Dines, Martin (2010) Gay suburban narratives in American and British culture: homecoming queens. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan. 232p. ISBN 9780230233249

Abstract

Long condemned for being homogeneous and intolerant, suburbia seems to offer gay people little but the road out to the big city. So why are so many gay stories set there? This book shows that far from having nothing to do with modern gay identity, post-war suburbanization has helped produce it. Exploring the work of over twenty established and lesser-known British and American gay writers and directors, including Dennis Cooper, Quentin Crisp, Todd Haynes, Christopher Isherwood, David Leavitt, Oscar Moore and Edmund White, Martin Dines argues that the suburbs form a crucial and complex site in the gay imagination. These suburban stories offer a variety of competing pictures of gay subculture and different strategies for engaging with mainstream society. Ever conscious of the multiple attractions and contradictions of suburban landscapes and living, this book offers a sophisticated and lucid account of the ways location and narrative combine to shape identity and cultural politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

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