New book sheds light on gay groups in Indonesia

The Jakarta Post
13 August 2009

New book sheds light on gay groups in Indonesia

Ni Komang Erviani , The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Society still strongly refuses to accept the lifestyle choices of gay men in Indonesia, causing many to lead double lives, a US scholar says.

Tom Boesllstorf, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, launched his book Monday titled The Gay Archipelago at the Queer (Q) film festival in Denpasar. Though the book has been in circulation in English since 2005, the recently reprinted version is in Indonesian.

The professor meticulously studied the origins and history of gay communities in Indonesia, and details the lives of several individuals struggling against social prejudices.

Peculiar Story back in print

Source: Straits Times Life!
29 May 2008

Peculiar story back in print
By Bernard Koh

AN OLD Singapore novel, Peculiar Chris, is back on the shelves after 15 years.

Written by Johann S. Lee when he was 20, the 1992 book is a coming-of-age story about a young Singaporean gay man.

In March, 2,000 copies of the reprint hit local bookshops. According to publisher Cannon International, which also published the first edition, some 300 copies have been sold.

The book’s original print run of 3,000 copies sold out quickly, prompting an additional print of 2,000 later that year. It also stayed on Times bookstore’s local bestsellers list for most of September 1992 to March 1993.

Cannon’s managing proprietor Tan Wu Cheng says: ‘The public response then was tremendous, but that isn’t surprising for a book that portrays the lifestyle of a different group of people in a very open and accessible manner.’

To know where I’m coming from

Source

10 February 2008
Straits Times

Hot off the press
By Stephanie Yap

TO KNOW WHERE I’M COMING FROM
By Johann S. Lee Cannon International/Paperback/ 280 pages/ $21.40/(with GST)/ Times The Bookshop/***

First, let’s make it clear where this review is coming from. This novel is not a work of great literature, at least not in the lyrical sense.

Diary-like in its artless, earnest tone, a typical sentence goes like this: ‘The memories which washed over me came not in a gentle cascade but in a drowning torrent, not so much in a montage of images as deep stirrings in my consciousness.’

Book review of An Acceptable Sacrifice?

Source: The Times/Times Literary Supplement
18 July 2007

The Church and homosexuality
by John Habgood

AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE? Homosexuality and the Church.
By Duncan Dormor and Jeremy Morris, editors. 190pp.
SPCK. Paperback, Pounds 12.99 – 978 0 281 05851 8.

When the world’s Anglican bishops meet for the Lambeth Conference in July 2008, it is to be hoped that many of those engaged in the crucially important debate on homosexuality will have been persuaded to read this book. That the subject is contentious, not least among Christians, hardly needs further demonstration. Whether it needs to be contentious is another question altogether, and the nine essays in An Acceptable Sacrifice?, by a group of Cambridge lecturers, doctors and clergy, provide convincing reasons why more constructive attitudes are both possible and necessary. What the authors are offering the Churches is an intelligent and wide-ranging guide, which tackles the difficult questions, and is not content with simplistic answers.