QUEER LITERATURE

QUEER
LITERATURE AND
ORIGINS
When did queer culture begin to become celebrated?
Stonewall Riots

Friends of Dorothy
THERE IS NO ONE CORRECT
REPRESENTATION OF THE QUEER
IDENTITY WITHIN THE MEDIA.
 QUEER
LITERATURE
Queer Theory Media and other Creative Works
• Lover is a lesbian feminist novel by
Bertha Harris, published in 1976 by
Daughters, Inc., a Vermont small press
dedicated to women's fiction.

• Lover reflects complex notions of radical

lesbian philosophy, community, family
structure, and eroticism by using highly
inventive, often fantastical storytelling
techniques
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• Brokeback Mountain is a 2005

American romantic drama film directed
by Ang Lee

• depicts the complex emotional and

sexual relationship between Ennis Del
Mar and Jack Twist in the American
West from 1963 to 1983
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• Les Guérillères is about a war of the
sexes, where women 'engage in bloody,
victorious battles using knives,
machine guns and rocket launchers'.[1]
Moreover, sympathetic males join them
in their combat

• The novel is, some say, based on a

concept of women's superiority in
which women win the war and institute
a new equilibrium of women ruling
men
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The diaries of Anne Lister (1791-1841

• A great treasure of lesbian social history.

• Lister is a wonderful character, pleased to

be thought “gentlemanly” but insulted when
someone calls her a mere “fellow”. Her
courtships of women are all the more
fascinating when you reflect that they’re
from Jane Austen’s time. But here people
get stomach upsets and venereal diseases.
Not to mention hot lesbian action: Lister
uses “kiss” to mean a great deal more than
kissing. I like to imagine Lister herself
striding into one of Austen’s balls and
distracting the heroine’s attention from all
the complacent Darcys and Bingleys in the
room.
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11. The City and the Pillar, by Gore Vidal
The City and the Pillar shocked America
when it was released in 1948. The queer
coming-of-age novel about Jim Willard
and his search for love was the first novel
from a respected writer (Gore Vidal) to
speak directly and sympathetically about
the gay experience in an era when
homosexuality was still very much taboo.
The book is remembered today for this
legacy as well as for various themes —
Hollywood’s glass closet, being gay in the
military, the poisonous effects of
homophobia on society — that still
reverberate today.
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City of Night by John Rechy

• 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a seminal

piece of fiction that follows the life of a
gay hustler in New York City, Los
Angeles, New Orleans, and San
Francisco.

• Through stream-of-consciousness
narration, the reader gets a glimpse of
queer life in mid-century America, with
a long and fascinating cast of characters
that includes drag performers, S&M
practitioners, and sex workers.
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A Boy’s Own Story, by Edmund
White

• is comparable to another literary

classic, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in
the Rye. The 1982 book by Edmund
White, which begins with the first
sexual encounter of a 15-year-old boy,
is based on his own experiences
coming to terms with his gay identity
as a youth in the Midwestern United
States.
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• German writer Thomas Mann crafted this
novella based on his own experience in
Venice, where he caught sight of a
handsome young man who captivated him,
body and soul.
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• This lyrical book is a wonderful story
with a background of a civil war and a
love story between two young girls on
the frontlines.
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Larry Kramer, a founder of ACT UP and the playwright
of The Normal Heart, may be known for his vocal AIDS
activism. But his 1978 novel, Faggots, was also a loud
statement that portrayed the hedonism of gay New York
City.

The book features a cast of dozens of gay men, who

variously engage in bathhouse orgies, use a slew of party
drugs, and cavort in clubs with names like The Toilet
Bowl and Fire Island. The book was condemned by
numerous LGBT people upon its release for what many
perceived as sex-negativity. But the ensuing AIDS crisis
established Faggots as a bellwether of the storm to come.
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Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson, loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's 1896
opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in
Lower Manhattan's East Village in the thriving days of bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

The musical was first seen in a workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1993. The show's creator,
Jonathan Larson, died suddenly of an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan
syndrome, the night before the off-Broadway premiere. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre
on April 29, 1996.
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Everybody's Talking About Jamie is a musical

with music by Dan Gillespie Sells and book and
lyrics by Tom MacRae. The musical is inspired by
the 2011 television documentary Jamie: Drag
Queen at 16 directed by Jenny Popplewell. The
musical follows a 16-year-old teenager as he
overcomes prejudice, beats the bullies and steps
out of the darkness to become a drag queen.
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The Prom is a musical with music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by
Chad Beguelin, and a book by Bob Martin and Beguelin, based on
an original concept by Jack Viertel. The musical follows four
Broadway actors lamenting their days of fame, as they travel to the
conservative town of Edgewater, Indiana, to help a lesbian student
banned from bringing her girlfriend to high school prom.

The musical made its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in

Atlanta, Georgia in 2016 and premiered on Broadway at the
Longacre Theatre in October 2018.

A film adaptation, produced and directed by Ryan Murphy, was

released on December 11, 2020.