An illuminating, well-written history of a unique place.
A vibrant social history of the iconic bastion of queer culture and leisure.
Inspired by the work of poet Frank O’Hara, a frequent visitor to Fire Island who was tragically killed in a freakish accident there in 1966, Parlett first ventured to the island in 2017 while furthering his doctoral research on American poetry and cruising. His experiences during this visit, as a curious researcher who was also actively engaged in the gay party scene, serve as the launching point for this uniquely insightful and colorful cultural history. Parlett traces the extraordinary literary heritage of the island, including its earliest foundation, laid by Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde; midcentury luminaries (W.H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Patricia Highsmith) and their booze-fueled escapades; and later, the more serious, politically charged influence of James Baldwin, who drew much-needed attention to the narrow Whiteness of the community. The hedonistic, sex-and-drug–laden tenor of the 1970s and ’80s, portrayed in novels by Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and others, was ravaged by the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, which had an indelible, long-lasting impact on the island’s literary and artistic culture. “Along with the many artists and writers lost to AIDS,” writes Parlett, “came the loss of an engaged and informed audience; the readership that kept gay publishing afloat, and the wider sense of a community consuming and critiquing the work of its own luminaries and emerging voices.” Throughout the book, the author smoothly interweaves an enlightened perspective of the island’s influence and importance with candid appraisals of its shortcomings, especially related to cultural homogenization and the overwhelming Whiteness that has continued into the 21st century. “Fire Island feels like a case study of utopian imperfections,” writes Parlett, “of the way norms become entrenched and inequalities perpetuated in a place defined by the fact that it is not, simply, for everyone.”
An illuminating, well-written history of a unique place.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-335-47518-3
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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