Sara Glass’s nuanced memoir is about coming to terms with her sexuality and needing to leave the constraints of her upbringing.
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It was the early 1920s and the dawn of the transition from the silent film era to the invention of synchronized sound and “the talkies.” Ottalie Mark—a young secretary for the lavish Capitol Theatre movie palace in Manhattan—probably had no idea she would come to be an unlikely, if crucial, centerpiece of the business world at the intersection of music, film, and the law. #musicology
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They were an unusual and proudly unruly group, mostly college-educated women, a rarity at the time, in the early 1900s. They came together every other Saturday afternoon in a bustling, smoky eatery called Polly’s, to debate the as-yet nascent definition and import of “feminism,” as well as other political and social issues of the day. Their club, appropriately named Heterodoxy for the divergent mix of opinions its participants posed, formed in 1912. It was just a few years before their scruffy Greenwich Village haunt became a magnet for the masses because of its reputation as a hotbed of free love and radical thought and a wellspring for revolutionary change. Read more in The Washington Post.
“This Boy We Made” describes her relentless, twisting quest to understand the genetics of why the gentle, dancing toddler “Tophs,” with his chubby cheeks, comes to experience a maddening assortment of maladies and challenges over his young life. Some are benign, but some are serious — “the morning when he awoke but didn’t stir, in the haunting way that turns a real child into a doll,” as well as stimming (repetitive actions and movements), hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood sugar) and, perhaps most disconcerting, expressive speech delay and the associated difficulty communicating his wants and needs. The book details the intricacies of how the Harrises, including Tophs’s older sister, Eliot, and father, Paul, navigate the medical unknowns — along with some unexpected genetic findings — and how it all impacts the family psychologically and spiritually.
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Hickson’s story speaks to some of the urgent legal and societal issues of medical ethics. Among these is the decision to withhold treatment, one of the key ways in which Washington sees the imperative of informed consent slipping away.
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The book, at once tense and tender, is a scrupulously researched account of their lives. It is the first biography to comprehensively weave together their lifelong romance, radical art and fearless political resistance during World War II.
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Along with the ascension and ebbing of Carlos’s career, Sewell conveys the more intimate aspects of the composer’s life. Carlos, who “was assigned the male sex at birth [in 1939] and given the name Walter,” was one of the first public figures to disclose having undergone sex reassignment surgery.
It was Thanksgiving eve, 1972. Mimi, the matriarch of the Galvin family, had labored over a flawless meal for her husband and the 11 of her 12 children who had converged for the holiday. If a stranger had glanced inside their home, he or she would have noted a seemingly idyllic scene, punctuated by the gingerbread house Mimi had made and placed on display ahead of what she’d hoped would be a beautiful night. But it was not to be. For starters, her eldest son, Donald, picked up the dining room table and threw it at his brother Jim, sending the pressed linen, plates and silver everywhere.
Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, “D-Day Girls” traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France.
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Richtel’s bedrock is his unabashed romance with the immune system, which he affectionately nicknames “an elegant defense,” for its complex ability to ward off any number of would-be invaders that could compromise our health. “It is an ever-vigilant, omnipresent peacekeeping force in the Festival of Life,” he says early on in the book. Like a kid spinning a superhero tale, Richtel employs delightfully effusive prose, particularly as he relates such intricacies as the science of inflammation and the roles of the immune system’s most advanced fighters, T cells and B cells, which Richtel notes are two of the most effective biological structures in the world.
“Once a T cell or B cell finds its evil mate, its infection doppelgänger, it can set in motion a powerful defense, following hard on the innate reaction, bringing in defenders trained specifically to bounce out this particular antigen. Explosions! Implosions! Toxic gas attacks! Good guys eating bad guys!”
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Long before most of us understood even the full meaning of the terms such as social justice and human dignity, Rabbi Sanders had begun to translate those ideas into action.
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While “Bad Advice” is a quick read, its goal is weighty: to defend science as a vital beacon in the public sphere. Offit lays a compelling — and sometimes disturbing — foundation for why we need to protect its honor, and he calls for scientists to “become an army of science advocates out to educate the country. Because science is losing its rightful status as a source of truth, now is the time.”
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Having periodically voiced the premonition that his life would be violently cut short, Milk was on a mission to improve the welfare of gay people, as well as all others who were disenfranchised or in the underclass. As Faderman points out, “He was very aware of himself as part of an ultraliberal Jewish tradition that fought for the oppressed of all stripes.” In taut, brisk prose that mirrors his sense of urgency, she relates how Milk’s relentless pursuit of his own version of tikkun olam involved three failed runs for office as an openly gay man in San Francisco during the tumultuous gay liberation movement of the 1970s.
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March 8 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. release of The Birdcage, the iconic Mike Nichols remake of La Cage aux Folles starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane about an openly, joyously gay couple from South Beach, Florida and the complicated marriage of their son to the daughter of a conservative politician.
What made this movie such a blockbuster in 1996? Was that because its light-in-the-loafers, limp-wristed protagonists were neutered enough to be non-threatening to the masses? It certainly didn’t hurt that the cast was packed with big-name actors who infused their roles with hilarity and warmth. Some say the movie reinforced tired stereotypes. Others suggest it offered positive images that ultimately helped move the needle on marriage equality. Twenty years later, one thing is certain: The Birdcage took gay representation to bold new places at a pivotal moment in the struggle for LGBTQ visibility and civil equality—and for that, it deserves to be celebrated.
“It cannot wait,” says the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movie Selma, which opened nationwide last Friday. King is pleading with President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act. It’s a trenchant scene whose message is not lost on Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who is also depicted in the film. Lewis, now 75, is still an idealistic agitator whose sense of urgency for dismantling discrimination has long extended to gay rights.
