Queer Spirit: reading list 2

	The Trouble with Normal argues passionately against same-sex marriage, but here's the twist: not because it denigrates the institution of marriage, but because it perpetuates the cultural shame attached to sex between consenting but unmarried adults. When gay men and lesbians try to claim that they're just like "normal folk," Michael Warner writes, they do a profound disservice to other queer folk who choose not to live in monogamous or matrimonial bliss and who believe that the solution to being stigmatized for your sexuality is not to pretend it doesn't exist. SHOP>> The Trouble With Normal
	This is the first book to examine the unique ways in which gay men and lesbians make the journey toward the psychic wholeness and balance needed in every life—a process C. G. Jung called individuation. Here eighteen prominent therapists and writers offer thought-provoking insights into the deep meaning of homosexuality. Contributions from: Robert A. Johnson, Christine Downing, Robert Bosnak, Joseph Henderson, John Beebe, Robert H. Hopcke, Howard Teich, Morgan Farley, Caroline T. Stevens, Will Roscoe, and more. SHOP>> Same-Sex Love, and the Path to Wholeness
	The Zuni Man-Woman focuses on the life of We’wha (1849-96), the Zuni who was perhaps the most famous berdache (an individual who combined the work and traits of both men and women) in American Indian history. Through We’wha’s exceptional life, Will Roscoe creates a vivid picture of an alternative gender role whose history has been hidden and almost forgotten. “An important book that will bring to the field a better understanding of the role of the berdache in Pueblo culture.”—John Adair, San Francisco State University SHOP>> Zuni Man-Woman
	Religious history rings with tales of converted libertines- -Saul, St. Augustine, Thomas Merton among them. Now, thanks to this wonderfully uplifting biography by freelance journalist Schneider, to that list can be added Issan Dorsey--the thieving, doping, female-impersonating gay hooker who became abbot of one of the nation's top Zen monasteries. Born Thomas Dorsey, Jr., in 1933, the future abbot bloomed into his homosexuality as a teenager and moved to San Francisco, where he developed a nightclub drag-queen act--and a world-class drug habit to go with it. SHOP>> Street Zen
	Death inspires a hip young New Yorker to quest for spiritual life in this searing memoir. During a vacation in Jamaica in the mid-1980s, Matousek realized that his life was about to undergo a cataclysm. At 28, he was an editor at the chic Manhattan magazine Interview. Yet despite success, he was sickened by the meaninglessness of his work; the sight of the magazine's founder, Andy Warhol, "ghostlike, his sharp dead eyes surveying his kingdom," did little to ease his soul. SHOP>> Sex, Death Enlightenment: A True Story
	"I was conceived on a bathroom floor by a woman trying to forget herself and a man who materialized out of nowhere," Mark Matousek tells us. His father soon dematerialized, turning up for the last time in 1961 to make an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap 4-year-old Mark. Thirty-five years later, now HIV-positive, Matousek decides to hire a detective to look for the man he never knew. His compassionate, startlingly funny memoir mingles the tale of that quest with recollections of his troubled youth, a reconstruction of his parents' early lives and his mother's 14-year affair with a married man, tender portraits of his three sisters, and a loving depiction of his new boyfriend, Louis, whose support helps Matousek grapple with his past. SHOP>> The Boy He Left Behind
	Written in the form of an interview with Mark Matousek, Andrew Harvey brings his knowledge of eastern religions, the Christian mystic tradition, and modern scholarship to bear on virtually every issue pertinent to bringing a mystic perspective to contemporary Christian life. Harvey makes it clear that mysticism is not the private domain of monastics but actually an imperative for the "ordinary" Christian wishing to make a real difference in his or her world. SHOP>> Dialogues With a Modern Mystic

queer spirit: reading list 2