In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

cret Cherry Pie"—a tender story ofhis father's losing battle with plutonium-induced cancer mixed with a wry commentary on family and espionage in the 1950s—with analyses ofRobert Aldrich's 1955film noir, KissMeDeadly, and the 1982 documentary, Atomic Café. Ultimately, and righdy so, Learningto Ghw bills itselfas a call to action, as an attempt to refute simultaneously the notions that the nuclear age has ended and/ or that we can no longer do anything about it. In his introduction to the collection , Bradley explains that he hopes the combined essays "will make radiation a little less abstract and invisible," that "they will demonstrate the folly and the consequences ofsecrecy, ofdisinterest, ofassuming someone elsewill take care of our nuclear problems for us," and that they "will encourage Americans to start asking more questions" (xvii). The classroom, especially given this book's myriad teaching applications as well as its expert mix ofemotional, aesthetic, and intellectual impact, seems like a fine place to start. % Amber L. Hollibaugh. My Dangerous Desires:A Queer GirlDreaming Her Way Home. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. 278p. Michael Kramp University of Northern Colorado Amber Hollibaugh'sMyDangerousDesiresis truly acumulative book; it represents the culminations of a life—both physical and intellectual—filled with struggle, passion, and most importantly, desires. The text brings together important prose from Hollibaugh's lengthy career in political activism, including various genres such as memoir, interview, essay, and dialogue. The majority ofher recent activism revolves around the Lesbian AIDS Project in New York City, but her writing illustrates the influence of her history in earlier social movements, such as Civil Rights, Feminism, and Gay Liberation on her ideas and subsequent actions. Hollibaugh is a poignant writer who is able to expose the artifice ofcommonly held assumptions about sex, desire, and class; and while her book discusses the limitations ofour current conceptions ofsexuality and sexual identity, it deserves special recognition for its ability to reveal nie realities ofclass in America culture and the great potential ofhuman desire in the political arena. In the "Foreword," Dorothy Allison recalls Hollibaugh's own desire to "speak to academics without fear" (xiii). Even though this compilation offers litde ofthe critical apparatus oftraditional scholarly writing, My Dangerous Desires does address important concerns of the academic community, specifically in relation to our conceptions ofclass, gender, and queer identity. Hollibaugh refuses to sepa118 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * SPRING 2002 Reviews rate her personal history from her ideas and argues "that history matters, that it is one ofthe few tools within our grasp which we can use to reconstitute our understanding ofour individual human lives and longings and our larger collective experiences " (4). Her use ofpersonal history drives her work, and she suggests that this story of the individual allows one to express desires and create relationships with others. Hollibaugh's claim is strikingly reminiscent ofthe philosophy ofGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who theorize the revolutionary promise engendered by packs, or assemblages of desiring individuals. Like Deleuze and Guattari, Hollibaugh emphasizes the power of desire to incite revolutions, unite diverse people, and produce pleasure. She announces her interest "in writing about our actual, messy, passionate, imperfect, desiring lives"; and by doing so, she allows herself to imagine "the dreamed-about spheres of the possible" (7, 29). Hollibaugh's focus on this visionary realm of the possible, facilitated by the untidy desires she investigates, forces academics to reconsider their understandings of gender, sexuality, and class. Her writings powerfully detail the desires of gay individuals ofcolor, sex-workers, members ofthe working class, and high-femme dykes; she unveils the immense capacityofthese socially-muted longings to transform current academic conceptions ofidentity and pleasure. Her discussions ofthe effects ofdesire on the construction ofclass identity are direct and honest. Although the academic community continues to struggle to enunciate the role ofclass in identity-formation, Hollibaugh manages to capture succinctly the importance of this social marker. She indicates that "being poor weds itself to your essence, embeds itself in your spirit, your heart, wraps itself around the convictions you carry, around every expectation and dream you harbor " (10). Her poetic comments become quite real when she discusses such issues as the politics of the sex trade and the...

pdf

Share