Queer Quotes: On Coming Out and Culture, Love and Lust, Politics and Pride, and Much More

edited by Teresa Theophano
Beacon Press
www.beacon.org
0807079065 (cloth) $15.00

Queer Quotes: On Coming Out and Culture, Love and Lust, Politics and Pride, and Much More, edited by Teresa Theophano, is a delightful collection of GLBT-related quotations. Divided into 16 topics, including "All Things Queer," "Naming Ourselves," and "Queer History," with quotes range from the touching to the bitingly funny, with some healthy stops along that way that prompt a reader to think. However, all the quotes have a positive slant. Theophano in her introduction explains that she has "avoided including sound bites from homophobes. We already know what the Trent Lotts, Jerry Falwells, and Fred Phelps of the world think of GLBT issues. …Let's be utterly, joyously, and quotably queer!" (10).

On the currently timely topic of "Love and (Gay) Marriage," Liz Langley states "Gay marriage should be legal if just to raise the standard of dancing at receptions" (29).

Political issues are the focus of "Out of the Closets, Into the Streets" with this from Barbara Grier: "It is the closet that is our sin and our shame." (81) And a chilling quote from Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the US, reads, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door" (77). Milk was assassinated in 1978.

In "the Arts" there are a number of humorous entries as well as two quotes for the queer bibliophiles from Dorothy Allison and Nancy Garden, respectively:

"If I'd taken up with a gospel band or rock and roll, I'd make a whole lot more sense to my family. But to write books. …I'd come home with books and they'd stare at me like I was crazy. That was the thing most queer about me" (37).

"[Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness] became my bible. I read it and reread it over and over again. And I vowed at that point that I was going to write a gay book that ended happily, a book about my people" (40). The author of dozens of award-winning children's and teens' books, Garden wrote Annie on my Mind, originally released in 1982, a groundbreaking novel concerning love been between two high school girls.

Theophano has included a biography section for the over 270 speakers quoted. This handy appendix provides brief biographical summaries, frequently listing best known titles if the person is an author, and an explanation of their notability. This section is particularly useful given the broad range of personalities quoted -- from Sophocles and Oscar Wilde to Melissa Etheridge and Calpernia Addams. Regretfully, not all these entries include a year of birth (or death). There appeared to be a few minor errors and the reader should cross-check the biographic information if using it for more than casual reference. (For example Rita Mae Brown's groundbreaking novel, Rubyfruit Jungle, is listed as originally released in 1983 rather than 1973). This reviewer would have liked the biographical data to have included the names of some long-term relationships, especially when the partners also appear in the volume as with Kate Clinton and Urvashi Vaid.

However, these shortcomings pale compared to the value of the section. Further, the editor has provided an index to the hundreds of quotes allowing the reader to find all quotes by a particular person. These last two sections result in a collection that is valuable to researchers as well as fun for the casual reader.

A well-organized, thoughtful, and fun little book, Queer Quotes is the most comprehensive title of its kind and would be useful for libraries and others who might use quote books, as well as being a size and format that make it a charming gift book.

-MJ Lowe