In a small room lined with shelves and tables holding various books, one book, “Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans” by Philip Gambone, had all the readers’ attention.
Award-winning writer and teacher Gambone visited Boxcar Books in Bloomington, Ind. on Friday night, an event sponsored by BloomingOUT on WFHB and IU GLBT Support Services.
At the Sixth Street venue, Gambone read the introduction of his most recent book. Participants of various sexual orientations joined in a question-and-answer session following the reading.
“The turnout was great, and the questions were wonderful,” Gambone said. “I hope the crowd got a little sense of my personality — about the personality behind this book, about the enthusiasm behind this book. I hope that in the excerpt that I read from the introduction, they picked up a little bit about what my goals were for the book, how I went about doing the book, who I saw as the audience for the book.”
Gambone is an essayist, journalist and fiction writer hailing from Massachusetts and has written three other GLBTQ-based books.
Along with writing, he has taught English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston College and the Harvard University Extension School.
“Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans” is a book of various profiles of people in the GLBTQ community.
Gambone traveled to different parts of America, candidly interviewing people about their lives.
Celebrities included in the book are David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin.
Less familiar voices include a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and “drag king,” a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be partners, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay fraternity and a pair of Vermont garden designers.
Altogether Gambone interviewed 102 people, he could only publish 44 interviews. He said it was difficult to choose which stories made the cut.
In the end, he mainly focused on showcasing diversity and sharing untold stories.
“Some people who have been really well profiled in the past — (I) cut them,” Gambone said. “(I was looking for) diversity in whatever way you could measure it: age, geography, occupation, race, religion, ethnic group — any way I could cut it.”
The project began in summer 2007. The author traveled for two years across America. He started by sending letters to potential participants, introducing himself and asking them to speak.
Gambone said he also used Google as a tool to find places to visit and people to interview, typing in searches such as “gay Chicago” or “gay Austin.”
“‘Gay Chicago’ was the best because … Tracy Baim, who publishes the Windy City Times, put together this enormous website in which she interviewed gay/lesbian Chicagoans,” Gambone said. “I browsed the website and came up with names of people I wanted to profile in the book.
“‘Gay Austin’ was another one. I really wanted to go to Texas.”
Face-to-face interviews with permission to use first and last names was a must for each profile, as Gambone was determined to get more than just a voice. Seeing the interviewee in some sort of environment was alsoimportant.
“I interviewed people in their homes, in their offices, in hotels, outside on picnic tables, in their workplace, wherever we needed to meet,” Gambone said.
To research, Gambone studied each interviewee and how he or she creates his or her identity.
“If they were a writer I read their work, if they were a musician I listened to their music, if they were a filmmaker I watched their films, if they were a historian I read their books, if they were a politician I tried to familiarize myself with their political record,” he said.
An average of 20 to 30 hours of review was done prior to each interview.
Because each person was different, the sets of questions were specifically tailored to each participant — though each discussion started the same: “tell me something memorable about your childhood.”
From that question a theme emerged.
Personality, story, anecdote, humanity, pride and strength were all qualities the author wanted to capture from each person.
Never bored by a story, he said he heard tales with laughter, tears and emotions in between.
After the event, Gambone stayed to speak to patrons and sign copies of his book.
IU student Samuel Buelow came to the event 20 minutes early and was the first guest to arrive.
He said he was attracted to the reading because of its description and especially because of the popular names featured within it.
“I thought I’d go and see what it was like, and it was really kind of a surprise,” Buelow said. “Just the stories in general and this idea of this compilation of stories is just exciting to me.”
From what Gambone read, the book sounded interesting, Buelow said. As a result, Buelow left the bookstore with a signed copy in hand.
This particular book hit shelves in June 2010. Though a second volume is not in the works, writing one is a hopeful thought — Gambone said he has 58 more interviews he’d like to see published.
“I didn’t approach this book with an agenda; I didn’t approach this book with a thesis; I didn’t approach this book with an ax to grind,” Gambone said. “The only agenda was: Let me get as diverse a range of stories as possible.”