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Winter's Light: Reflections of a Yankee Queer
Winter's Light Reflections of a Yankee Queer Author:John Preston Coming home to find yourself: a gay man sets down roots in native soil. — In these stirring autobiographical essays and social commentaries, a prolific writer and gay rights pioneer — whose voice was stilled by AIDS in April 1994 — tells of the search for a place to belong. John Preston left his native Massachusetts and embarked on ... more »39;the Grand Tour of the Gay Capitals," moving from city to city as did so many others because "having a hometown wasn't the point. Being gay was our geographic location."
But in 1979 he abandoned the gay fast track and settled in Portland, Maine. At first life there was difficult; Preston was the only gay man willing to be interviewed on television without hiding his identity. Slowly, he and other activists created a space for gay people in this small New England city.
Preston describes the camaraderie of his neighborhood barbershop, where old-timers gradually accept his sexuality because he can quote Red Sox batting averages. He writes of the 90-year-old Yankee matriarch who befriends him and others with AIDS. But Preston holds no illusions about his native region. He does not flinch from the tragedies of a gay youth's murder in Bangor or a gay man's self-defense against homophobic thugs in Lewiston. Yet his rediscovered sense of place deepened his resolve to fight for full membership in the community. For Preston, New England offered more than variety of its seasons, the beauty of its landscape, or the character of its people: it offered him an identity and a home. "This is the beginning for me," he writes. "I start here."« less