Queers in American popular culture

Jim Elledge

Lambda Award-winning poet Elledge (English, Kennesaw State Univ.) assembles in three volumes 45 substantive, scholarly essays regarding the significance of queer people in American popular culture. These essays cover a wide range of topics ranging from blogs written by transgendered women to portrayals of gays and lesbians in blaxploitation films. In his introduction, Elledge writes that his goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer topics, but the content is heavily skewed toward gay, lesbian, and queer. A few essays explore transsexual or transgendered subjects, but influential figures such as Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg are ignored. Also, with no essays on bisexual topics, bisexual people are rendered nearly invisible. Many significant bisexual artists are excluded (for example, Bessie Smith, David Bowie, and Margaret Cho), while bisexual authors such as Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes are mentioned only in the context of lesbian fiction. Other important artistic communities and movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, women's music festivals, and Andy Warhol and the Factory are also neglected.