Your Next Gay Read: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences!

In 2005, lesbian novelist, playwright, and critic Sarah Schulman came to the University of Michigan for a tour de force academic visit wherein she would give a lecture, attend a reading of her latest play, and — lucky for me — go have drinks at a local gay bar and spout wisdom to an intimate table for four.

I had been a huge fan since my high school days as a grunge-era lesbian pseudo-intellectual, and her novel After Delores is still one of my favorite reads. So imagine my excitement when my mentor, gay classics scholar David Halperin, officially introduced us at the weekend’s first event, marching me over to Schulman like the proud father of a lesbian son.

The lecture Schulman gave that day is the only academic lecture I’ve heard that nearly made me cry — and if you’ve been to an academic lecture (usually dry, usually delivered in a monotone only academics can approximate), you know that usually these kind of things don’t move you. I’d quite simply never heard anything like it before.

Her lecture, “Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences,” was an unflinching, forty-minute deconstruction of homophobia in the family: how it works, its personal and cultural impact, and its inexplicable invisibililty — or even, unnameability — inexplicable, given that it’s something that nearly every gay person has faced or may struggle with their entire life. And then the strangest thing happened… During the Q&A, Schulman talked about her unsuccessful efforts pitching her manuscript to different publishers. No one would publish this book.

I was aghast, and sort of immediately heartbroken. Hearing someone break down the depravity of homophobia — especially the violence that occurs within the family — for just forty minutes was the first tangible comfort I’d ever felt about the wounds inflicted on me by my own family. What if the other people who needed to hear Schulman’s powerful take on this form of social violence never would get the chance?

Flash forward four years to this summer, when I ran by Grace Moon’s house to make arrangements for a surprise birthday party we weren’t supposed to be throwing. I rushed in, winded by my jog up the three flights to her studio, and nearly fainted when I inadvertently glanced down at her kitchen table mid-sentence.

“IS THIS REALLY IT???”

Moon looked at me like I was possessed. I grabbed a small book with