Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life, by Wendell Ricketts

Blue on blue

 

 

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Story Blub: In this age of Will & Grace and gentrification, the “dream market” and gay investment advisors, you don’t hear much about working-class queers. In fact, some would even consider the idea a contradiction in terms. But the contributors to Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life would beg to differ. The first collection of short stories by working-class queer, gay, and bisexual men, Everything I Have Is Blue is a rich and long-overdue contribution both to the burgeoning field of working-class studies and to LGBTIQ fiction. The international writers include a professional trucker, a Texas prisoner, a librarian, a poet, an activist, a retired English professor, and a street mime, to name a few, but what makes their voices powerful and unique isn’t their professions, it’s their ability to straddle ideological and cultural divides that would give Paul Bunyan pause. In Everything I Have Is Blue are love stories and stories of lives gone wrong; narratives of hope and songs of despair; tales of revenge and chronicles of redemption. In short, Everything I Have Is Blue showcases a literature of depth and complexity that brings much-needed color to the palate of queer cultural and literary identity. Contributors include Timothy Anderson, Rane Arroyo, Keith Banner, James Barr, C. Bard Cole, CAConrad, Marcel Devon, Dean Durber, Rick Laurent Feely, John Gilgun, Rigoberto González, Jim Grimsley, Ryan Kamstra, Christopher Lord, Alfredo Ronci, Jan-Mitchell Sherrill, and Royston Tester.

About the author: Wendell Ricketts holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. He is senior editor of the anthology Intimate Relationships: Some Social Work Perspectives on Love and the author of Lesbians and Gay Men as Foster Parents.

Review by Gerry Burnie

Being Labour Day, I set about finding a GBLT book thst dealt predominantly with labour and/or work, and happily I came up with Wendell Ricketts’ collection of short stories, called Everything I Have Is Blue: Short Fiction by Working-Class Men About More-or-Less Gay Life [Suspect Thoughts Press, July 29, 2005].

Unfortunately, it’s not available in Nook or Kindle formats, but there are copies available through both the Barnes and Noble and Amazon’s open market place.

The stories are set in a variety of locales, Portland, Baltimore, Toronto, New Orleans, Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and from a number of perspectives: urban migrants, college students, newly employed, or, like Timothy Anderson’s trucker in Hooters, Tooters and the Big Dog, someplace in between.

As a long ago migrant, myself, I could readily identify with the majority of protagonists, i.e. anxiously trying to shed our rural roots and blend in to a more ‘sophisticated’ urban society. However, being a physical outsider is one thing, while being a social (psychological) outsider is quite another, and it is this latter theme that adds an interesting edge to most of the stories, e.g. Ricketts’ Raspberry Pie, John Gilgun’s Cream, Rick Laurent Feely’s Skins, and Christopher Lord’s  My Special Friend. It is one of envy mixed with contempt, and frustration coupled with admiration.

While ‘more-or-less’ gay, these men each make an effort to avoid the stereotypes that have been assigned to them by the media – the fashion plates, the literary effete, and so on. They are ‘blue through and through, and proud of it.

This is the image and message that makes this anthology of working-class gay stories such a worthwhile read.

Nice to hear from a side of gay society that doesn’t often get heard from. Four and one-half bees.

An update: 

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Blue, Too: More Writing by (for or about) Working-Class Queers includes work by twenty writers (Rigoberto González, Timothy Anderson, Tara Hardy, Judy Grahn, Keith Banner, Carter Sickels, and Renny Christopher, to name a few) who speak meaningfully—in short fiction, memoir, performance pieces, and prose poems—about queers in and from the working class.

Intended for discerning readers and ideal for both reading groups and college-level classes, Blue, Tooexplores some of the realities of the group that makes up the majority of the LGBTQ “community.”

As a sourcebook for working-class and queer studies, Blue, Too also contains these special features: “A Blue Study: The Reader’s, Writer’s, and Scholar’s Guide” to using Blue, Too to examine the interlocking issues of queerness and social class, including discussion questions and prompts for writing and mini-research projects that connect the reader with working-class and LGBT scholarship; “Reading Blue,” an extensive annotated bibliography that represents the first-ever attempt to create an exhaustive listing of materials related to queers and class; and “Class/Mates: Further Outings in the Literatures and Cultures of the Ga(y)ted Community,” an expanded theoretical and critical essay that reviews the history and present of working-class queers in literature, media, and pop culture.

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