IIRE News no. 21
Co-director edits Third World gays book
IIRE co-director Peter Drucker has been lecturing since his arrival on staff in 1993 about liberation movements of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the Third World. In 1994 his research took form as an IIRE Working Paper, in 1996 as an article in the London-based New Left Review. In 1998 and again last year he worked to include Third World participants and highlight Third World issues at the IIRE's Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Strategy Seminars. Now he has edited and introduced a pioneering anthology on Third World gays and the left, called Different Rainbows.
Even before publication the book evoked high praise. Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York and the unofficial dean of US lesbian/gay studies, called it "a unique, long-needed, and immensely valuable book" whose "significance cannot be overstated". "The essays ... are brilliantly bound together by the book's editor", he added. Urvashi Vaid of the NGLTF Policy Institute, one of the most prominent figures on the US lesbian/gay left, called it "essential and engagingly written".
Drucker's conclusion argues, "Full lesbian/gay equality requires Third World liberation in a broader sense: liberation from poverty and dependency." He suggests that Third World movements are beginning to forge a new model of "liberation without ghettoization", which lesbian/gay movements in developed capitalist countries can also learn from.
Among Different Rainbows' other authors are Dennis Altman, whose book Homosexual Oppression and Liberation was a founding text of the movement, and Margaret Randall, a long-time radical activist in Mexico and Cuba whose interview with Nicaraguan lesbian Sandinistas is reprinted in the book. Other articles in the book discuss Mexico, the Brazilian Workers Party, Latin American lesbianism, post-apartheid South Africa, India, Kenya and China.
For those friends of the IIRE who are interested, here is the ordering information for the book:
Title: Different Rainbows: Same-Sex Sexualities and Popular Movements in the Third World
Editor: Peter Drucker
ISBN: 1 902852 10 9
Publisher: Millivres Ltd/Gay Men's Press
Through amazon.com: US $15.96 plus shipping
Through US or Canadian bookstores: US $19.95 via Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive Suite 90, St. Paul MN 55114-1065; website www.cbsd.com; email <consortium at cbsd.com>; fax 1-651-221-0124; tollfree phone 1-800-283-3572.
Through Australian bookshops: AUS $24.95 via Bulldog Books, P O Box 300, Beaconsfield, NSW 2014; email <bulldog at rainbow.net.au>; fax +61 (0) 2-9699-3527; phone +61 (0)2-9699-3507.
Through bookshops in the UK and the rest of the world: £ 12.95 via Central Books, 99 Wallis Rd, London E9 5LN; email <mo at centralbooks.com>; fax +44 (0)208-533-5821; phone +44 (0)208-986-4854.