Cover via Amazon
Hear Us Out!: Lesbian and Gay Stories of Struggle, Progress, and Hope 1950 to the Present
by Nancy Garden
Published 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Young Adult Short Stories and Non-Fiction Essays
240 pages
In this unique collection, Nancy Garden brings readers through the last fifty years of American gay and lesbian history using a combination of historical essays and short stories. The book is organized by decades, with each section beginning with an essay that gives the background of what was going on in the gay movement at that time, followed by two short stories based on the details of that decade. For example, the chapter on the 1960s explains the Stonewall riots and the Daughters of Bilitis, followed by a story of a young lesbian who is inspired when she hears about the Riots on the radio. For the 1980s, Garden tells us about the discovery of AIDS and HIV (including how AIDS was originally considered to be the “gay cancer”) and a story about a young gay man whose gay teacher dies of AIDS.
Nancy Garden’s 1982 book Annie on My Mind is the first lesbian book I ever read and it has a special place in my heart, so when I saw Hear Us Out! at the library, I snatched it up. Overall, I’m glad I did. Although I usually slog through short stories, I flew through the ones in this collection, mostly because I wanted to see which parts of history she would focus on for the essay portions. It was intriguing to see which events she found important enough to include and which she did not, e.g. Matthew Shepard and Gwen Arajuo get a mention, but Brandon Teena does not.
Interestingly, although she mentions bisexual and transgender identities, as well as the changes in acronyms from GL to GLBT to GLBTQ, none of the characters in her short stories overtly identify as either bisexual or transgender (one character says her best friend sometimes calls her Toby, but that’s as far as it goes).
The stories themselves are rather bland–or violent, as I think at least half of the stories have someone die or some get brutally attacked. They are still well written, though, and when combined with the historical context they are put into perspective in a way that keeps the collection from becoming devoid of hope.
Grade: B-
Recommended: This is a great book to get both a very accessible overview of GLBT history as well as stories from a variety of perspectives. Best if you like historical context for your fiction.
Hmm… sounds like a really interesting book, especially the history parts of it, but I’m not a huge fan of too much violence or blandness.
The weird part was the stories for the 50s, 60s, and 70s were pretty positive, but once we hit the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the rest of the decades involved gang rape, suicide, and death from AIDS. Odd to move in that direction, right?
Pingback: Weekly Link Round Up « The Lesbrary
The historical context is actually what makes this appeal to me the most. But I’ll read Annie on my Mind first, since I already own that one
Annie On My Mind is a classic–I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!
Pingback: October Round-Up « Bonjour, Cass!