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- “Blue, Too is, without a doubt, the authority on working-class queer writing in the English language.” (Lambda Literary Review)
- “Book of the Year…. Ricketts’ (essay) ‘Class/Mates: Further Outings in the Literatures and Cultures of the Ga(y)ted Community’ is worth the price of the book.” (GayToday.)
- “[W]ill shatter your ideas of who and what queer people are.” (The Good Men Project.)
- “Ricketts … single-handedly created the genre of gay, working-class literature.” (Seattle Gay News)
- “[In Blue,Too] Ricketts discusses in great detail the scope of queer, working-class literature and the people who created and inspired it.” (Bilerico Project)
- “Blue, Too … resembles a kind of community in itself: a safe place to explore and become that has been denied the “queerly classed” for far too long.” (Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide)
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Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers contains work by twenty writers, including Rigoberto González, Timothy Anderson, John Gilgun, Judy Grahn, Tara Hardy, Keith Banner, Carter Sickels, 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) and 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including a reprint of a 1978 Judy Grahn story, a new translation from Italian, and excerpts from John Gilgun’s unpublished autobiography.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 “A Blue Study: The Reader’s, Writer’s, and Scholar’s Guide” 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 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.
Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers
ISBN-13: 978-0989980012 v 6″x9″
Buy directly from FourCats Press! Get a discount! Copies of Blue, Too are $16 (which includes domestic US shipping; contact us for rates abroad). Make payment via PayPal to sales@fourcatspress.com; be sure to provide a shipping address. Our books are also available from your local bookstore, from IndieBound sellers (click on the red “Shop Indie Bookstores” at right), or from major online booksellers.
Resellers/bookstores: Please contact FCP regarding discounted orders.
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Past praise for Everything I Have Is Blue
“This book serves up feisty, sharp stories that stretch and challenge stagnant notions of class, masculinity, and gay identity.” (D. Travers Scott, author of Execution, Texas and One of These Things is Not Like the Other)
“The edgy, surprising stories in Everything I Have Is Blue are a tonic: they make an important contribution in terms of bringing to our attention characters and themes we seldom see explored in gay contemporary fiction.” (Jaime Manrique, author of Besame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction and Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me)
“This book gives us what no contemporary TV program, movie, or magazine has even come close to—the tender, angry, funny emotional innards of the embattled daily life of working-class gay men. These could be the stories of the guys on the corner in my neighborhood—or yours!” (Minnie Bruce Pratt, author of S/He)
FourCats Press 