An important book that showcases different models for gay men of color.
A professor of sociology explores details of his life as a queer Filipino American and the long-overlooked stories of gay immigrant men like him.
Told through stories that redefine what it means to be a gay person of color at the intersection of homophobia, sexism, and racism, Ocampo’s text “chronicles the life experiences of young adult men who have roots in the Philippines, Mexico, and Latin America. All of the men I interviewed are cisgender, meaning they identify with the sex they were assigned at birth: male. They are sons of immigrants. Most were born and all were raised primarily in the United States, which means they are ‘second generation’ Americans.” Following in the tradition of scholars of intersectionality and performative gender and sexual identity, these coming-of-age narratives reveal how pathways of education and socio-economic status are influenced by "the need for independence from the heteronormative family and friend circles [these men] felt trapped by.” He also shows “how gay people of color can grow exhausted of the identities they have meticulously curated. Ocampo effectively explores the "value systems of the gay community and the immigrant family and its community" in the context of belonging and incompatibility with the dreams that many immigrant parents have for their American-born children. Cultural expectations can lead to volatile relationships between parents and their gay children, leaving children with limited options. Some experience homelessness or commit suicide. Organized into chapters with titles such as "Lessons in Manhood and Morality," "Escaping to College," "Not That Gay," the text smoothly combines personal anecdotes with thorough sociological research, spotlighting those who feel they don't fit the archetype of the ideal gay man within predominantly White queer spaces, both virtual and in-person. Ocampo should be commended for presenting the lives of queer people of color in a humane, compassionate, and informative way.
An important book that showcases different models for gay men of color.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4798-2425-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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