- Title:
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Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
- Written by:
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Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Read by:
-
Jeremy Atherton Lin
- Format:
-
Unabridged CD Audio Book
- Number of CDs:
-
7
- Duration:
-
7 hours 51 minutes
- Published:
-
March 04 2021
- Available Date:
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March 04 2021
- Age Category:
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Adult
- ISBN:
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9781867518853
- Genres:
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Non-fiction; Autobiography; History
- Publisher:
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Bolinda audio
Qty
Format
Price
Bolinda price
Gay Bar is a brilliantly evocative fusion of cultural criticism, history and memoir telling the story of the gay bar, arguably on the brink of extinction.
Does gay still have a place?
Strobing lights and dark rooms, drag queens on counters, first kisses, last call; the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression. Now they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: Could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?
In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, the author embarks on a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. Gay Bar time travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s, to chichi bars in the wake of AIDS, to today’s fluid queer spaces. Atherton Lin charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out – and a chance encounter one restless night that would change his life forever.
The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the link between place and identity, inviting us to go beyond Stonewall and enter the underground. Sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.
'One of the best writers I've encountered, remaking the world sentence by immaculate sentence.'
Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City
'I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so happily surprised and enchanted by a book. GAY BAR is an absolute tour de force.'
Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
'Jeremy Atherton Lin's personal history of queer nightlife is shot with vibrant intellectual adrenaline. With keen original insight, he celebrates the gay bar as a site of ribald, sensuous, and urgent resistance. A must-read for all.'
Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
'Each page made me yearn for the dance floor and each chapter made me think about our need for queer spaces in new ways. I'm so glad that someone has written the definitive book about gay bars... but specifically, Atherton Lin, who has captured the subversiveness and sexiness that make these places what they are, or, tragically, were.'
Amelia Abraham, author of Queer Intentions