"An intelligent, persuasive, and, in its way, heartbreaking manifesto."
--The New York Times Book Review
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"A jolting book...An intense, personal, and
courageous document. A book written out of rage, unnerving, thought provoking."
--The Los Angeles Times |
A Documentary
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A passionate outcry against the oppression of
homosexuals, this is the author's 6th book and first work of non-fiction. John Rechy calls
this angry documentary "a non-fiction account, with commentaries, of three days and
nights in the sexual underground." It is set in parks, alleys, tunnels, garages,
streets and beaches of contemporary Los Angeles and its immediate environs--the
"battlefield" of the sexual outlaw who brings a sense of choreography, ritual
and mystery to the sex hunt.
 "The
Sexual Outlaw" has three distinct, but smoothly interwoven, elements to bring into
sharp focus the scene of the committed homosexual, the sexual outlaw who lives on the very
edge of American society. The first tells the story of a single shattering weekend in the
life of Jim, a sometime male hustler; the second consists of documentary sections, some
blackly funny, that uncover the insanity and agony of the oppression visited upon the
homosexual minority; and, finally, there are personal statements and resentments by the
author dramatizing Rechy's own developed sexual identity and mature political awareness.
Rechy brilliantly cuts back and forth among these three elements, using cinematic
terminology and forms to take the reader on an excursion of a subculture of our cities
still hidden from our view, and to show what it is really like in the "gay"
underworld. This
stylized intermixture of forms and voices, history and drama, eroticism and ideas, rage
and humor, makes for fascinating reading with an appeal in no way
limited by its explosive subject matter
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