Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men

by Tom Dolby and Melissa de la Cruz

Book Overview

A literary celebration of one of the most important relationships in a straight girl's life--her gay best friend This collection of original essays goes beyond the banter to get to the essence of an intimate relationship like no other. With a foreword by Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys brings together pieces by National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon ( The Noonday Demon ), novelist Gigi Levangie Grazer...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452289610
• ISBN13: 9780452289611
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Bonding

De la Cruz, Melissa and Tom Dolby, editors. "Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men", Dutton, 2007. Bonding Amos Lassen and Literary Pride The new book with the long title has just as much information as the title seems to have in words. "Girls Who Like Boys..." is a wonderful new collection that looks at the bonds between straight women and gay men. It is an anthology made up of personal essays about friendships and relationships. Starting off with a great foreword by the author of the "Tales of the City" series, Armistead Maupin that explains the nature of the book, we are taken on a careful look at a kind of love that is not sexual in nature. Society has looked at straight women who befriend gays as covers-up, beards and what have you. What we learn here it is that neither gender nor sexuality that "dictates the tenants of our heart". The editors, Melissa de la Cruz and Tom Dolby looked at themselves and their own relationship and this is what prompted them to book like this together. This is the first personal book ever done on the subject and it includes the writings of 28 authors who explore their special relationships in topics from parenthood to friendship. Divided into five separate sections, each dealing with different aspects of relationships, the book is just that much more fun to read. Group dynamics are dealt with in the first section under the topic of "Guys and Gals". These group dynamics range from shopping sprees to be there for one another during periods of good times and of need. "Close Confidants" deals with one-on-one relationships that have people together and the five essays here are moving and funny. "A Fine Romance" contains stories of love as well as lust based on the either wrong comprehension or misinterpretation and well-meant advice as well as resignation. As could be expected there is a section on "Growing Up, Coming Out" which is based on friendship during the years that identity is formed and if you remember those years like I do the essays are about the guys who don't fit as well as the girls. Finally we come to "Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons' which deals with the ties that bind. It is interesting here that there is even one essay about a mother who hopes that one of her sons will be gay so that he will have some of the qualities that she values in her gay friends. Taken as a whole, we get a unique picture of a straight-gay relationships. Many people do not understand that these kinds of relationships exist, especially in rural Arkansas and it is s good to have a book that explains it and does so in such a beautiful way.