{"id":571,"date":"2011-07-19T15:27:43","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T20:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=571"},"modified":"2011-07-19T15:27:43","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T20:27:43","slug":"binding-the-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/binding-the-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Binding the God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mann, Jeff. Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the American South.<\/em> New London, CT: Bear Bones Books, 2010. Paperback. 231pp. $15.00. Kindle Edition, lending enabled. $7.99. ISBN: 978-1-59021-219-6.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Lambda Award-winning writer<\/a> Jeff Mann follows up on his Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear<\/em> with this second collection of personal essays. And these essays are deeply personal \u2013 reflecting both his deep affection for the land and people of the mountains and the deep pain the homophobia endemic to the region causes him.<\/p>\n

Mann is a gay, pagan, leather bear, and in many ways, you might think this makes him out of place in the mountains of West Virginia. But he is also an Appalachian, and a country boy \u2013 and he can\u2019t live comfortably away from the region and its people. Instead, he uses his multiple outsider status \u2013 gay, blue-collar, mountain, pagan, and bear \u2013 to educate and enlighten the classes he teaches and the communities in which he dwells. The essays in Binding the God<\/em> will do the same for the urbane and sophisticated, the slender and smooth-chested, and the A-list gays, and will remind us all that the GLBT community and GLBT culture is everywhere.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that Mann\u2019s home does not cause him pain. Despite his deep affection for the land and people of the Mountain South, he is acutely aware of its conservative politics. He looks around at the gym and sees a hot man, his perfect good ol\u2019 boy type \u2013 and realizes the object of his affection is likely straight and even homophobic. But then, he has a great time bonding with the men painting his house, and they don\u2019t mind that he\u2019s gay, because he can talk trucks and cowboy boots and country music. Being a hill-queer may be a contradiction \u2013 but it\u2019s one with which Mann has learned to live. And if he has to occasionally escape to gay-friendlier climes, the mountains always call him back home.<\/p>\n

Some may be wary of the sexual content, but without it we\u2019d get a distorted view of the very complicated Jeff Mann. The essay \u201cBondage Tape in Budapest,\u201d for example, illuminates the relationship between leatherbear Mann and his vanilla partner. And when Mann talks about Tim McGraw, not just as a musician, but as a sex object \u2013 well, I can relate. I only ever listened to Tim McGraw because he looked hot on the album cover!<\/p>\n

Recommended for all public and academic libraries, and particularly for those libraries serving GLBT or Appalachian communities.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by, John Bradford<\/strong><\/em>
\nHead of Automation & Technical Services<\/em>
\nVilla Park Public Library<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mann, Jeff. Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the American South. New London, CT: Bear Bones Books, 2010. Paperback. 231pp. $15.00. Kindle Edition, lending enabled. $7.99. ISBN: 978-1-59021-219-6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}