Welcome to the web page of the Nevins Memorial Library's GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) Book Group. We are a group of men and women who are interested in reading quality GLBT literature and nonfiction. We meet at the library on the 2nd Thursday of the month, from 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm. Copies of the title for discussion are made available at the Circulation Desk. Titles for the next month's discussion are available at each meeting. For more information, contact Nanci Milone Hill at extension 14. |
January 10, 2007 - The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong
Drawing inspiration from a fleeting reference in the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (1954) to two "Indochinese" men who at one point cooked for Toklas and Gertrude Stein, Truong has concocted a delectable fictional memoir. Faced with the decision about whether to accompany Stein and Toklas to America, return to Vietnam, or remain in France, Binh, the Vietnamese cook who has labored for the unconventional ladies he has dubbed "The Steins," for about five years, reflects back on his troubled life and times. Interspersing his own story with that of his illustrious employers, Binh meanders back and forth through time, recounting his youthful misadventures in Vietnam, his time toiling as a galley hand aboard a sailing vessel, and his years spent cooking for the Steins and indulging in the joys and perils of the seamier side of Parisian nightlife. Using salt as a metaphor for "food, sweat, tears and the sea," and interweaving the narrative with suggestions of ingredients, recipes, and exotic dishes, Truong provides a savory debut novel of unexpected depth and emotion. Margaret Flanagan. Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved |
February 14, 2007 - Farewell To My Concubine, by Lilian Lee
Prolific Hong Kong writer Lee ( The Last Princess of Manchuria , LJ 7/92) sets an intricate love triangle against the backdrop of China during the warlord period, the Japanese occupation, the Communist victory, and the Cultural Revolution. Singers Duan Xiaolou and Cheng Dieyi grow up together and come to play leading roles at the Peking Opera; their bravura performance is Farewell to My Concubine , in which the devoted mistress of a general kills herself rather than face her man's defeat. Cheng incarnates female roles so totally that he falls passionately in love with Duan, who feels only brotherly affection for his stage partner and marries a beautiful courtesan. The obsessive Cheng tries repeatedly to undermine the marriage. Unlike most Chinese fiction, this novel seamlessly integrates the personal and the social; its riveting drama of a menage a trois also reveals the burden of recent Chinese history.
Cherry W. Li, Univ. of Southern California Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 1993 Cahners Business Information, Inc. |
March 13, 2007 - The Doctor, by Patricia Duncker
At the turn of the 19th century in England, a young, beautiful Mary Ann Bulkeley gives birth to a redheaded baby girl of uncertain paternity. Before the sensitive tomboy turns ten, the family determines she should be raised and schooled as a boy. So begins The Doctor, a provocative, illuminating novel based on a true story about a brilliant female physician who is compelled to live as a man under the name James Miranda Barry. |
April 10, 2007 - Delta Belles, by Penelope J. Stokes
"The year is 1965 and the Spring Fling Talent Show is in the works at the Mississippi College for Women, a proper Southern institution. As a joke, Delta Ballou puts the names of her three best friends on the list of Performers. Rising to the challenge, they agree to sing and even convince Delta to join them. Rae Dawn DuChamp plays the piano and weaves harmonies in a smoky contralto. Lacy Cantrell masters the basic guitar chords, and her twin sister, Lauren, contributes a pleasing voice. They call themselves the Delta Belles and win the talent show hands down." "What started as a lark turns into an exciting adventure. The Delta Belles perform at protests and voter registration rallies across the country. As graduation draws near, all the Delta Belles seem poised for bright futures." "Twenty-five years later Delta, recently widowed and angry at God, is asked to get the Belles together to perform at their college reunion. Lacy and Lauren haven't spoken to each other in years, and Rae Dawn has been beset by overwhelming losses. Their reunion turns out to be much more than an opportunity to relive the past. As the old friends reconnect, they come to a new understanding of the meaning and value of their lives."--BOOK JACKET. |
May 15, 2007 - What night brings by Carla Mari Trujillo,
Please note that this is a date change from the original May 8th meeting!
The gripping story of a young girl discovering her lesbian identity. Miguel Marmol Prize Winner. What Night Brings focuses on a Chicano working-class family living in California during the 1960s Marci--smart, feisty and funny--tells the story with the wisdom of somecone twice her age as the determines to defy her family and God in order to find her identity, sexuality and freedom. |
June 12, 2007 - Rubyfruit Jungle, by Rita Mae Brown
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first milestone novel in the extraordinary career of one of this country's most distinctive writers. Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America--and living happily ever after. Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy and loses her virginity to her girlfriend. Molly decides not to apologize for that. In no time she mesmerizes the head cheerleader of Ft. Lauderdale heiress. But the world is not tolerant. Booted out of college for moral turpitude, an unrepentant, penniless Molly takes New York by storm, sending not a few female hearts aflutter with her startling beauty, crackling wit and fierce determination to become the when first published, Rubyfruit Jungle has only grown in reputation as it has reached new generations of readers who respond to its feisty and inspiring heroine.
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September 11, 2007 - Beautiful Inez by Bart Schneider
"From novelist Bart Schneider comes a tale of romantic love and sexual adventure, social change and family upheavals, set against the backdrop of San Francisco in the 1960s." "Inez Roseman has a brilliant career as a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony, a successful husband, and two bright and talented children. But despite her seemingly perfect life, Inez is obsessed with thoughts of suicide." "Sylvia Bran also has an obsession. Enraptured with the beautiful violinist, she pretends to be a reporter and arranges to interview Inez. At once seductive and solicitous, she awakens Inez from the suffocating grip of her career, the demands of motherhood, and the tensions caused by her husband's many affairs. The two women become lovers, embarking on a dance of passion and betrayal that soon spins out of control."--BOOK JACKET. |
October 9, 2007 - Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, by Paul Monette
A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social and literary pursuits, all the while keeping a secret -- from himself and the rest of the world. Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dream of "the thing I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing." Searingly honest, witty, and humane, Becoming a Man is the definitive coming-out story in the classic coming-of-age genre. |
November 13, 2007 - Pages For You, by Sylvia Brownrigg
In a steam-filled diner in a college town, Flannery Jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than she's ever seen: a graduate student, reading. Flannery, a seventeen-year-old, new to everything around her -- college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life -- is shocked by her own desire to follow this beauty wherever it takes her. By chance she finds herself enrolled in a class taught by the remote, brilliant older woman; intimidated at first, she gradually becomes Anne Arden's student outside class as well. Whatever the subject -- Baudelaire, lipstick colors -- Flannery proves an eager pupil, until one day she learns more about Anne than she ever wanted to know. |
December 11, 2007 - Terminal Velocity by Blanche McCrary Boyd
"In 1970 I realized that the Sixties were passing me by. I had never even smoked a joint, or slept with anyone besides my husband. A year later I had left Nicky, changed my name from Ellen to Rain, and moved to a radical lesbian commune in California named Red Moon Rising, where I was playing the Ten of Hearts in an outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland when two FBI agents arrived to arrest the Red Queen . . ." So begins Blanche McCrary Boyd's brilliantly raucous account of self-styled feminist outlaws, their desperate adventures and extraordinary fates. |
| ALA Stonewall Book Awards - The Stonewall Book Awards are sponsored by the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgenered Round Table. Since Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah received the first award in 1971, a total of forty-eight books have been honored for exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered experience. |
| Gay and Lesbian Fiction - A selection of recent fiction Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender themes, from the Seattle Public Library. |
| Lesbian Fiction: a Selected List - Compiled by the librarians at the Harold Washington Library Center from the Literature and Languages Division at the Chicago Public Library. |
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