GLR September-October 2025

NewYork (1895). She worked for Alvah H. Doty photographing the conditions at the Quarantine Stations at Ellis Island. Yochel son has written a much-needed reappraisal of a pioneering artist who lived life on her own terms. Her photographs serve as docu ments wherein signifiers of the social norms of class, gender, and sexuality are subverted into images of queer resistance. I RENE J AVORS DAYS RUNNING: A Novel by Shawn Stewart Ru ff D OPAMINE /Semiotext(e). 216 pages, $17.95 Shawn Stewart Ruff continues the story of Cliffy Douglas, the protagonist of his fic tiondebut Finlater (2008), in his fourth novel Days Running . A precocious Black high school senior in 1971 Cincinnati, Cliffy is “fagbashed” after being seen kiss ing his boyfriend. Still closeted, Cliffy is afraid to tell his parents or the police the truth about the attack. He also refuses to name his “psycho motherfucker” attacker, Buster, a notorious neighborhood tough who’s related to a drug dealer. Cliffy’s relationship with his family is also on the rocks. He and his brothers refer to their parents by the initials of their first and middle names: “LACK.” There are pre school-aged twins, and his religious mother,

tographer Alice Austen. Unlike Ann Novotny’s earlier work, Alice’s World: The Life and Photography of an American Orig inal, 1866–1952 (1976), in which Austen’s lesbian identity was concealed with coded language, Yochelson situates her as a “new woman” who defied conventional gender rules and roles and celebrates Austen’s 55 year relationship with Gertrude Tate. Austen spent most of her life living in her family’s home, Clear Comfort, on Staten Is land, NY. Her wealthy family expected her to live a life reflective of her class: to marry well, have children, and uphold the expecta tions of her social position. She defied all of this. She played tennis, rode a bicycle, took up photography, and learned how to de velop prints. She photographed just about everything. However, the focus of her pho tography changed in the early 1890s when she began satirizing gender roles. She pho tographed female friends in drag or in sug gestive tableaus that hinted at lesbian tropes. She described these scenes as exam ples of “the larking life.” She claimed that “she was too good to marry,” rejecting tra ditional marriage and all that went with it. Her involvement with photography ex tended to her exploration of New York’s working-class neighborhoods. She produced a photographic portfolio, Street Types of

“the only person I know whose uplifting in tentions manage to scold and make me feel down,” is pregnant again. His self-centered, Vietnam-veteran dad is on antipsychotic drugs after a history of PTSD-related family violence. Cliffy doesn’t recognize LACK’s awkward advice as the help and encourage ment it is meant to be. His younger brother Corey is hanging out with a group of thug wannabes, while older brother Dudley can’t wait to leave town. Cliffy is ready to graduate and go to UCLA, though the plans for his long-dis tance boyfriend Chip to move to California are becoming less certain. In denial about his anger, disassociation, and recurring vivid dreams, Cliffy wants to retaliate against Buster. At Chip’s insistence, the couple goes after Buster with baseball bats, but that doesn’t seem enough. Dudley gives Cliffy a gun the night he leaves to join the military. Unsure about using it, Cliffy nev ertheless escalates the situation through ha rassing phone calls to Buster, wondering: “What kind of person will I be after all this?” Days Running is a fast-moving jour ney through Cliffy’s pre-graduation months filled with teenage self-pity and angst and the need to grow into a more open and self confident gay young adult. R EGINALD H ARRIS

September–October 2025

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