You Have Been Watching - The Autobiography Of David Croft

Bronson Lemer (Author)

The Lonely Veteran's Guide to Companionship

3,In this collection of interrelated essays, Bronson Lemer explores companionship through the lens of a queer veteran, focusing on the difficulty of forming true connections with others, including a "battle buddy" during basic training, the people he meets while teaching in China, and the spirit of a long-dead older sister. Lemer uses lessons from popular culture and literature--the globe-trotting exploits of fictional criminal Carmen Sandiego, the sexual exploration in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, the expatriate longing in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, just to name a few--as a means to think more broadly about the role of the outsider and how we navigate aimlessness while searching for stability and meaning. Lemer's distinct take on the veteran's story boldly engages the intersection of military narratives and queer culture, including examinations into the role of thirst traps in contemporary dating culture, the fears of long-term health damage caused by military service, and the ways in which intimate relationships can lead to a loss of self. Taken together, his essays illustrate how one queer veteran managed to carve out a path that led him, however awkwardly at times, closer to ...

Magdalena J. Zaborowska (Author)

James Baldwin: The Life Album

1,An intimate portrait of James Baldwin, offering a new understanding of his life and works as seen through his close relationships and private life "Baldwin authority Zaborowska's gracefully impassioned biography. . . . A creatively conceived appreciation for a decorated life and its far-flung influences on race, queer culture, and art."--Kirkus Reviews James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a pivotal figure of the twentieth century, an influential author, intellectual, and activist who led a celebrated public life--and whose words and image and persona remain current in our culture. Baldwin's many incarnations--"son of Harlem," "Black icon," "great twentieth-century writer," "race man," "prophet," "witness"--have reemerged in the digital age as Baldwin's work becomes a touchstone for a new generation. It is the private, vulnerable, and messier Baldwin--the man behind the prophet and the online meme--who is the focus of this book. Magdalena J. Zaborowska draws on Baldwin's archives and material legacy--from his unpublished papers to his books to his house in France--to offer a fresh look at the writer's understated and obscured private life. Taking a cue from Baldwin's own love of the ...

Curtis Chin (Author)

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir

9,This "vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt" memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin's time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980's Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers). Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city's spiraling misfortunes; and where--between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions--he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself. Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung's, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a ...