Showing results for "Firsts" in LGBTQ+ Studies

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

Today's young women are told we can be anything, so we search for a love to back us, not hold us back. We want the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kind of love, not Prince William and Kate. Yet, while we unapologetically own our careers and lives and Bumble accounts, we're still unsure whether men truly accept - let alone desire - the women we have become. We are told to lean in at work but wait for him to call. To ask for the pay rise but not his number. We are ambitious at work but confused in love.

In 1930, William Haines was Hollywood's #1 box-office draw - a talented, handsome, and wisecracking romantic lead. Off screen, however, protected by a careful collaboration between studio and press, he was openly gay with reporters and studio chiefs alike. Here is Haines's virtually unknown story - rich with detail, revelations, and scandal - about silent movies and talkies; his lover Jimmie Shields, and their fifty-year relationship.