I think I’ve recommended Delany’s scifi novels to you before (I definitely have on various stockings in the past) but he has some nonfiction I’ve been planning to read that sounds like it’d be up your alley. I haven’t read any myself I hear great things.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue:
In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.
The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village:
Born in New York City's black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married white poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city's new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961. Through the decade's opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin, and a panoply of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.
PS: I think you will like this photographer: https://www.suzannemoxhay.com/ --although her photographs are montages, not real places.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2023-03-01 04:07 am (UTC)I think I’ve recommended Delany’s scifi novels to you before (I definitely have on various stockings in the past) but he has some nonfiction I’ve been planning to read that sounds like it’d be up your alley. I haven’t read any myself I hear great things.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue:
The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village:
PS: I think you will like this photographer: https://www.suzannemoxhay.com/ --although her photographs are montages, not real places.