In particular, this book uses alternative theoretical perspectives to focus on how young children are 'doing' gender in kindergarten classroom. Rather than relying exclusively on biological and socialization theories of gender construction, Blaise breaks down theoretical barriers with new understandings of how gender is socially and politically constructed by young children.

Playing It Straight: Gay Men and Heterosexual Marriage Milton E. Ford The words “gay men and straight marriage” raise many questions. Why would a man who knows he’s gay marry a woman? Can a man discover he’s gay after he marries? What is life like for a gay man in a marriage to a woman? Why, having married, would he get divorced? Why might he remain married? And what is the role of society, particularly religion, in this experience? Playing It Straight answers these and many other questions by examining common themes that emerge from interviews with men from many areas of the United States who are gay, or predominantly gay, and who married women. In face-to-face taped interviews, the men talk about the way they see themselves now, what their childhood and teen years were like, their experiences leading up to marriage, what the marriages were like, and how those marriages are continuing or how they ended. The book looks at where the men are now and the meaning they now make of their marriages to women. The topical arrangement of the book makes it a valuable resource for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the realities that often emerge for a gay man when he marries a woman.

Outgrowth of the author's thesis (Yale University, 2007) under the title: The plague of jocularity: contesting humor in American art and culture, 1863-1893.

Amidst the shrill and discordant notes struck in debates over the make-up—or breakdown—of the American family, the family keeps evolving. This book offers a close and clear-eyed look into a form this change has taken most recently, the lesbian coparent family. Based on intensive interviews and extensive firsthand observation, The Family of Woman chronicles the experience of thirty-four families headed by lesbian mothers whose children were conceived by means of donor insemination.With its intimate perspective on the interior dynamics of these families and its penetrating view of their public lives, the book provides rare insight into the workings of emerging family forms and their significance for our understanding of "family"—and our culture itself.

Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Art Pepper (1925-1982) was called the greatest alto saxophonist of the post-Charlie Parker generation. But his autobiography, Straight Life, is much more than a jazz book--it is one of the most explosive, yet one of the most lyrical, of all autobiographies. This edition is updated with an extensive afterword by Laurie Pepper covering Art Pepper's last years, and a complete and up-to-date discography by Todd Selbert.