LGBT Fiction and Memoirs for a Course

This file contains suggestions for novels, short-story collections, and
memoirs for use in an LGBT-themed junior/senior level course.  The 
suggestions were offered on WMST-L in April 2008.  For more WMST-L files
available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Please, if anyone has suggestions, novels, short-story collections, or
memoirs for each of the following for use in an LGBT-themed
junior-senior level course:

Lesbian
Gay Male
Trans
Bisexual


I know many of the quick-to-come-to-mind titles but would appreciate
hearing about what has worked (or not worked) in your classes and/or
suggestions that I might not have come across before I send the text
order to bookstore in a couple of weeks.

Thank you.

Milton Wendland
milton  AT  ku.edu

Lillian Faderman's "Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir"
# University of Wisconsin Press; 1st edition (May 15, 2004)
# ISBN-10: 0299200140
# ISBN-13: 978-0299200145

--
*************
Dra. Rosa Maria Pegueros
Department  of  History
  &  Women's  Studies  Program
University of Rhode Island, RI 02881-0817
E-mail: drpegueros  AT  cox.net
BLOG: http://heartofskycafe.blogspot.com/
http://tinyurl.com/doxno
http://drpegueros.googlepages.com/home
*************
Historians are gossips who tease the dead. 
                  ~Voltaire, Scribbling Books

Are you looking for YA novels?  Try Christine Jenkins and Michael
Cart's The Heart Has its Reasons for annotated young adult novels.  I
have used Girl Walking Backwards that worked well.  I can send you
other suggestions, but I'm not sure, again, if you want adolescent
characters or "adult" characters.

Best,

Deborah Brothers

Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit teaches very well.            

Best,            
Jeana DelRosso
 
Dr. Jeana DelRosso
Chair, Department of English
Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD  21210
jdelrosso  AT  ndm.edu
 

I successfully taught at the college level /The Price of Salt /(Lesbian),
/Middlesex /(intersexed), and /TransgenderWarriors/.

Amal Amireh
George Mason University

Stir Fry by Emma Donoghue would be a good one.  Coming of age novel.

Helen Thompson
University of Guam
drhelent  AT  gmail.com

I'm currently using Two Truths and a Lie: A memoir written & performed by
Scott Turner Schofield  (ISBN 978-0-9785973-2-0) in my Intro to Lit classes.
It's a collection of three solo plays that explore gender, sex, sexuality.
Scott Turner Schofield is a fabulous performer and powerful speaker who
tours his shows to colleges, theaters and festivals-- a great opportunity to
read the book and experience the performance too! I've had overwhelmingly
positive experiences teaching material from his performances and am excited
to now have the book. I recommend enthusiastically.

Elizabeth Wilson
Adjunct Instructor
ASU English Dept.

Hello, 

Recent History, by Anthony Giardina, is a good one. A nuanced
treatement of masculinity and sexuality - the main character
struggles to come to terms with his dad's relationship with a
man, and his own emerging (bi)sexuality, in the context of
the 1960's. What's really good about the novel, among other
things, is the way Giardina explores the psychological
complexity of the main character's internalized heteronormativity. 

john

-- 
John Landreau
Women's and Gender Studies
The College of New Jersey

Hi Milton,
For some perhaps less familiar texts, I would recommend:
Erika Lopez *Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel
Thing* (please note that I've not taught this one, but my friend
Mary has, with success)

Felicia Luna Lemus *Like Son* (novel, FtM)

Doug Wright *I Am My Own Wife* (play based on the true story of
an East German transwoman who lived from 1928-2002)

Allison Bechdel *Fun Home* (graphic novelized autobiography)

Anything by Sarah Waters is great, of course, as is anything by
Jeanette Winterson. Winterson's *Written on the Body* (novel in
which the narrator's gender is never identified) and *The
Passion* are both lovely narratives dealing with the materiality
of sexual identity.

Best,
Jeannie


Jeannie Ludlow, Ph.D., Undergraduate Coordinator
Women's Studies Program
jludlow  AT  bgnet.bgsu.edu

I'm using a new (2007) memoir, What Becomes You, by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda
Raz (mother and transsexual son), in my Feminist Memoirs course this
quarter. Response from students and discussion has been really great so far.
Here is a description: 

What Becomes You is the story of Aaron's transformation from female into his
new identity as a gay man. A finalist for the Lambda Book award, this
extraordinary memoir explores women's experience and men's lives, the art
and science of changing sex, uncharted family values, and a world
transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and clown school. 
Aaron Raz Link is the director of the Museum of Nature in Portland, Oregon.
Hilda Raz, a professor of English and women's and gender studies at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor of
Prairie Schooner and author of the poetry collections, Trans and Divine
Honors.

Kelli Zaytoun

Kelli Zaytoun, Ph.D.
Director, Women's Studies
Asst. Professor, English
Wright State University
kelli.zaytoun  AT  wright.edu
  

In response to my query for LGBT novels, memoirs, etc I received the
following replies so far.  Some of you asked for me to compile and
post to the list so here they are.  (Please, continue to send me ideas
-- these are all great - some I knew, some are new to me!)


What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz (mother and
transsexual son) (2007) memoir -- What Becomes You is the story of
Aaron's transformation from female into his new identity as a gay
man. A finalist for the Lambda Book award, this extraordinary memoir
explores women's experience and men's lives, the art and science of
changing sex, uncharted family values, and a world transformed by
surgery, hormones, love, and clown school.

Beyond All Desiring by Judith Laura
more info on http://www.judithlaura.com/beyond.html
 
Body, Remember by Kenny Fries.  Memoir in which he explores his
identity as disabled, gay, and Jewish.  He's also a great
visitor/speaker if you're interested.
 
Exile and Pride, by Eli Clare.  Hard-to-classify mixed-genre
memoir/essay/cultural history.  Clare identifies as mixed class,
queer, disabled, rural.  The book deals with the intersection of
identities within Clare and each of us.
 
The Me in the Mirror, by Connie Panzarino.  Autobiography of a woman
disabled from birth.  How she becomes a disability activist, then a
feminist, then a lesbian.

Erika Lopez *Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing* 

Felicia Luna Lemus *Like Son* (novel, FtM)

Doug Wright *I Am My Own Wife* (play based on the true story of an
East German transwoman who lived from 1928-2002)

Allison Bechdel *Fun Home* (graphic novelized autobiography)

Anything by Sarah Waters
 
Anything by Jeanette Winterson -- Oranges are Not the Only Fruit --
*Written on the Body* (novel in which the narrator's gender is never
identified) and *The Passion* are both lovely narratives dealing with
the materiality of sexual identity.
 
Olivia by Olivia (recently rereleased by Cleis Press) -- wonderful
small novel about a young woman studying at a girls school in France
lead by two lesbians. Olivia is actually one of the women in the
Bloomsbury group and it is rumored that she fictionalized Eleanor
Roosevelt as one of the characters in the novel -- delightful late
modern novel (published in 1952)

Recent History, by Anthony Giardina -- nuanced treatment of
masculinity and sexuality - the main character struggles to come to
terms with his dad's relationship with a man, and his own emerging
(bi)sexuality, in the context of the 1960's. What's really good about
the novel, among other things, is the way Giardina explores the
psychological complexity of the main character's
internalizedheteronormativity.

Ruby Fruit Jungle.  Rita Mae Brown
 
B-Boy Blues by James Earl Hardy. He has written now a series of books
that are all a delight and very accessible and look at issues in black
gay male life.

Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker
(sonnets). Very fun and profound and would be meaningful to juniors.
 
Stir Fry by Emma Donoghue (Coming of age novel)
 
Two Truths and a Lie: A memoir written & performed by Scott Turner
Schofield (collection of three solo plays that explore gender, sex,
sexuality. Schofield is a fabulous performer and powerful speaker who
tours his shows to colleges, theaters and festivals-a great
opportunity to read the book and experience the performance too)
 
Price of Salt (Lesbian)
Middlesex (intersexed)
TransgenderWarriors
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
 Djuna Barnes, Ladies Almanack (some students find it difficult, but if they get into it they love it)
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
Achy Obejas, Memory Mambo
 
Lillian Faderman's "Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir"
 
Christine Jenkins and Michael Cart's The Heart Has its Reasons
(annotated young adult novel)
 
Girl Walking Backwards
 
"Man in the Middle" by John Amaechi (The overall story is less about
gay identity -- which to some is one of its strengths -- and more
about his life in general, both before and after being in the
NBA. There is a short passage where he talks about the men's locker
room as one of the gayest places he's ever been in.)
 

Milton W Wendland, M.A., J.D.
Attorney at Law (New York, Florida, & Dist of Columbia)
Doctoral Student, Program in American Studies &
   GTA, Dept of Women Gender & Sexuality Studies
The University of Kansas, Lawrence