10 literary getaways: queer literature has exploded in the past 15 years to include a whole modern pack of terrific releases that further expand our gay horizons. Pack one of these books on your next trip to delve deeper into a place.1 Bursa Bursa, city, Turkey Bursa (b  rsä`), city (1990 pop. 838,323), capital of Bursa prov., NW Turkey. , Turkey Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (Picador, 2003) In this Pulitzer snatcher, XY-chromosomed Calliope calliope, in musiccalliope, in music, an instrument also called steam organ or steam piano in which steam is forced through a series of whistles controlled by a keyboard. seduces a girl she calls the Obscure Object of Desire, then morphs into medical plaything, underage stripper, and handsome bureaucrat. It all begins in 1922 at the western end of Asia's Silk Road in the labyrinthine lab·y·rin·thine adj. Of, relating to, resembling, or constituting a labyrinth. labyrinthine pertaining to or emanating from a labyrinth. market city of Bursa, Turkey. Here, sibling silk merchants grow mutually infatuated before escaping war, marrying on a transatlantic voyage, and passing on a recessive gene for hermaphroditism hermaphroditism Condition of having both male and female reproductive organs (see reproductive system). It is normal in most flowering plants and in some invertebrate animals. True human hermaphrodites are extremely rare. . 2 Santiago, Chile Flesh Wounds and Purple Flowers, Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco (Arsenal Pulp, 2001) Camilo crosses borders, from furtive adolescent encounters with Santiago's 1970s Pinochet soldiers to illegal Canadian immigration immigration, entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. . He returns to the increasingly open gay scene in his contemporary hometown: "The patrons, whose silhouettes were shattered by violent strobe rights, looked like ghosts boogying in a fog of smoke and dry ice"--a moment of eerie beauty in this gritty AIDS elegy. 3 Los Angeles Southland, Nina Revoyr (Akashic, 2003) Lesbian law student Jackie Ishida doesn't dig her heritage, but an enigmatic name in her grandfather's will pulls her through Los Angeles's history to the family's old hood of downtrodden Crenshaw, with stops in Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Boyle Heights, and Echo Park. The resulting whodunit, pregnant with the traumas of internment, racism, and riots, inverts our girl's world. 4 Colombo, Sri Lanka Funny Boy, Shyam Selvadurai (Harcourt Brace, 1994) An effeminate ef·fem·i·nate adj. 1. Having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men. See Synonyms at female. 2. Characterized by weakness and excessive refinement. child banished from both girls' and boys' games, Arjun conspires with two women navigating the growing rift between the Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority: Radha, whose interethnic tryst sends her into nearby exile and the hands of a mob; and Arjun's mother, whose lover dies investigating police torture. As our Tamil protagonist falls for a Sinhalese schoolmate, this lush ocean-side capital bends under fear's weight during the island's 1980s conflict. 5 New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. Invisible Life, E. Lynn Harris E. Lynn Harris is an Black American author, (b. June 20, 1955). Harris writes primarily about African American men on the down low or in the closet; Harris confirmed that he is a homosexual. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Atlanta, Georgia. (Anchor, 1991-1994) Raymond Tyler Jr. is a closeted bisexual black lawyer working in a posh Manhattan firm; troubled by bigotry, he shuttles from Harlem's Canaan Baptist Church with his beauty queen girlfriend to an upper west side bed with his married male lover. In between, you glimpse landmarks like the swinging Cotton Club and pickup joints like the (now defunct) Nickel Bar. 6 Tokyo Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto (Washington Square, 1993) In a neon-flushed Tokyo of drag bars, incense, and stainless steel knives, orphaned amateur chef Mikage is taken in by a friend and his entrancing transsexual trans·sex·u·al n. A person who strongly identifies with the opposite gender and who chooses to live as a member of the opposite gender or to become one by surgery. adj. 1. Of or relating to such a person. 2. mother. In Shinjuku (Tokyo's gay district), Mikage treks through busy Chuo Park past glass-and-granite towers, gazes from a high-rise window at cars "like a phosphorescent phos·pho·res·cence n. 1. Persistent emission of light following exposure to and removal of incident radiation. 2. Emission of light without burning or by very slow burning without appreciable heat, as from the slow oxidation of river flowing through the darkness," and finds relief from mourning in Asian kitchens from which fresh steam rises like a halo. 7 Xi'an, China When Fox Is a Thousand, Larissa Lai (Arsenal Pulp 1995-2004) A trickster fox spirit haunts the concubines and wives of ninth-century Changan (now Xi'an), Chinas imperial capital for 11 dynasties. Fox celebrates her 1,000th birthday in a dark tryst with Chinese-Canadian woman Artemis Wong, who like the Fox harbors mysterious connections to the Tang Dynasty's poetess, convicted murderer, and Taoist priestess Yu Hsuan-Chi. You'll glimpse her world of mysticism and faith at the lunar-month festivals of the millennium-old Baxian Gong temple and monastery. 8 Idaho The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, by Tom Spanbauer (HarperPerennial, 1991) "Excellent, Idaho, is where this all happened," begins half-native hooker and storyteller Duivichi-un-Dua (a.k.a. Shed). It's in the rugged frontier landscape north of Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains that a multiracial town of hookers, miners, and herbalists is brutally remade as a Mormon settlement, and teenage Shed takes up with a bisexual mystic and cowboy who he suspects is his father. 9 San Francisco Valencia, Michelle Tea (Seal, 2000) Poet and former hustler Michelle hooks up with knife-wielding Petra, inaugurating a rollercoaster year of love and promiscuity centered in the Latin-infused Mission District. Our heroine careens down Valencia Street into the city's clubs and also parades down 18th Street on pride weekend in true S.F. style, "with a brand new girl and a 40, while the June sun was high and shining." 10 Berlin I Am My Own Wife I Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright which examines the life of German individual Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, who killed his father when he was a young boy and survived the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Berlin as a transvestite. , Charlotte von Mahlsdorf Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (March 18, 1928 - April 30, 2002) was the founder of the Gründerzeit Museum (a museum of every-day items) in Berlin-Mahlsdorf. Early life (Cleis, 1992-1995) Taking a leaf from her butch aunt's resistance book, teenage Lottchen kills a Nazi: her father. In crumbling East Berlin, she then finds her calling: salvaging turn-of-the-century (Grunderzeit) artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. and becoming her own woman (an 1880s-style housewife) as well as a transgender hero. In the green easternmost section of Hellersdorf, the birthplace of Germany's postwar gay movement embodies Charlotte's passion for preservation in times of legislated amnesia. What about the classic queer tomes of time and place? For 29 more great literary destinations, visit OutTraveler.com |
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