Wendell Ricketts

Blue, Too: More Writing by (For or About) Working-class Queers Wendell Ricketts

Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers contains work by twenty writers (Rigoberto González, Carter Sickels, John Gilgun, Judy Grahn, Tara Hardy, Keith Banner, and Renny Christopher, to name a few, who speak meaningfully?in short fiction, memoir, performance pieces, and prose poems?about queers in and from the working class.

Blue, Too entertains and challenges, but most of all provides a touchstone for queer working-class writers and readers, illuminating our realities, our struggles, and our resistance to assimilation and mental gentrification.

Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers contains some reader favorites from Everything I Have Is Blue (out of print since 2008) but includes nearly 400 pages of new material, including a reprint of a 1978 Judy Grahn story, a new translation from Italian, and excerpts from John Gilgun?s unpublished autobiography.

As a sourcebook for working-class and queer studies, meanwhile, Blue, Too features two special sections: ?A Blue Study,? a guide for readers, writers, and scholars to using Blue, Too to examine the interlocking issues of queerness and social class, including discussion questions and prompts for writing and mini-research projects that connect the reader with working-class and LGBT scholarship; ?Reading Blue,? an extensive annotated bibliography of more than 500 items that represents the first-ever attempt to create an exhaustive listing of materials related to queers and class; and ?Class/Mates: Further Outings in the Literatures and Cultures of the Ga(y)ted Community,? an expanded theoretical and critical essay that reviews the history and present of working-class queers in literature, media, and pop culture.