pride Month. To celebrate, I compiled some lists of LGBTQ-themed books. Happy Pride Month everyone!

Adult Fiction

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Tired of living with the same people every day? What about being a drifter who gets to experience life in different people's bodies every single day? You can never be in the same person's body for more than one day. Of course, identical twins are a different story.

No consequences for your behavior the next day. Luckily, the book's main character is the responsible 

Tessa and Lucas, friends forever; however, Lucas wants more and Tessa does not. Lucas asked Tessa to go to the prom with him in a dramatic way; Tessa, meanwhile, is infatuated with deli Josie. Tessa's parents own Giant Brookfield Markets "Giant Brooks" grocery store—even in a small town. I guess Tessa's parents had in mind a dress for her when they gave her money for the prom because when she bought a tux, they did not even think it was for her.

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is intended for mature readers onlyRecognize the icon above? Perhaps you may not realize this but Playboy the publication, historically speaking, has been a leading magazine devoted to freedom of expression and human rights (to a certain extent). Founded in 1953 in Chicago by Hugh Hefner, Playboy has often been perceived as a "taboo" 

Tonight at 9pm, HBO will premiere Jeffrey Schwarz's new documentary VITO: The Life of Gay Activist Vito Russo. Extensive research for the film was undertaken at the New York Public Library using Vito Russo's papers, as well as many other collections, such as the Gay Activists Alliance Records and ACT UP New York Records.

I was privileged to preview 

Let's keep the momentum of NYC's 2012 Gay Pride Parade going with a list of LGBTQ-themed books for young adults. New and old, NYPL has titles your teens are going to love, if they don't already. Please feel free to add recommendations or additions in the comments.

The Difference Between You and Me has it all 

Not that there is not enough already going on in your busy summer life...

But Wednesday, June 6th at 7:00p.m. in the Trustees Room of Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (476 Fifth Ave) you are joining Linda Hirshman and Eric Marcus as they discuss Linda's new book

Gravity by Leanne Lieberman, 2008

Ellie, a 15-year-old Orthodox Jew, is happy to go to Bubbie's (her grandmother's) cottage this summer to learn about the flora and fawna. There, she meets Lindsay, a beautiful, provocative blond girl, whom Ellie is attracted to. Unlike boys, whom she is supposed to like, Ellie is captivated by Lindsay. They swim together in a canoe, and she visits Lindsay at her cottage.

However, Leviticus 

"Is that what we are: libertines?"

"It's what I am," Jack said, "and what you aspire to be."

Jack Holmes and His Friend.

Edmund White, born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. When he was 7, his parents divorced and he (with his mother and sister) went to live in Evanston (on the outskirts of Chicago), while spending summers with his father in Cincinnati.

Edmund attended The Cranbrook Academy, and later the University of Michigan, where he 

Joe Brainard was born in 1941 in Salem, Arkansas and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A gentle, unathletic stutterer, Joe exhibited artistic talent from an early age. It was his way of dealing with the outside world of the public school in a working-class neighborhood. “Artistic” was a wide range of things, including designing his mother’s dresses. He won practically every art contest he entered.

Dayton Art Institute gave Brainard 

“Things have made you what you are... What you are will make you what you will become.”

—Samuel R. Delany, Dahlgren

(Whatever. You wish you could grow a beard like that...)

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., a.k.a. “Chip” (a nickname he gave himself at a summer camp, approximately age 12, because all of his friends had nicknames and he didn’t. “They mostly call me Chip” he introduced 

Tomorrow, November 1st at 6pm, join Thomas Glave (English, General Literature, and Rhetoric, SUNY Binghamton) at the CUNY Graduate Center for this year's Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture. Thomas Glave is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, The Torturer's Wife, and the essay collection Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award). He is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (winner of a 2008 Lambda Literary Award). The Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture is 

For the past four weeks, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Village Voice, Le Monde, El 

 "We all know that Gay is Good. It's up to us to get out there and make it better---much better!"

  In case you need some inspiration this National Coming Out Day, check out It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating A Life Worth Living edited by Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller. The book shares stories of coming out and thriving from LGBT notables from Gene Robinson to Suze Orman,  as well as everyday people. My favorite is Urvashi Vaid's essay "The only reason big changes happen is when people like you and me decide to fight for things to change, when we take action to make 

 Given today's historic repeal of DADT, it important to remember just how long exclusion from military service has been affecting LGBT people in the U.S. It is often thought that exclusion of gays and lesbians from military service focussed in WWII. However, there is evidence that there were soldiers discharged for homosexuality as early as the American revolutionary war. Last year, the Library received a unique letter documenting a member of the U.S. navy who was discharged for homosexuality in 1914. The donor, David Jarrett kindly transcribed the letter with the donation. The letter is 

  If you haven’t already, make sure to check out Michael Schiavi’s new biography of Vito Russo: Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo.  As Schiavi eloquently glosses—“Twenty years after Vito’s death, we remember him as the author of The Celluloid Closet, as one of Gay Liberation’s angriest agitators, and as one of the earliest, most eloquent voices raised on behalf of people with AIDS.”  The biography was researched using the 

 

To mark the 30th anniversary of the first documented case of HIV/AIDS, the Mid-Manhattan Library, the Columbia Center for Oral History and the HIV Story Projectare co-sponsoring a special program. Tonight at 6:30pm at the Mid-Manhattan Library, three oral historians play