Torquere (E-Journal - York University)

Wray, B.J.

English

Imagining Lesbian Citizenship: A Kiss & Tell Affair

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120 
BOOKS RECEIVED 
OUVRAGES RE<;US 
John Barton. Sweet Ellipsis. Toronto: ECW Press, 1998. 173pp. 
ISBN 1-55022-354-2. 
Jim Egan. Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a 
Canadian Gay Activist. Compiled and edited by Donald 
W. McLeod. Toronto: Canadian Lesbian and Gay 
Archives and Homewood Books, 1998. 159pp. Includes 
bibliographical references, index. ISBN 0-9683829-0-8 . 
Susan Hawthorn and Renate Klein, eds. CyberFeminism: 
Connectivity, Critique and Creativity. North Melbourne, 
Vic.: Spinifex Press, 1999. 434pp. ISBN 1-875559-68-X. 
Readers who wish to review these or other books should contact John 
L. Plews, Editor, torquere, at torquere@ualberta.ca. Unfortunately, 
we cannot accept unsolicited reviews. 


Books Received

Tapley, Heather

The Hobo-Sexual: A Connective History

Ménager, Serge D.

Dominique

Epp, Garrett P.J.

Readers wishing to review books should contact the 
Book Review Editor, Bobby Noble, at: jnoble@yorku.ca. 
Les lecteurs/lectrices interesse(e)s a recenser un ou plusieurs 
ouvrages sont prie(e)s de communiquer avec Bobby Noble, 
Directeur de comptes rendus, a l'addresse suivante: jnoble@yorku.ca. 
Stephen Guy-Bray. Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in 
Renaissance Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 
2002. x + 265pp. $60.00 (Cdn). ISBN 0802036775. 
GARREIT P. J. EPP (University of Alberta) 
T he term "Renaissance" is largely out of critical fashion, but Stephen Guy-Bray makes it matter here. His intriguing book deals with the cultural rebirth of a classical elegiac mode in 
early modem England, and with the "homoerotic space" that this 
mode opened, and can still open, for writers and readers alike. The 
literary mourning of men by men, he argues, provides a socially safe 
means of celebrating homoeroticism: "By testifying to the fact that 
what he documents has come to an end, the poet can declare his 
distance from the potentially dangerous story he tells while in 
substituting a poem for a homoerotic attachment he grants that 
attachment a textual survival" (22); this in tum grants to later readers 
a means of articulating such attachments, and such losses. On the 
other hand, Guy-Bray 's use of the term "Renaissance" in the book's 
torquere: Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association ! 
Revue de Ia Societe canadienne des etudes lesbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 4-5 (2002-2003) © CLGSA I SCELG 
214 I Epp 
title is also misleading, since two of the book's five chapters deal 
only with the classical sources, to the exclusion of "Renaissance 
Literature." These chapters provide necessary background to the rest 
of the book, and are interesting in themselves. Still, it seems ironic 
that a book that unclosets past readers and imitators of classical 
literature, or at least their reading practices, should itself hide a closet 
classicist. In the "Renaissance" chapters (one of which, incidentally, 
deals at length with the Italian Castiglione's Latin poetry before 
moving on to Surrey and Milton), Guy-Bray occasionally neglects 
to translate individual Latin words and phrases on which his argument 
depends, which might put off some potential readers, including more 
than a few students of early modem English literature, and more still 
of the history of sexuality. And this would be unfortunate, since the 
book has much to offer even, or perhaps especially, to those with 
"no Latin and less Greek." 
While the homoeroticism of Virgil's second eclogue is well 
known, even infamous, that of the Aeneid remains a surprise to 
surprisingly many. In his Introduction Guy-Bray notes, "I concentrate 
on the most famous classical texts precisely because they are the 
most famous: they have been most often read, studied, and used as 
models for literary composition; indeed, they are the basis for later 
ideas of the classical tradition and, to some extent, of homoeroticism" 
(5). However, more readers now know Virgil's work by reputation 
and allusion than have actually read it - in translation, much less 
in Latin - and fewer still have read the idylls of Theocritus. Now, 
far more than in early modem England, "Latin is a 'safe' language 
that is only understood by the educated" (4); however, it is no longer 
"the language of sexual knowledge" (4, quoting Bruce R. Smith), 
and its sexual secrets have largely fallen beyond safety into total 
darkness. Analyzing these classical works alongside their early 
modem descendants, both famous and obscure, written both in Latin 
and in English, sheds light all around. Guy-Bray does a service to 
classicists, as well as to early modem scholars, in demonstrating how 
those earlier works were later read, and used, both to open up and to 
regulate homoerotic possibility. 
It is much to Guy-Bray's credit that, despite his subject matter, 
all of which concerns sorrowful loss, this is not a morose book. Still, 
one might wish for more than the occasional flash of his dry wit 
here, since he uses it to such excellent critical advantage. Take, for 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 215 
instance, his discussion of sexual metaphor in Milton's Latin elegy 
for hi~ friend Charles Diodati: "the most obvious reason for using 
sexual metaphors to describe a relationship is that the relationship 
was or is sexual ... I propose to give Milton the benefit of the doubt 
and assume that he and Diodati were lovers" (119). Guy-Bray's 
argument does not depend upon any such assumption; indeed, he 
later discusses the poem's insistence on Diodati's virginity ( 129-30). 
However, by proposing the assumption, he allows the reader of 
Milton not only a laugh, but also the same homoerotic possibilities 
that Milton and his contemporaries would or could have found in 
the classical works that so clearly influenced their work. That is, he 
opens up a "homoerotic space" for the modem reader and scholar in 
some seemingly unlikely places. 
Like its primary source material, this book is a personal response 
to a particular time and particular events. In his Postscript ("one 
motivated partly by my desire for a happy ending" 6), he writes, 
"the rise of the AIDS pandemic has strengthened the connection 
between homosexuality and death" (217) - a connection evident 
in all the works he deals with here, from the poetry of Theocritus 
and Virgil to the plays of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher. 
When he argues, in relation to the Aeneid, "that one of the lessons 
Renaissance writers learned from the ending of the poem is that death 
is the price paid for the embrace of two men" (84 ), he is also making 
an argument regarding present readers of ancient and early modem 
poetry. However, this same lesson is one that the book seeks to 
supplement or subvert. While the Aeneid, like a wide variety of other 
works across time, suggests that "the price of male beauty is death" 
(69), poetic beauty grants a form of immortality. The book thus ends 
on a celebratory note, with a return to a work discussed at the outset: 
"As I see it, Theocritus's point is that love between men is something 
that occurs in all places and at all times and is passed on orally: by 
poetry and by kissing" (224). Guy-Bray's book embraces the past in 
order to bring past embraces between men to life in the present. 


Stephen Guy-Bray. Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature

de Souza, Erica Renata

222 I Robinson 
for a utopian, queer Canada is wiser not to overlook the homophobic 
elements that also make Canada and Canadian identity what they 
are. It is sometimes too easy to assume that Canada is hospitable to 
queerness because of its policies of tolerance and human rights, when 
rather what is needed is a deconstructive critique of Canadian national 
identity and even "multiculturalism" as ideals. Regardless of how 
far we still have to go to becoming a queer country, Goldie's 
collection certainly points toward hope for the future. 
Gloria Kropf Nafziger, ed. Home Truths: Lesbian Mothers Come 
Out to Their Daughters. Edmonton, AB: Rowan Books, 2001. vi 
+ 106pp. $16.95 (Cdn). ISBN 0-9685257-5-X. 
ERICA RENATA DE SouzA (State University of Campinas, 
Brazil, and York University1) 
This all-Canadian anthology is a celebration of the relationships of lesbian mothers and their daughters embodied in histories and poetry. The work presents unique histories of life, pain, 
and discovery. All the women whose writing features in this 
collection have one thing in common: they are all mothers who 
abandoned a heterosexual life-style and had to learn how to unite 
mothering and homosexuality. There are true stories about family, 
homosexuality, and, above all, love among women: biological 
mothers, adoptive mothers, step mothers, and their relationships with 
their daughters, partners, and sexuality. Each history tells us how 
these women made mothering and love walk together in various 
configurations, and how oftentimes the relationships with their 
daughters were badly affected by homophobia in society. To differing 
degrees, the women present depictions of supportive daughters, 
partners, ex-husbands, daughters' boyfriends, and parents-in-law; 
they also introduce us to the prejudice of relatives and communities. 
1 Ms. de Souza is a visiting scholar in lesbian mothering. Her research is 
supported by the Funda~ao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP). 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 223 
In many cases the women's process of coming out to their children 
was accompanied by the anguish of seeing their children's sadness 
and suffering because of the breakup of the heterosexual marriage. 
Kathy Frey tells us about her difficulty in naming herself as a 
lesbian. During this process - which she describes as painful -
she decided that talking to her child about "it" was something that 
could wait for the future, for she wanted to protect her daughter from 
being harmed in her childhood. But the woman with whom she was 
involved took the initiative without her consent, and so she had to 
deal with the situation much sooner than she expected. 
Susan presents the beautiful letters that she exchanged with her 
daughter in order to clarify some points eight years after the fact of 
her coming out. Her daughter's very sensitive replies tell how hard 
it was for her to deal at once with the concept of homosexuality, her 
unpopularity at school, her father 's new marriage, and her struggle 
to "prove" her heterosexuality at school. 
Jacqueline Dumas found that she saw a stronger daughter arising 
from her (Jacqueline's) coming out. Yet she also reflects on the irony 
that her lesbian friends' indifference to her daughter made her child 
experience "the same erasure" that she always felt as a lesbian. 
Margaret decided in her teens that she would not be a mother, 
but then one day she met Anne and Mary, a girl born with Down 
syndrome. From that point on her preconceptions were put to the 
test and eventually she began to see herself as a mother. 
For Martha, coming out was a difficult process that was 
overshadowed by the breakup of a relationship. "I think that it was, 
and is, much harder for them to watch me struggle in relationships 
than it is for them to handle my sexual identity" (38). 
After a year and half of living as a stay-at-home mother, Anne 
Moore realized that she and her daughter needed more from life, 
that she needed an identity of her own. She explains how she left 
her daughter with her ex-husband, but became her child 's rock and 
reference, until the day her daughter met a homophobic boyfriend. 
B. shares the history of her eight-year blended family as a lesbian 
mother who has a transgendered male as the father of her three 
children and a woman as a partner. She suggests that her daughter 
grew up in a stressful environment filled with the struggle to deal 
with the new blended family, social pressures, and the "teenage 
questioning of individual sexuality" (67). 
224 I de Souza 
Elizabeth Anne comments on the education that she and her 
husband gave their daughter, which was rooted in Christianity and 
also in the belief "that differences are to be celebrated" (70). After 
separating from her husband and calling herself a lesbian, she felt 
compelled to tell her daughter the truth. 
For twenty years K.S. denied her homosexuality, and as part of 
this process she became an alcoholic in her late teens. After coming 
out to her daughters, she noticed her oldest daughter starting to drink 
in order to handle her mother's sexual orientation. However- in 
contrast to Anne Moore's history - K.S.'s daughter's boyfriend 
played a positive role in her daughter's acceptance of her partner. 
Gloria Nafziger found herself cut off from her daughter's friends 
and lost her church community. Nowadays, her daughters have two 
homes, one with their father and the other with their mother and her 
partner, and two church communities in which different perspectives 
on homosexuality give "different levels of comfort" (87). 
Dona denied her homosexuality from the age of fifteen, when 
she had her first and only lesbian experience, until the age of fifty-
three, when she came out to her daughter. 
Mary Anne Moore told her daughter that she was adopted in 
the same gradual way that she came out to her. 
And Debbie Culbertson, like other women in this book, writes 
that her coming out news came at a difficult time for her daughter, 
along with the end of the marriage and the loss of her father's daily 
presence. She encountered a supportive daughter, but nowadays 
Culbertson has realized- similarly to Anne Moore and B.- how 
social pressure leads teenagers to desire a "normal" family. 
Home Truths is an invitation to a walk with some brave women 
down a road of pain and reward, love and (in)comprehension, 
"belonging and separation" (iv). It is also a book for all of those 
who want to broaden their understanding of the combined concerns 
of mothering and homosexuality. Above all, it is a celebration of 
life narratives, valuable to anyone interested in the diversity and 
complexity of human relationships. 


Gloria Kropf Nafziger, ed. Home Truths: Lesbian Mothers Come Out to Their Daughters

Not a member yet

Imagining Lesbian Citizenship: A Kiss & Tell Affair

Books Received

The Hobo-Sexual: A Connective History

Dominique

Stephen Guy-Bray. Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature

Gloria Kropf Nafziger, ed. Home Truths: Lesbian Mothers Come Out to Their Daughters

"What We Do Well": Writing the Pussy Palace into a Queer Collective Memory

Full Text Replica

Athabasca Falls

Queering "Pervert City"

76

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