Pansy

The top-selling queer poet in America, Andrea Gibson's Pansy balances themes of love, gender, politics, sexuality, illness, family and forgiveness with stunning imagery and a fierce willingness to delve into the exploration of what it means to truly heal. Each turn of the page represents both that which as been forgotten and that which is yet to be released. While this book is a rally cry for political action, it is also a celebration of wonder and longing and love.

This is a fascinating collection of children's poetry and stories. The book aims to help children learn about several exciting topics while having fun. It introduces them to the histories of various parts of England, its notable personalities and places, traditions, and many more. The stories help in inculcating moral values in children in a subtle and fun manner. The beautiful illustrations present in the book keep the little readers engaged and curious till the end.

First published in 1932, A Scarlet Pansy is an extraordinarily vivid and richly textured depiction of American queer life in the early twentieth century, tracing the coming-of-age of androgynous Fay Etrange. Born in small-town Pennsylvania and struggling with her difference, Fay eventually accepts her gender and sexual nonconformity and immerses herself in the fairy subculture of New York City. A self-proclaimed “oncer”—never tricking with same man twice—she immerses herself in the nightclubs, theaters, and street life of the city, cavorting with kindred spirits including female impersonators, streetwalkers, and hustlers as well as other fairies and connoisseurs of rough trade. While reveling in these exploits she becomes a successful banker and later attends medical school, where she receives training in obstetrics. There she also develops her life’s ambition to find a cure for gonorrhea, a disease supposedly “fastened on mankind as a penalty for enjoying love.” A Scarlet Pansy stands apart from similar fiction of its time—as well as that of the ensuing decades—by celebrating rather than pathologizing its effeminate and sexually adventurous protagonist. In this edition, republished for the first time in its original unexpurgated form, Robert J. Corber examines the way in which it flew in the face of other literature of the time in its treatment of gender expression and same-sex desire. He places the novel squarely within its social and cultural context of nearly a century ago while taking into account the book’s checkered publication history as well as the question of the novel’s unknown author. Much more than cultural artifact, A Scarlet Pansy remains a uniquely delightful and penetrating work of literature, resonating as much with present-day culture as it is illuminating of our understanding of queer history and challenging our notions of what makes a man a woman, and vice-versa.

In this poignantly woven story, the author introduces readers to Joe, from his five-year-old to his young adult self. Joe narrates of his life, his dysfunctional family’s stories, his inner thoughts, observations, and sentiments, and his heart and soul. Only his grandmother, whom he affectionately calls Nanny, truly loves and understands him. Nanny has helped him start and create The Pansy Garden that would become his place of solace, meditation, and home. Though his very young mind can only grasp so much, he has absorbed the events and happenings around him—his family, his community, his country—and shares them all with the pansies in his garden. As he comes of age, the realities of life gradually unfolds before his very eyes. His Nanny dies; his alcoholic Mother sleeps with their priest; his good-for-nothing Father leaves; his indifferent brother escapes the military draft; his four sisters face adolescence in a way they know how; and he is battling with homosexuality. Born and raised in a big family with little heart or no compassion, Joe only has The Pansy Garden to soothe and listen to him. How will he deal with life’s deck of unpredictable cards? Readers are about to find out as this novel unravels. For more information on this book, log on to www.Xlibris.com.

Margaret "Pansy" Gordon's life covered a remarkable span of years and territory. She lived one century, and the years took her from England to residences in British Columbia, Salt Lake City, and an Ojibway village on Georgian Bay; back to Utah and then Canada to homes at the shore of Bear Lake, on an Alberta farm, and in a prairie town; and to Los Angeles for the last decades of her life. She had gone to British Columbia as the daughter of an Anglican missionary to the Tsimshian Indians. She lived in Los Angeles as a Mormon missionary assigned to work as a genealogist. Her personal journey through repeated frontier adventures, religious service, and economic challenges is as worth noting as where she went, but it would be far less engaging if she did not write about it so well. Her memory for detail and her felicity in putting it to paper will reward those who delve into her "Family History," as she titled her memoir. Claudia L. Bushman, descendant of Pansy Gordon, author of numerous books, taught American studies at Columbia University for many years and taught Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University from 2008 to 2011. She has included letters and other documents that complement this memoir.