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Gay & Lesbian Interest / Autobiography / American Studies

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Gay American Autobiography Writings from Whitman to Sedaris Edited by David Bergman Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies David Bergman and Joan Larkin, Series Editors   “Intimacy as history! I adored these glimpses into gay men’s lives, and thank David Bergman for having uncovered them. I only wish I’d had this book decades sooner.” —Michael Lowenthal, author of Charity Girl   In the first anthology to survey the full range of gay men’s autobiographical writing from Walt Whitman to the present, Gay American Autobiography draws excerpts from letters, journals, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies to provide examples of the best life writing over the last century and a half.             Volume editor David Bergman guides the reader chronologically through selected writings that give voice to every generation of gay writers since the nineteenth century, including a diverse array of American men of African, European, Jewish, Asian, and Latino heritage. Documenting a range of life experiences that encompass tattoo artists and academics, composers and drag queens, hustlers and clerks, it contains accounts of turn-of-the-century transvestites, gay rights activists, men battling AIDS, and soldiers attempting to come out in the army. Each selection provides important insight on the wide spectrum of ways gay men have defined and lived their lives, highlighting how self-awareness changes an author’s experience. The volume includes an introduction by Bergman and headnotes for each of the nearly forty entries. Bringing many out-of-print and hard-to-find works to new readers, this challenging and comprehensive anthology chronicles American gay history and life struggles over the course of the past 150 years.   “Bergman has brought together an impressive, diverse cache of source materials in a field which has been written on, but has always lacked a generic anthology. There have been subject- and period-based anthologies, but nothing spanning the 150 years or so of available material in this way.” —Richard Canning, University of Sheffield   • Visit David Bergman’s Web site at             www.davidbergmanpoet.com   David Bergman is professor of English at Towson State University and author of numerous books, including Cracking the Code, winner of the 1985 George Elliston Poetry Prize, and Men on Men 2000, winner of the 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Best Literary Anthology. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

May 2009 LC: 2008039537 PS 536 pp.   6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-299-23044-9   Paper $29.95 t Add titles to your shopping cart by clicking on the "Add this book to cart" link above. You can submit your order electronically, paying for it with your credit card. Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature Never ordered from us before? Read this first. A sampling of writers included: Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Henry James Paul Goodman Edward Field Edmund White Samuel R. Delany Paul Monette Jaime Manrique Kevin Killian David Sedaris Wayne Koestenbaum Justin Chin

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If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact Kirt Murray, Web manager. E-mail: kdmurray@wisc.edu or by phone at 608-263-0733. Updated January 24, 2009 © 2009, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System