Gay Travels: A Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions) - Softcover

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9781883513061: Gay Travels: A Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883513065 ISBN 13: 9781883513061

Publisher: Whereabouts Press, 1998

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From the foreword by Felice Picano

"This volume makes no attempt to rival those gay travel guides that already exist. It is something different, far more intriguing: a collection of stories that aim at being what Herman Melville deemed "an inside narrative." That is, what being a gay man in a foreign land really feels like, smells like, tastes like, and hurts like. The voices here might be likened to those of friends sitting around a dinner table the night before your journey who provide you with insights and warnings that only later do you discover add infinitely to your excursion."

Table of Content

Felice Picano "Foreword"
Lucy Jane Bledsoe "Preface"
Spain Brian Bouldrey "Pilgrim's Regress"
Beijing Philip Gambone "Invading Their Space"
Olympia Darieck Scott "Ride of the Centaurs"
Tangier Joe Orton "Tangier Diary"
California Rondo Mieczkowski "Bodies in Motion"
India Adam Klein "A Desert Shade"
Israel Hanns Ebensten "First Night in the Promised Land"
Berlin and beyond Edmund White "Shopping"
Central Africa Cary Alan Johnson "Obi's Story"
Mexico City Andrew Holleran "Sleepless in Mexico"
Sacramento Michael Nava "Journey to 1971"
Tobago Achim Nowak "Jungle Fever 138"
Russia David Tuller "Broken Romance"
Barcelona Erasmo Guerra "La Placa Reial"
Indiana Michael Lowenthal "Sand Niggers and a Tallboy Bud"
Paris James Baldwin "Equal in Paris"
Capri and beyond Paul Monette "A One-Way Fare"

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Review:

Travel literature can offer a delicious way of anticipating, enhancing, and savoring your travels, especially if the theme coincides with your own experiences. In Gay Travels: A Literary Companion, Lucy Jane Bledsoe has compiled 17 travel stories by some great contemporary gay writers, wherein they explore Russia and Tangier, India and Israel, Central Africa, Indiana, and a multitude of gay travel experiences. Philip Gambone goes to China, "determined to find gay life in Beijing"; Achim Nowak meets an Indian boy in Tobago whose "eyes shine so impossibly black, like bursting embers as he speaks"; and Andrew Holleran, "passing" for straight in Mexico, says "Mexico is where foreigners come when their own masks are coming apart." This is not a guide to gay-friendly accommodations and entertainments. Rather, it's a beautiful companion set that invites you to enrich your own travels, contemplate, compare, and enjoy a lot of good literature.

About the Author:

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Editor

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.