LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Kyle Rahe

The Beast in the Closet

            While taking this course I became fascinated by the discrepancy between the sensitive attentions paid to the writings of so many minority cultures while the writings of the gay and lesbian community remain in the dark.  I fully realize and am proud of the fact that so many of these writers are canonized in other courses.  David Bergman of Towson State University is quick to point out what a less impressive place the world would be without Whitman, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich.  He contends though that while these authors may be studied their gayness is not and the richness of the works lacks because of it (Bergman 1).  I would further contend that my interest was also in the exclusion of works which were defiantly gay.  Whitman and James are fine, but their meaning was veiled as a result of the times in which they lived.  How would a classroom respond to an openly gay or lesbian character discussing love and sexual practice?  If Toni Morrison can win a Nobel for works that feature rape and sodomy involving black women why should a high-thinking audience still turn away from stories that concern a tenth of the American populace?  I would like to say that I appreciate the delicacy of controversy over these matters and the pressures upon teachers and administrators to balance the curriculum.  That is why this report is merely to report facts, not judge too harshly.

            One of the first items I learned was that gay lit is more appropriately known now by the anagram LGBT lit which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature.  The 20^th century members of this group are divided into two camps, pre-Stonewall and post-Stonewall.  The Stonewall riots were a series of riots that lasted several days in New York City in 1969.  The genesis of this group of protests was the illegal raid of a Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall Inn.  Throughout the 50s and 60s police had harassed, documented, and bullied many members of the gay and lesbian community with these right-violating raids.  The anger and turmoil came to a head at Stonewall and the resulting fervor became the first time large groups exclusively marched for gay rights (Wikipedia).  Stonewall was essentially the birth of the gay rights movement (When I use the term gay I mean it as a short to apply to lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender as well).  What is personally fascinating to me is how this type of struggle mirrors the black riots and marches and the zoot suit riots for Latinos.  Perhaps if people were made more aware of the similarities of these minority groups’ struggles, resentment of gays would not be so high in the black and Hispanic communities.  (Took 2 min. break)

            Why is gay lit not as prevalent as the works of our class?  The answer is simple, just look at modern headlines, America is a religious nation that goes up and down through closeted periods and more open times.  The argument not to teach gay lit is exactly the same as not to teach other works viewed subversive like Huck Finn, Grapes of Wrath, and Catcher in the Rye.  We must save the children.  Parents believe that exposure to gay material might make their own children gay or at least deviants.  Gay people find this view absurd; exposure to heterosexual culture does not turn gay people straight.  Secondly, the influence of the religious right and their refusal to acknowledge accepting gay people as anything less than an abomination of God is a strong factor.  Most American families attend some type of church structure and would protest this teaching as amoral.  Finally, the sexual frankness, innuendo, and bravado of openly gay writing can just be too much for a heterosexual reader to acclimatize oneself to.  As much as I champion gay lit and support gay rights, as a heterosexual I must admit I do not feel comfortable reading about explicit gay sexual practices as easily as I would a man/woman situation.

            So where does that leave us?  Gay lit deserves a place either as minority lit or some other sub-category.  The easiest solution would be to just re-look at the gay authors already in the canon from a fresh queer theory perspective.  This will be very effective, but David Bergman warns that students need to consider how this perspective affects the art as a whole.  He also warns that perhaps professors should not even discuss the authors’ orientation at first, only later applying it to the teaching.  Lastly, he says we should still pay attention to heterosexuality and that these two worlds are not exclusive no matter what the artists’ orientation. 

            The most popular current gay lit is pulp-type novels that gay readers connect to.  The difference between the real detective fictions of Raymond Chandler and gay pulp stories is minimal.  Both inhabit shadowy worlds where things may not be as they seem and secrets are kept.  I would propose that the most pressing works that need to be added though are works that deal with the AIDS crisis and the sensitive nature of the psychology the threat of HIV has caused.  As one of the first major groups affected by the crisis, the gay community has been in a position to produce and gather information years before the rest of the world.  Now that the world is taking off its rose-colored glasses and seeing HIV/AIDS for the menace to all people that it is these works will prove invaluable to be studied.  Landmark works like Fags and And The Band Played On are watershed moments in non-fiction.  Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the last piece legendary critic Harold Bloom chose for his The Western Canon was Tony Kushner’s epic play Angels in America.  How can something of this scope not be studied in literature and drama classes across America?