What do you think?
Rate this book
Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners
Who’s Yer Daddy? offers readers of gay male literature a keen and engaging journey. In this anthology, thirty-nine gay authors discuss individuals who have influenced them—their inspirational “daddies.” The essayists include fiction writers, poets, and performance artists, both honored masters of contemporary literature and those just beginning to blaze their own trails. They find their artistic ancestry among not only literary icons—Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, André Gide, Frank O’Hara, James Baldwin, Edmund White—but also a roster of figures whose creative territories are startlingly wide and vital, from Botticelli to Bette Midler to Captain Kirk.
Some writers chronicle an entire tribal council of mentors; others describe a transformative encounter with a particular individual, including teachers and friends whose guidance or example cracked open their artistic selves. Perhaps most moving are the handful of writers who answered the question literally, writing intimately of their own fathers and their literary inheritance. This rich volume presents intriguing insights into the contemporary gay literary aesthetic.
Winner, LGBT Nonfiction Anthology, Lambda Literary Awards
Some writers chronicle an entire tribal council of mentors; others describe a transformative encounter with a particular individual, including teachers and friends whose guidance or example cracked open their artistic selves. Perhaps most moving are the handful of writers who answered the question literally, writing intimately of their own fathers and their literary inheritance. This rich volume presents intriguing insights into the contemporary gay literary aesthetic.
Winner, LGBT Nonfiction Anthology, Lambda Literary Awards
312 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2012
2 people are currently reading
76 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 17, 2018
Intriguing if uneven collection of essays. A few which stood out to me include Richard Blanco’s examination of his grandmother and Richard McCann’s poignant exploration of his father, a “failed” writer. Enjoyable pieces as well by Timothy Liu and Paul Lisicky’s homage to Joy Williams.
October 31, 2015
‘You’ll discover an issue that remains vital to every thoughtful person, whether a writer or reader, whether straight or queer: the question of identity!’
An insightful quote from the Introduction; as a matter of fact, from the 2012 book Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, edited by 2 poets & teachers, Jim Elledge and David Groff.
The double entendre title, Who’s Yer Daddy? - does not refer to any premeditated sexual unseemliness; instead the book includes 39 rational essays by 39 brainy guys who are described in the Introduction as ‘...a broad representation of today’s gay writers – of all ages, races, levels of recognition, gender expression, class, and literary aesthetic.’ Be sure to read the 6-page Introduction for further explanation of the cause & effect w/regard to this compassionate collection of a wide variety of thought-provoking men.
I couldn’t wait to read this book after I found the guru-type title in my ongoing research w/regard to the scholastic objective & Mentor/Mentee subject matter of my recent book, OK2BG about a guy who wants to be a Mentor to kids at-risk, especially gay kids at-risk for suicide. I sincerely wanted to find further advice about some better methods to help so many kids in distress; whether a school library full of books is a viable option to persuade students to stop, look & listen to what other same-sex people have to say on the subject of compassion, thereto posit a safe & sane, somewhat stealthy strategy against the assimilated psychosis of modern-day homophobia.
What I got as a result while reading the book was the self-realization & conceptual confirmation that I was on the right track or the right bus or driving myself in the right direction toward the right way, to help support & solve the problem of hateful conduct.
Therein, I virtually met 39 new & friendly guys I hadn’t known before amid their subjective conversations about who or what had influenced them on various levels of intellectual & realistic achievement, which was fully worth the lengthy time it took for me to pay attention to the congregation of details within each guy’s unique presentation. Some essays were more cerebral than others, while I especially liked the nostalgic stories about awkward stuff that happened to them when they were younger & that they could now see the affect such an act of confused deliberation, after discomfited participation had on their overall growth as a progressive & empathetic person.
Many of the contributors are poets & I was tentative, at first about the unnecessary need to exercise my awareness with verse; to have to jump-through-hoops, in other words, in order to find meaning in the premise of the poem before I could resolve my confusion.
However, Who’s Yer Daddy? - is not a book of poetry, albeit about interpretation from the poet’s point-of-view & from the perspective of what influence they have thus gleaned from their own trials & tribulations, presented as an interpretation for the greater good of all concerned, in my opinion or perception.
I liked Dave King’s description of his adolescent friends, especially his most influential buddy, ‘D’ aka ‘my friend D’ – ‘No one was yet gay, and friendship was largely a matter of instinct. Each of us hid himself behind screen concealments; all of us trusted the scrims the others put up.’
‘Maybe friendship itself is like crime: merely motive plus opportunity; and perhaps D was the maguffin.’ – Dave King
Sadly, Raymond Luczak laments his younger years – ‘I was the boy that no one wanted. No one wants you if you’re too different. In my case, I was both deaf and gay.’ And an orphan! Although, his book Mute pays ‘tribute to the poet’s mentors, professors, and friends.’ – according to a review posted by James on Goodreads.
Raymond writes - ‘It is impossible to choose only one influence as my singular inspiration as a gay writer.’
‘Being orphaned heightens doubts about one’s place in the universe.’ – Raymond Luczak
‘Encouragement – it must be said – is its own form of influence. So is getting out of the way. So is letting go, so that other influences can emerge to complicate the stories that must be told.’ – K.M. Soehnlein
Who’s Yer Daddy? – is deceptively compact at <300 pages with 39 essays & with 8 pages in the back of the book describing the contributors, still the book is filled to the brim with poignant quotes & abundant book titles for further research & reading.
However, the ravenous & sometimes silly savant in me wonders why only 39 guys & not an even 40 or substantial 50, since the book appears to be on the small size at 6” x 8.5” x 1”. I definitely wanted more of the same good stuff from another dozen guys or so, to fill perhaps 350 pages, or what if 100 guys wrote on the stellar subject of social or sympathetic support & influence to give us a sizeable tome totaling 750 pages, since each guy was allotted an average number of 7.5 pages.
Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind, as the title of the book about Kurt Cobain exclaims - maybe someday there will be another more comprehensive (read: more guys) in a subsequent volume of Who’s Yer Daddy? - Anthology?! Yet in the meantime, the current 2012 edition will keep me busy reading & researching far into the near future.
Here is the table-of-contents for your reading reference & thoughtful evaluation, since so many online book descriptions for Anthologies rarely list all the authors of their inclusive essays (listed here alphabetically by the author’s last name)-
Noel Alumit - Vanity Fair Interviews Writer Noel Alumit
Rick Barot - Botticelli Boy
Mark Bibbins - "It does not have to be yours"
Richard Blanco - Making a Man Out of Me
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez - Miss Thing
Justin Chin - Some Notes, Thoughts, Recollections, Revisions, and Corrections Regarding Becoming, Being, and Remaining a Gay Writer
Peter Covino - Queering an Italian American Poetic Legacy
Mark Doty - Walt Whitman: Glow on the Extremest Verge
Jim Elledge - Introduction: All Our Daddies – and Then Some
Jim Elledge - The Little Girls with Penises
Kenny Fries - How I learned to Drive: The Education of a Gay Disabled Writer
Thomas Glave - The Four of Them
Rigoberto Gonzalez - Beloved Jotoranos
David Groff - Introduction: All Our Daddies - and Then Some
David Groff - My Radical Dads
Benjamin S. Grossberg - Culture Club in Space: An Anecdotal Poetics
James Allen Hall – Fugitives
Aaron Hamburger - The Mentor I Never Met: Janet Frame
Greg Hewett - The Tallahatchie Meets the Arve, or Unexpected Gay Confluences in the '70s
Martin Hyatt – How to Skin a Deer
Charles Jensen – My Three Dads
Saeed Jones – Orpheus in Texas
Dave King – Caliban
Michael Klein - Some Notes on Influences or Why I Am Not Objective
Brian Leung - The Seismology of Love and Letters
Shaun Levin - I Will Tell This Story the Way I Choose
Paul Lisicky - A Hidden Life (On Joy Williams)
Timothy Liu - My First Poetic Mentor Was a Welshman Named Leslie
Chip Livingston – Under the Influence
Raymond Luczak - The World Is Full of Orphans
Jeff Mann – Romantic
Randall Mann – The World is Full of Orphans
Richard McCann – The Case of the Undone Novel
Alistair McCartney - Teenage Riot: Notes on Some Books That Guided Me Through a Profoundly Hormonal Time
David McConnell – Oubloir
Tim Miller – Jumpstart
Dale Peck - My Mother’s Grave Is Yellow
Charles Rice-Gonzalez – Latin Moon Daddy
K.M. Soehnlein - Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Father
Brian Teare - Positively Not: A Talk about Poetries and Traditions
Ellery Washington – Leaving Berlin
One other applicable story about this particular Los Angeles library book while in my possession when I was on a recent road trip to Spokane, Washington to visit family. I took a walk to the nearby Whitworth University, a private institution affiliated with the Presbyterian Church & founded in 1890 (as indicated on their About page under Facts & Rankings.
I wanted to visit the campus & the Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library, specifically to check & see if they had a copy of Who’s Yer Daddy? – hidden somewhere on a book shelf & more significantly, just listed in the library catalog.
Sure enough, there it was proudly displayed on a page with other similar subject-matter titles in the catalog, much to my sociable surprise. However there was no hard-copy situated on a book shelf, specifically at the address of the listed call number, still the catalog clearly indicated only an eBook was available, at this time. Apparently, there was an effort afoot to make available more books in e-format, as I noticed several other titles displayed the same message; although good news, at any rate, for the inquisitive college crowd in residence on campus, diligently at work on their respective liberal arts degrees, while studiously snuggled under a forest of giant pine trees & surrounded by vast, cropped green lawns nearby Division Street on the North Hill.
However, what distressed me the most was the conversation I overhead as I was looking for the book, Who’s Yer Daddy? - in the catalog, in the front lobby, when a guy suddenly ran in the library somewhat out-of-breath, but fortunately found his 2 friends seated on a sofa in the foyer by the checkout desk. I could only hear bits & pieces of what he was saying, like almost every other word. But I detected a definite amount of stress from the guy who was quietly out-of-breath after he rushed into the library in a frantic yet restrained state of excitement, to find his friends.
In a nutshell, the tall guy in a red sweat shirt was upset because he had recently been told that he couldn’t do his homework wherever he had decided he wanted to do it. And from what I could discern about the academic confrontation was something that had happened at the end of a recent class. He said, ‘she said, you can’t do your homework here!’
It struck me funny on 2 fronts; 1st that this supposedly confident, because he was a good-looking guy was apparently afraid of what he was told he couldn’t or shouldn’t do (homework at school or homework in class & maybe right after the class that generated the homework); 2nd that he said he wished his 2 friends had been there to help him figure out what he should have done, since he had obviously faltered in his attempt to stand-up for what he believed was right, but he just couldn’t or wouldn’t for whatever reason.
The tallish good-looking guy in the red shirt asked one of his friends still seated on the sofa what he would have done in the same situation, or at least could he have offered some support to help his befuddled friend say something appropriate, as the kafuffle was apparently not over yet. But the young man of color seated on the sofa indicated that he couldn’t do anything to help because he said, “I’m black!”
The 3rd friend standing silently nearby the young black guy hesitated for an appropriate answer to the overly complex situation which completely stumped this trio of visibly intelligent college guys.
I wondered if I had missed something in the plot, like the gruesome part about a murder or a bank robbery gone wrong, as I wondered why in the heck should there be an unusual problem with the whereabouts of homework?!
I wanted to do something to help this young man resolve his essential right to do his homework anywhere, anytime, whatever the circumstances. So I quickly finished scribbling the call number of the books I had hoped to find on the library shelf & tried to hastily formulate something to say, to help my wannabe (new) tallish friend with some directive for his disturbing dilemma. But I suddenly developed brain-freeze & then got tongue-tied, as I turned to walk toward the stairway & thereby missed an opportunity (to stick my foot in my mouth?!) for the good of all concerned. Rather, to help redeem these 3 young guys’ fear factors for not being able to express themselves because of the wrong color, supposedly, but I also imagined, some other deficiency of personal identity, in some psychological shape or form, whether specifically sexual or simply social, still something needed to be done to help them figure out a way to win the race. Altogether something that was not being taught in Psych 101, evidently.
I turned away from the computer in a wide arc & nearly brushed the shoulder of the tall agitated guy. I just wanted to tell him not to worry, that he did a good job & found his friends to talk about the stupid situation. And I was shocked by the gravity of such a simple thing gone awry, especially after the response from the young black guy. Outwardly, he felt he didn’t have a chance in a white world, but at least he had 2 white friends who cared enough to ask him for help.
I was dumbfounded by whatever abstract obstacle these guys supposedly had to deal with because of some ridiculous no-homework zone. In the midst of all that confusion, I had simply planned to say something like, “now say again, why couldn’t you do your homework wherever you wanted to do it - is that right?” And then I would have identified myself as the author of the book, OK2BG & handed out a few business cards, after I told the tall guy in the brick red shirt that he was entirely right to ask, why not! And to the young dejected black guy, “it’s okay to be black!” And maybe if there was a sequel of sorts to my book, OK2BG, perhaps a book about his self-imposed profiling plight entitled OK2BB.
After all is said & done, or rather unsaid & undone, there is a virtual shelf-full of Anthology books certainly close to the same subject matter of inspiration & encouragement as Who’s Yer Daddy? – together with more than 750 guys (who just happen to be gay) in just 39 books listed here for your (abridged) consideration in alphabetical order by title (including Who’s Yer Daddy?) - but with no table-of-contents, sadly) & (there are certainly many more Anthology collections published; some out-of-print, or just hard to find and/or that I have been [un]able to define all of their table-of-contents in a timely manner).
In the event you can’t find sufficient time & money to read all the Memoirs by or about these gay men, so a shelf full of Anthologies is a good place to start! All are currently available for purchase online, as of this date (Oct/2015) & more than half, actually 24 cost less than $1plus shipping, but shipping might be free if you buy all 39 books together. According to my calculations, the total for all 39 books would be less than $100 (just for the books). A perfect B-day or Xmas present for the young gay boy looking for role models.
And whatever you decide to do, please - read-it & re-gift it to a school library nearby; maybe the Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington, in order to help the trio of frantic friends in need of some splendid self-assurance & substantial inspiration, to help them remember to always be assertive but not aggressive & strategically self-reliant!
Read & Reassess B4 You Run Asunder! – Jack Dunsmoor
39 Anthologies by or about 750 insightful men, to help vulnerable gay kids at-risk (listed alphabetically by title) -
A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families - by John Preston
Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay - by Paul Vitagliano
Boyfriends From Hell - True Tales of Tainted Lovers, Disastrous Dates and Love Gone Wrong! - by Kevin Bentley
Boys & Girls – by Paul Burston
Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories - by Patrick Merla
Cast Out – Queer Lives in Theater by Robin Bernstein
Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America - by Mitchell Gold with Mindy Drucker
Divining Divas: 100 Gay Poets on Their Muses - by Michael Montlack
Farm Boys - Lives of Gay Men From the Rural Midwest - by Will Fellows
Friends and Lovers - Gay Men Write About the Families They Create - by John Preston & Michael Lowenthal
From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up - by Ted Gideonse & Robert Williams
Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature with Sixteen Writers, Healers, Teachers and Visionaries - by Mark Thompson
Gay Sunshine Interviews - by Allen Young & Allen Ginsberg (vol. 1) & Winston Leyland (vol. 2)
Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner - by Michael Shernoff
Growing Up Gay / Growing Up Lesbian - A Literary Anthology - by Bennett L. Singer
Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong - by John Preston
Identity Envy: Wanting to Be Who We're Not: Creative Nonfiction by Queer Writers - by Jim Tushinski & Jim Van Buskirk
Leading the Parade - Conversations with America's Most Influential Lesbians and Gay Men - by Paul D. Cain
Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS - by Edmund White
Love, Castro Street: Reflections of San Francisco - by Katherine V. Forrest & Jim Van Buskirk
Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer - by Angela Brown
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them - by Michael Montlack
Not in This Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America - by Heather Murray
Pages Past from Hand to Hand: the Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1918 - by David Leavitt
Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers - by Robert Giard
Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS - by David Groff & Philip Clarke
Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade - by Clifford Chase
Quiet Fire - Memoirs of Older Gay Men - by Keith Vacha
Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America - by Quang Bao & Hanya Yanagihara
The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves – by Sarah Moon & James Lecesne
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Essays on Queer Sexuality & Desire - by Greg Wharton
The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers - by Bruce Shenitz
The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America - by Axel Nissen
The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture - by David Bergman
Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans - by Philip Gambone
Walking Higher: Gay Men Write About the Deaths of Their Mothers - by Alexander Renault
When I Knew - by Robert Trachtenberg
Who's Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners - by Jim Elledge & David Groff
Wrestling with the Angel - Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men - by Brian Bouldrey
– Review by Jack Dunsmoor, author of the book OK2BG
An insightful quote from the Introduction; as a matter of fact, from the 2012 book Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, edited by 2 poets & teachers, Jim Elledge and David Groff.
The double entendre title, Who’s Yer Daddy? - does not refer to any premeditated sexual unseemliness; instead the book includes 39 rational essays by 39 brainy guys who are described in the Introduction as ‘...a broad representation of today’s gay writers – of all ages, races, levels of recognition, gender expression, class, and literary aesthetic.’ Be sure to read the 6-page Introduction for further explanation of the cause & effect w/regard to this compassionate collection of a wide variety of thought-provoking men.
I couldn’t wait to read this book after I found the guru-type title in my ongoing research w/regard to the scholastic objective & Mentor/Mentee subject matter of my recent book, OK2BG about a guy who wants to be a Mentor to kids at-risk, especially gay kids at-risk for suicide. I sincerely wanted to find further advice about some better methods to help so many kids in distress; whether a school library full of books is a viable option to persuade students to stop, look & listen to what other same-sex people have to say on the subject of compassion, thereto posit a safe & sane, somewhat stealthy strategy against the assimilated psychosis of modern-day homophobia.
What I got as a result while reading the book was the self-realization & conceptual confirmation that I was on the right track or the right bus or driving myself in the right direction toward the right way, to help support & solve the problem of hateful conduct.
Therein, I virtually met 39 new & friendly guys I hadn’t known before amid their subjective conversations about who or what had influenced them on various levels of intellectual & realistic achievement, which was fully worth the lengthy time it took for me to pay attention to the congregation of details within each guy’s unique presentation. Some essays were more cerebral than others, while I especially liked the nostalgic stories about awkward stuff that happened to them when they were younger & that they could now see the affect such an act of confused deliberation, after discomfited participation had on their overall growth as a progressive & empathetic person.
Many of the contributors are poets & I was tentative, at first about the unnecessary need to exercise my awareness with verse; to have to jump-through-hoops, in other words, in order to find meaning in the premise of the poem before I could resolve my confusion.
However, Who’s Yer Daddy? - is not a book of poetry, albeit about interpretation from the poet’s point-of-view & from the perspective of what influence they have thus gleaned from their own trials & tribulations, presented as an interpretation for the greater good of all concerned, in my opinion or perception.
I liked Dave King’s description of his adolescent friends, especially his most influential buddy, ‘D’ aka ‘my friend D’ – ‘No one was yet gay, and friendship was largely a matter of instinct. Each of us hid himself behind screen concealments; all of us trusted the scrims the others put up.’
‘Maybe friendship itself is like crime: merely motive plus opportunity; and perhaps D was the maguffin.’ – Dave King
Sadly, Raymond Luczak laments his younger years – ‘I was the boy that no one wanted. No one wants you if you’re too different. In my case, I was both deaf and gay.’ And an orphan! Although, his book Mute pays ‘tribute to the poet’s mentors, professors, and friends.’ – according to a review posted by James on Goodreads.
Raymond writes - ‘It is impossible to choose only one influence as my singular inspiration as a gay writer.’
‘Being orphaned heightens doubts about one’s place in the universe.’ – Raymond Luczak
‘Encouragement – it must be said – is its own form of influence. So is getting out of the way. So is letting go, so that other influences can emerge to complicate the stories that must be told.’ – K.M. Soehnlein
Who’s Yer Daddy? – is deceptively compact at <300 pages with 39 essays & with 8 pages in the back of the book describing the contributors, still the book is filled to the brim with poignant quotes & abundant book titles for further research & reading.
However, the ravenous & sometimes silly savant in me wonders why only 39 guys & not an even 40 or substantial 50, since the book appears to be on the small size at 6” x 8.5” x 1”. I definitely wanted more of the same good stuff from another dozen guys or so, to fill perhaps 350 pages, or what if 100 guys wrote on the stellar subject of social or sympathetic support & influence to give us a sizeable tome totaling 750 pages, since each guy was allotted an average number of 7.5 pages.
Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind, as the title of the book about Kurt Cobain exclaims - maybe someday there will be another more comprehensive (read: more guys) in a subsequent volume of Who’s Yer Daddy? - Anthology?! Yet in the meantime, the current 2012 edition will keep me busy reading & researching far into the near future.
Here is the table-of-contents for your reading reference & thoughtful evaluation, since so many online book descriptions for Anthologies rarely list all the authors of their inclusive essays (listed here alphabetically by the author’s last name)-
Noel Alumit - Vanity Fair Interviews Writer Noel Alumit
Rick Barot - Botticelli Boy
Mark Bibbins - "It does not have to be yours"
Richard Blanco - Making a Man Out of Me
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez - Miss Thing
Justin Chin - Some Notes, Thoughts, Recollections, Revisions, and Corrections Regarding Becoming, Being, and Remaining a Gay Writer
Peter Covino - Queering an Italian American Poetic Legacy
Mark Doty - Walt Whitman: Glow on the Extremest Verge
Jim Elledge - Introduction: All Our Daddies – and Then Some
Jim Elledge - The Little Girls with Penises
Kenny Fries - How I learned to Drive: The Education of a Gay Disabled Writer
Thomas Glave - The Four of Them
Rigoberto Gonzalez - Beloved Jotoranos
David Groff - Introduction: All Our Daddies - and Then Some
David Groff - My Radical Dads
Benjamin S. Grossberg - Culture Club in Space: An Anecdotal Poetics
James Allen Hall – Fugitives
Aaron Hamburger - The Mentor I Never Met: Janet Frame
Greg Hewett - The Tallahatchie Meets the Arve, or Unexpected Gay Confluences in the '70s
Martin Hyatt – How to Skin a Deer
Charles Jensen – My Three Dads
Saeed Jones – Orpheus in Texas
Dave King – Caliban
Michael Klein - Some Notes on Influences or Why I Am Not Objective
Brian Leung - The Seismology of Love and Letters
Shaun Levin - I Will Tell This Story the Way I Choose
Paul Lisicky - A Hidden Life (On Joy Williams)
Timothy Liu - My First Poetic Mentor Was a Welshman Named Leslie
Chip Livingston – Under the Influence
Raymond Luczak - The World Is Full of Orphans
Jeff Mann – Romantic
Randall Mann – The World is Full of Orphans
Richard McCann – The Case of the Undone Novel
Alistair McCartney - Teenage Riot: Notes on Some Books That Guided Me Through a Profoundly Hormonal Time
David McConnell – Oubloir
Tim Miller – Jumpstart
Dale Peck - My Mother’s Grave Is Yellow
Charles Rice-Gonzalez – Latin Moon Daddy
K.M. Soehnlein - Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Father
Brian Teare - Positively Not: A Talk about Poetries and Traditions
Ellery Washington – Leaving Berlin
One other applicable story about this particular Los Angeles library book while in my possession when I was on a recent road trip to Spokane, Washington to visit family. I took a walk to the nearby Whitworth University, a private institution affiliated with the Presbyterian Church & founded in 1890 (as indicated on their About page under Facts & Rankings.
I wanted to visit the campus & the Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library, specifically to check & see if they had a copy of Who’s Yer Daddy? – hidden somewhere on a book shelf & more significantly, just listed in the library catalog.
Sure enough, there it was proudly displayed on a page with other similar subject-matter titles in the catalog, much to my sociable surprise. However there was no hard-copy situated on a book shelf, specifically at the address of the listed call number, still the catalog clearly indicated only an eBook was available, at this time. Apparently, there was an effort afoot to make available more books in e-format, as I noticed several other titles displayed the same message; although good news, at any rate, for the inquisitive college crowd in residence on campus, diligently at work on their respective liberal arts degrees, while studiously snuggled under a forest of giant pine trees & surrounded by vast, cropped green lawns nearby Division Street on the North Hill.
However, what distressed me the most was the conversation I overhead as I was looking for the book, Who’s Yer Daddy? - in the catalog, in the front lobby, when a guy suddenly ran in the library somewhat out-of-breath, but fortunately found his 2 friends seated on a sofa in the foyer by the checkout desk. I could only hear bits & pieces of what he was saying, like almost every other word. But I detected a definite amount of stress from the guy who was quietly out-of-breath after he rushed into the library in a frantic yet restrained state of excitement, to find his friends.
In a nutshell, the tall guy in a red sweat shirt was upset because he had recently been told that he couldn’t do his homework wherever he had decided he wanted to do it. And from what I could discern about the academic confrontation was something that had happened at the end of a recent class. He said, ‘she said, you can’t do your homework here!’
It struck me funny on 2 fronts; 1st that this supposedly confident, because he was a good-looking guy was apparently afraid of what he was told he couldn’t or shouldn’t do (homework at school or homework in class & maybe right after the class that generated the homework); 2nd that he said he wished his 2 friends had been there to help him figure out what he should have done, since he had obviously faltered in his attempt to stand-up for what he believed was right, but he just couldn’t or wouldn’t for whatever reason.
The tallish good-looking guy in the red shirt asked one of his friends still seated on the sofa what he would have done in the same situation, or at least could he have offered some support to help his befuddled friend say something appropriate, as the kafuffle was apparently not over yet. But the young man of color seated on the sofa indicated that he couldn’t do anything to help because he said, “I’m black!”
The 3rd friend standing silently nearby the young black guy hesitated for an appropriate answer to the overly complex situation which completely stumped this trio of visibly intelligent college guys.
I wondered if I had missed something in the plot, like the gruesome part about a murder or a bank robbery gone wrong, as I wondered why in the heck should there be an unusual problem with the whereabouts of homework?!
I wanted to do something to help this young man resolve his essential right to do his homework anywhere, anytime, whatever the circumstances. So I quickly finished scribbling the call number of the books I had hoped to find on the library shelf & tried to hastily formulate something to say, to help my wannabe (new) tallish friend with some directive for his disturbing dilemma. But I suddenly developed brain-freeze & then got tongue-tied, as I turned to walk toward the stairway & thereby missed an opportunity (to stick my foot in my mouth?!) for the good of all concerned. Rather, to help redeem these 3 young guys’ fear factors for not being able to express themselves because of the wrong color, supposedly, but I also imagined, some other deficiency of personal identity, in some psychological shape or form, whether specifically sexual or simply social, still something needed to be done to help them figure out a way to win the race. Altogether something that was not being taught in Psych 101, evidently.
I turned away from the computer in a wide arc & nearly brushed the shoulder of the tall agitated guy. I just wanted to tell him not to worry, that he did a good job & found his friends to talk about the stupid situation. And I was shocked by the gravity of such a simple thing gone awry, especially after the response from the young black guy. Outwardly, he felt he didn’t have a chance in a white world, but at least he had 2 white friends who cared enough to ask him for help.
I was dumbfounded by whatever abstract obstacle these guys supposedly had to deal with because of some ridiculous no-homework zone. In the midst of all that confusion, I had simply planned to say something like, “now say again, why couldn’t you do your homework wherever you wanted to do it - is that right?” And then I would have identified myself as the author of the book, OK2BG & handed out a few business cards, after I told the tall guy in the brick red shirt that he was entirely right to ask, why not! And to the young dejected black guy, “it’s okay to be black!” And maybe if there was a sequel of sorts to my book, OK2BG, perhaps a book about his self-imposed profiling plight entitled OK2BB.
After all is said & done, or rather unsaid & undone, there is a virtual shelf-full of Anthology books certainly close to the same subject matter of inspiration & encouragement as Who’s Yer Daddy? – together with more than 750 guys (who just happen to be gay) in just 39 books listed here for your (abridged) consideration in alphabetical order by title (including Who’s Yer Daddy?) - but with no table-of-contents, sadly) & (there are certainly many more Anthology collections published; some out-of-print, or just hard to find and/or that I have been [un]able to define all of their table-of-contents in a timely manner).
In the event you can’t find sufficient time & money to read all the Memoirs by or about these gay men, so a shelf full of Anthologies is a good place to start! All are currently available for purchase online, as of this date (Oct/2015) & more than half, actually 24 cost less than $1plus shipping, but shipping might be free if you buy all 39 books together. According to my calculations, the total for all 39 books would be less than $100 (just for the books). A perfect B-day or Xmas present for the young gay boy looking for role models.
And whatever you decide to do, please - read-it & re-gift it to a school library nearby; maybe the Harriet Cheney Cowles Memorial Library at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington, in order to help the trio of frantic friends in need of some splendid self-assurance & substantial inspiration, to help them remember to always be assertive but not aggressive & strategically self-reliant!
Read & Reassess B4 You Run Asunder! – Jack Dunsmoor
39 Anthologies by or about 750 insightful men, to help vulnerable gay kids at-risk (listed alphabetically by title) -
A Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families - by John Preston
Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay - by Paul Vitagliano
Boyfriends From Hell - True Tales of Tainted Lovers, Disastrous Dates and Love Gone Wrong! - by Kevin Bentley
Boys & Girls – by Paul Burston
Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories - by Patrick Merla
Cast Out – Queer Lives in Theater by Robin Bernstein
Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America - by Mitchell Gold with Mindy Drucker
Divining Divas: 100 Gay Poets on Their Muses - by Michael Montlack
Farm Boys - Lives of Gay Men From the Rural Midwest - by Will Fellows
Friends and Lovers - Gay Men Write About the Families They Create - by John Preston & Michael Lowenthal
From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up - by Ted Gideonse & Robert Williams
Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature with Sixteen Writers, Healers, Teachers and Visionaries - by Mark Thompson
Gay Sunshine Interviews - by Allen Young & Allen Ginsberg (vol. 1) & Winston Leyland (vol. 2)
Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner - by Michael Shernoff
Growing Up Gay / Growing Up Lesbian - A Literary Anthology - by Bennett L. Singer
Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong - by John Preston
Identity Envy: Wanting to Be Who We're Not: Creative Nonfiction by Queer Writers - by Jim Tushinski & Jim Van Buskirk
Leading the Parade - Conversations with America's Most Influential Lesbians and Gay Men - by Paul D. Cain
Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS - by Edmund White
Love, Castro Street: Reflections of San Francisco - by Katherine V. Forrest & Jim Van Buskirk
Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer - by Angela Brown
My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them - by Michael Montlack
Not in This Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America - by Heather Murray
Pages Past from Hand to Hand: the Hidden Tradition of Homosexual Literature in English from 1748 to 1918 - by David Leavitt
Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers - by Robert Giard
Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS - by David Groff & Philip Clarke
Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade - by Clifford Chase
Quiet Fire - Memoirs of Older Gay Men - by Keith Vacha
Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America - by Quang Bao & Hanya Yanagihara
The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves – by Sarah Moon & James Lecesne
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Essays on Queer Sexuality & Desire - by Greg Wharton
The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers - by Bruce Shenitz
The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America - by Axel Nissen
The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture - by David Bergman
Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans - by Philip Gambone
Walking Higher: Gay Men Write About the Deaths of Their Mothers - by Alexander Renault
When I Knew - by Robert Trachtenberg
Who's Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners - by Jim Elledge & David Groff
Wrestling with the Angel - Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men - by Brian Bouldrey
– Review by Jack Dunsmoor, author of the book OK2BG
May 24, 2022
The title is cheeky, but the contents are mostly not. There are a few pieces in here that are engaging and enlightening, but there are also a lot that I ended up skimming. Lists of #poetfaves, maudlin tales of youth ("I was a very, very, very sensitive child . . ."), elliptical reminiscences too interior to follow, and a fair share of thickly academic bores. An interesting idea, but not a very interesting result.
September 29, 2019
This was such a treat to find in a little free library in Minneapolis, MN. Many of these writers are poets, and even though I don't read much poetry I still got a lot out of - and thoroughly enjoyed - this compilation.
October 8, 2014
Who's Yer Daddy is a collection of essays for any writer, no matter their orientation. Each essay was a great way to learn more about the writers that came before and those that inspired the men I am reading now. I have significantly increased my to-read list after devouring this collection, and I'm very glad to see the editors included a variety of authors--ranging from fiction to poetry to plays and performance art.
Really, my only issue with the book is that there is a lot of repetition for influences. While Wilde and Whitman are prolific writers that deserve their place in the literary canon, I found myself thumbing through some of the later essays after already reading about the effect these two men had on the writers listed before. Still, I would strongly recommend this book for anyone who considers themselves to be a reader or writer.
Really, my only issue with the book is that there is a lot of repetition for influences. While Wilde and Whitman are prolific writers that deserve their place in the literary canon, I found myself thumbing through some of the later essays after already reading about the effect these two men had on the writers listed before. Still, I would strongly recommend this book for anyone who considers themselves to be a reader or writer.
April 19, 2013
Terrific collection of essays from gay writers about their influences. Lots of good reading recommendations here! It's especially pleasing to me that some of the writers named by contributors as influences have their own essays in the book.
August 21, 2015
A bit poet heavy ;p
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews