Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas (Series Q)

Anthropologist Esther Newton, second-wave feminist, butch from birth, and author of the groundbreaking 1972 study of drag, Mother Camp, here presents 20 engaged and engaging essays and book excerpts from the past three decades, ranging from political arguments to memoirs. Early in her academic career, Newton took a stand against the dry, "objective" writing style then being promoted in her field (and many others) as the social sciences sought to ally themselves with the hard sciences. The resulting prose is a curious but flexible hybrid well suited to Newton's related subject matters--sexual politics (including gender identity); the intersections of feminism and the academy; and her own evolving position as a butch lesbian in the academy, the lesbian and gay world, and the culture at large. Although Newton's early work is important and influential, some of the most striking pieces in this collection date from the 1990s, including Newton's critical and historical exploration of theatre as "gay anti-church"; her essay "Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen," in which she tracks the election of the first-ever lesbian homecoming queen of Cherry Grove in the summer of 1994; and "My Butch Body," a memoir of her childhood and troubled youth. --Regina Marler