Description
Book SynopsisHow To Be a Real Gay takes its title from a series of workshops organised by gay activists in the small town of Ermelo, South Africa. Focusing on everyday practices of gayness in hair salons, churches, taverns, and meeting halls, the book explores the ambivalent space that homosexuality occupies in the newly democratic South Africa: on the one hand, protection of gay rights is a litmus test for the country's constitutional democracy, yet on the other, homosexuality is seen to threaten traditional values, customs, and beliefs.
The book is the first to emerge that recounts how gays in small-town South Africa negotiate this difficult symbolic terrain. How do discourses on international gay and lesbian social movements and gay equality hang together with local views on identity, gender, and relationships? Why do small-town gays harness fashion, style, and glamour in the making and sustaining of identity? How do economically vulnerable gays organise, access resources, and create networks linking small towns to cities?
How To Be a Real Gay delves to the core of what it means to be 'the other' in contexts of risk, exclusion, and inclusion. In its richly textured way, the book also speaks to the tremendous capacity of gays to imagine and create life-worlds in a harsh environment.
Trade ReviewIt is beautifully written up in a style which makes for entertaining reading and this book is, to my mind, a hybrid genre of oral history, life-stories and participating observations. - Ena Jansen Reid has woven together theory, method, research results and personal observations in an attractive way ... Throughout the book he discusses and tests theories. He does not put down the great story of the history of sexuality in South Africa in a dry way in broad terms, but embeds the most important events in a story. - Gert Hekma
