Margaret Mead Made Me Gay
Personal Essays, Public Ideas
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- $39.99
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- $39.99
Publisher Description
Margaret Mead Made Me Gay is the intellectual autobiography of cultural anthropologist Esther Newton, a pioneer in gay and lesbian studies. Chronicling the development of her ideas from the excitement of early feminism in the 1960s to friendly critiques of queer theory in the 1990s, this collection covers a range of topics such as why we need more precise sexual vocabularies, why there have been fewer women doing drag than men, and how academia can make itself more hospitable to queers. It brings together such classics as “The Mythic Mannish Lesbian” and “Dick(less) Tracy and the Homecoming Queen” with entirely new work such as “Theater: Gay Anti-Church.”
Newton’s provocative essays detail a queer academic career while offering a behind-the-scenes view of academic homophobia. In four sections that correspond to major periods and interests in her life—”Drag and Camp,” “Lesbian-Feminism,” “Butch,” and “Queer Anthropology”—the volume reflects her successful struggle to create a body of work that uses cultural anthropology to better understand gender oppression, early feminism, theatricality and performance, and the sexual and erotic dimensions of fieldwork. Combining personal, theoretical, and ethnographic perspectives, Margaret Mead Made Me Gay also includes photographs from Newton’s personal and professional life.
With wise and revealing discussions of the complex relations between experience and philosophy, the personal and the political, and identities and practices, Margaret Mead Made Me Gay is important for anyone interested in the birth and growth of gay and lesbian studies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The wonderful title of this collection refers to the moment when Newton--a college student ashamed of her feelings for other women--read Coming of Age in Samoa and realized that various cultures have differing ideas of what constitutes "normal" sexuality. It seems only fitting, then, that Newton (Cherry Grove, Fire Island), now a professor of anthropology at SUNY Purchase, would become a pioneering scholar in lesbian and gay studies. This collection--an intellectual genealogy of Newton's work from the last 30 years--reveals the prescience and durability of her earliest writings. The selections from her influential 1972 study of drag culture, Mother Camp, make effortless statements about gender presentation as "performance" and "impersonation" that are now staples of contemporary queer theory. In the 1960s, however, she had little professional support from her colleagues ("My topic was widely viewed as an inappropriate dirty joke"). Her newer pieces prove just as stimulating and vital. "Theater: Gay Anti-Church" argues that for gay people, theater serves as an almost religious site of community, iconography and ritual. A chapter from her upcoming autobiography, My Butch Career, shares personal revelations and exposes the formation of young butch identity: "My child body was a strong and capable instrument somehow stuffed into the word `girl.' " This collection will be deservedly popular among devotees of gay and lesbian studies and anthropology. 23 b&w photos.
