January 11, 2002
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11
eveningsout
Three volumes herald another British invasion
The Comedienne
By V.G. Lee
Diva, $13.95 paperback
Wasted
By Aidan Shaw
Gay Men's Press, $13.95 paperback.
Different Rainbows
Edited by Peter Drucker
Gay Men's Press, $19.95 paperback
Reviewed by Anthony Glassman
The term "British Invasion" was coined in the 1960s to encompass a wave of musical acts from the United Kingdom; "New Wave" in the eighties referred to a new batch of British artists bringing their post-punk sounds to the United States.
Now, however, the U.S. is faced with what could perhaps be best labeled the "Paper Wave" with the landing on our shores of the Millivres-Prowler Group.
The book publisher is made up of a number of imprints, among them Diva, Zipper, Gay Men's Press and Prowler. Prowler and Zipper are their erotic fiction lines, Diva their lesbian line, and Gay Men's Press is pretty self-explanatory.
The company has just recently clinched a distribution deal on this side of the Atlantic, and is making the most of it.
The Comedienne is a fascinating tale of an ugly duckling, a lesbian coming of age over the past two decades, and her attempts to fit in and find love.
Joan has decided to become a comedian, and an interviewer draws out her life story in a series of chapters written in a first-person perspective.
Joan's relationship with her mother colors
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all of her relationships with other women, not a good thing.
As she goes on, though, something interesting emerges: She begins to like herself more, and define herself in relation to other people less.
The ugly duckling doesn't become a beautiful swan, but when you genuinely like yourself, it doesn't matter what you look like.
Wasted, on the other hand, is a saucy, drug-addled tale of fast living and shifting alliances in modern gay England. Aidan Shaw's face on the front and back cover of his books might be familiar to readers: he's a porn star, and has worked with the everpopular director Chi Chi LaRue.
However, given his pedigree, his writing is remarkably solid. It's erotic, it's humorous, and it shows the agony and the Ecstasy (sorry) of everyday life for the comfortable and debauched.
David and Joe are lovers. David and Flora used to be. Ryan and Leila are together, and Ryan is David's nephew. Ryan goes to visit his uncle and live up in the big city, Leila
in tow.
Things, as they are wont to do, spiral out of control when vengeance, jealousy and a veritable alphabet soup of drugs are added in. After David's death in a freak fire, however, Joe and Flora find themselves coming together in their grief, and all looks well. The way things look, however, is far from what they are in this clever and, it bears repeating, debauched novel.
The jewel in this publisher's crown is their non-fiction, ranging from self-help and howto guides on family life to Different Rainbows, a collection of essays on the LGBT movement in Third World countries.
The beginning of the book deals extensively with Central and South America, de-
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tailing the nascent movements south of the border that American activists seem completely oblivious to. The collection also deals extensively with Africa, where South Africa has established itself as one of the strongest supporters of gay rights in the world, having written protections into their constitution following the end of apartheid. The rest of the continent, however, is not so accepting, as leaders of other nations use a combination of anti-colonial rhetoric and fundamentalist Christianity to condemn their gay and lesbian citizens.
Asia is perhaps the most unique area in
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terms of its dealings with LGBT people. A number of these nations seem to turn a blind eye to gay goings-on, implicitly approving of their queer citizenry's lives while officially following the post-colonial wave of illegality and condemnation. India, on the other hand, seems to just want the problem to go away.
Millivres-Prowler has an entire catalogue of books currently available, including at least two more by Shaw. If these three are any indication, the publisher is going to be as much a force to be reckoned with here as it is in its homeland.
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