Jin Xing, Catherine Texier: Shanghai Tango

Mein Leben als Soldat und Tänzerin. Dt.v. Anne Spielmann. D 2006, 223 S., geb., € 20.51
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1967 als Junge in der mandschurischen Provinz geboren, ist Jin Xing der einzige männliche Nachkomme seiner aus Korea stammenden Familie. Der ganze Stolz der Familie bündelt sich in seiner Person. Doch das heile Bild gerät ins Wanken, als der Junge mit einem Hungerstreik die Zustimmung seiner Eltern zum Eintritt in eine Armeeschule, der eine Tanzausbildung angeschlossen ist, erzwingt. In den Militärjahren spürt Jin Xing, dass er im falschen Körper steckt. Der Tanz wird zum Instrument, um die fremde Hülle abzusprengen. Mit 17 Jahren wird Jin Xing Oberst der Volksbefreiungsarmee und gehört bereits zu den besten Tänzern Chinas. Während mehrerer Auslandsaufenthalte reift in ihm die Idee zur Geschlechtsumwandlung, die er mit 28 durchführen lässt. Jin Xing ist der erste anerkannte Transsexuelle Chinas. Gleichsam tut die Geschlechtsumwandlung ihrer Karriere keinen Abbruch. Im Gegenteil: die Tänzerin ist selbst in ihrem Heimatland so beliebt wie nie zuvor.

Greg Louganis: Breaking the Surface

USA 2006, 306 pp., brochure, € 14.49
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
Revised update of the 1995 bestselling autobiography of athlete, four-time Olympic gold medalist, and gay role model, Greg Louganis: he won back-to-back double gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, and his amazing physique and handsome face should have made him a media superstar. Yet Louganis's struggles with self-doubt lack of confidence held him back personally and professionally. He only achieved real happiness after coming out as an HIV-positive gay man. In this autobiography, he also discusses his early struggles with adoption and abuse, his late-detected dyslexia, and prejudice toward his dark skin coloring. His newfound celebrity led to drinking and drugs, and intensified the difficulties he was having in his relationships.

Paul Levy (ed.): The Letters of Lytton Strachey

UK 2005, 698 pp., brochure, € 25.99
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Critic, intellectual, gossip and sexual libertine who towered over the early twentieth-century literature, Lytton Strachey once referred to many of the letters in the collection as »a parcel of dynamite!«. And rightly so: his profilic output is shot through with an acerbic wit and sardonic humor and offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of his secret life, including his friendship with luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, Dora Carrington and John Maynard Keynes as well as his lover, Roger Senhouse. Spanning Strachey's lifelong letter-writing carreer, Paul Levy's selection offers an insider's view of the Bloomsbury group and throws new light on its members, their relationships and their influence, which continues to resonate to this day.

Jens Bisky: Geboren am 13. August

Der Sozialismus und ich. D 2006, 255 S., pb, € 8.12
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Jens Bisky, Jahrgang 1966, war in seiner Jugend überzeugter FDJ-Agitator - doch nachts traf er immer wieder Klassenfeinde. Später war er Offizier der NVA, was ihn als Schwulen nicht davon abhielt, seine Nächte in den einschlägigen Bars Ostberlins zu verbringen. Er war mit den Künstlern befreundet, die den Film »Coming Out« drehten, und als er nach dessen Premiere am 9. November 1989 aus dem Kino kam, war zu aller Überraschung die Grenze zum Westen offen. Und als die Mauer endgültig gefallen war, stellte Jens Bisky überrascht fest, wie gut er auf den Kapitalismus vorbereitet war. Ein schonungsloser Rückblick von beklemmenden bis tragikomischen Erfahrungen und ein Abschied auf eine Jugend nach Plan, mit viel Humor packend geschrieben.

Jack Fritscher: Some Dance to Remember

USA 2005, 439 pp., brochure, € 26.70
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This memoir novel of San Francisco in the 1970s and the early 1980s is one classic of gay literature, seen from the perspective of an eyewitness. This epic of San Francisco's Castro seethes with sex, drugs, panic, and passionate characters: a gay writer, a drop-dead gorgeous bodybuilder, a cabaret singer, a Vietnam vet, a Hollywood bitch, and a rough-trade porn mogul. Narrator Magnus Bishop channels Ryan O'Hara, a writer pioneering a tell-all voice in the emerging subculture of gay amagzines. When Ryan meets Quentin Crisp's »perfect man« in Kick Sorensen, lust and politics collide. Steroids rule Castro Street. Gender fascism divides queens versus clones into a gay civil war over correct queer identity. White assassinates the gay Mayor Harvey Milk. Gay rioters burn City Hall. Ryan, romancing the morphing trickster Kick, cruises through nightclubs, ecstatic sex, and leather rituals in legendary bathhouses.

Bruce Benderson: The Romanian

USA 2006, 401 pp., brochure, € 16.59
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Benderson was wandering Budapest researching sex clubs for Nerve.com when he fell in love. Romulus, a Romanian street hustler, was a sleekly attractive, uneducated (though clever) 24-year old, into soccer, TV and swapping dirty stories with his buddies. Living in a largely homophobic culture, Romulus didn't consider himself anything but heterosexual, even as he spent months having sex with Benderson. As the author slid into an obsession with Romulus, he started reading about Romanians whose lives and loves seemed curiously tangential: the artist Brancusi, the lascivious King Carol II and his Jewish lover, Lupescu. Sometimes, Benderson and Romulus drove around the Romanian countryside, exploring villages mired between pastoral paganism and socialist realism. Weaving storytelling and seduction, Benderson's tale has a deliciously »Arabian Nights« flavor.

Joshua Gamson: The Fabulous Sylvester

USA 2005, 306 pp., brochure, € 14.79
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In the world of that most disparaged of musical genres - disco - the subject of this biography commanded respect. By conventional standards, Sylvester James was an outsider - he was an out, gay, African-American who dressed in drag and sang with a thundering falsetto but he found mainstream success in the late 1970s and early '80s with three Top 40 hits. In his short life, Disco sensation Sylvester led the young people of the nation to San Francisco and on to a liberation that was real, mighty real, where nothing was straitlaced or old-fashioned. Sociologist Joshua Gamson uses Sylvester's story to take us through the 1970s, when a generation took off its shame. He also uses firsthand conversations with virtually everyone who knew or worked with Sylvester, from his youth in L.A. through his successful music career, to his death from AIDS in 1988 at 41

Danny Danziger, Nicholas Purcell: Hadrian's Empire

USA 2005, 302 pp., hardback, € 34.99
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Hadrian's Wall - it has stood for nearly two millennia as a monument to its creator, and yet he himself remains an enigmatic figure. Hadrian was not in the usual mould of Roman Emperors. He was Spanish and a restless, inquiring intellectual, a homosexual who identified with Greek culture and ideals. He travelled constantly and spent much time in Athens and Alexandria. Although he was not warlike, he was a good soldier, comfortable mingling among the ranks. His personal life was a complicated one, rife with scandal and conflicted sexuality - his unhappy marriage with Sabina and his well-known yet tragic love affair with the Bithynian youth Antinous. The book's theme is that Hadrian's reign marked Rome's apogee, the point at which its tolerant expansionism started to implode.