auria cortes

Can you do me a favor? Please take the time to listen to the embedded video. Ellen has an important message that we all need to hear.  

Okay, finished listening? 

Since Ellen said it all, I’ll leave it at that. She inspired this week’s TT. Below is a list of authors who are gay or bisexual.

• Another Country by James Baldwin: Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions–sexual, racial, political, artistic–that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s. 
• Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote by Truman Capote:  Best known for In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Portraits and Observations is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by this most beloved of writers. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Hollywood, written when he was twenty-two, to meditations about fame, fortune, and the writer’s art at the peak of his career, to the brief works penned during the isolated denouement of his life, these essays provide an essential window into mid-twentieth-century America as offered by one of its canniest observers. Included are such celebrated masterpieces of narrative nonfiction as “The Muses Are Heard” and the short nonfiction novel “Handcarved Coffins,” as well as many long-out-of-print essays, including portraits of Isak Dinesen, Mae West, Marcel Duchamp, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe.                       
• Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Thrift Edition) by Walt Whitman: “The most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Inspired by transcendentalism, Whitman’s immortal collection includes some of the greatest poems of modern times, including his masterpiece “Song of Myself.” Shattering standard conventions of symbolism and allegory, it stands as an unabashed celebration of body and nature. 
• Complete Works of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde: Collins is perhaps the single best edition of Wilde’s complete works. Along with the author’s full canon of plays, poems, essays, and novels, this also contains numerous appendixes of biographical information and chronologies of Wilde’s work as well as examples of his famous one-liners divided into categories. This Centenary Edition was edited by his grandson Merlin, who made revisions to the text.
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf: In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister: a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. But if only she had found the means to create, urges Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give a voice to those who have none. Her message is simple: A woman must have a fixed income and a room of her own in order to have the freedom to create.
• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams: In this semi-autobiographical play the domineering matriarch of the Wingfield family tries to find a “gentleman caller” for her fragile daughter. This is a “memory play”; the narrator/character, Tom, continually shifts from narration to his “in scene” character. This technique makes the drama a most effective selection for audio. The cast is extraordinary throughout, with each performer deftly handling the most subtle nuances of Williams’s poetic realism. Jessica Tandy’s portrayal of Amanda deserves special kudos. The production and direction of the performance are equally engaging. Through the use of sound effects and evocative music, the listener is swept into the troubled, poignant world of these haunting characters. 
• The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham: This is a masterful adaptation of Maugham’s tale of one man’s search for enlightenment. His quest weaves through European and American society from WWI through the Great Depression, allowing Maugham to introduce characters from every niche of French, American, and English society. It’s a pleasure to hear Michael Page switch accents to bring each of them to life. His voice balances perfectly Maugham’s strong narrative with the individualized syntax and slang that distinguishes them. Page also manages one of the toughest tasks of all, delivering Maugham’s reflections on the nature of the human spirit so that both the worldly cynicism and the spiritual yearning come through. 
• Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster: A widow travels to Tuscany where she falls in love with Italy and a much younger Italian man. Her dead husband’s family is angered and sends her brother-in-law to stop the affair, but it is too late a marriage has occurred. Lilia dies in childbirth and her English relatives try to obtain custody of the infant.
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather: Willa Siebert Cather was born in 1873 in the home of her maternal grandmother in western Virginia. Although she had been named Willela, her family always called her “Willa.” Upon graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh where she worked as a journalist and teacher while beginning her writing career. In 1906, Cather moved to New York to become a leading magazine editor at McClure’s Magazine before turning to writing full-time. She continued her education, receiving her doctorate of letters from the University of Nebraska in 1917, and honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of California, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton. Cather wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and novels, winning awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, One of Ours, about a Nebraska farm boy during World War I. She also wrote The Professor’s House, My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and Lucy Gayheart. Some of Cather’s novels were made into movies, the most well-known being A Lost Lady, starring Barbara Stanwyck. In 1961, Willa Cather was the first woman ever voted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma in 1974, and the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York in 1988. Cather died on April 24, 1947, of a cerebral hemorrhage, in her Madison Avenue, New York home, where she had lived for many years.
• The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, Deluxe Edition (Literary Classics) by Hans Christian Andersen: Here are all 159 tales written by Hans Christian Anderson, the master Danish storyteller, accompanied by illustrations from Arthur Rackham, Hans Richter, and other. These cherished tales include: “The Little Mermaid” “Thumbelina” “The Emperor’s New Clothes” “The Snow Queen” “Ib and Little Christina” and “The Princess and the Pea”
• Find Me (Paperback) by Rosie O’Donnell: FIND ME is riveting. It tells the fascinating story of the relationship that developed between O’Donnell and someone who was in desperate need of help and called her out of the blue. O’Donnell weaves her personal history through the story, exploring the emotional impact of her mother’s death on her life in general and on this experience specifically. Her vulnerability seems genuine, and there are moments of stunning insight. The story is personal and intimate, and O’Donnell’s reading enhances it perfectly. This may have particular appeal to those interested in codependency.
• Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany: A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can’t remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast–the marginalized.