Gaytude

About the Book

Winner - The National Indie Excellence

Awards, Gay/Lesbian Non-Fiction

Category


GAYTUDE: a poetic journey around the world features bilingual poetry (English-French) written, translated and adapted by Albert Russo and Adam Donaldson Powell; with photography by Albert Russo.

Gaytude is published by Xlibris Corporation, USA, copyright 2009 by Albert Russo and Adam Donaldson Powell, 335 pages, in both hardcover and softcover editions: ISBN hardcover: 978-1-4363-6396-9 and ISBN softcover: 978-1-4363-6395-2. Gaytude is available from Xlibris, Barnes and Noble, Target, Alibris, Amazon (US, France, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan) as well as from numerous bookdealers in many countries.

Gaytude is a poetic study of both the universality and the diversity of gay experience ... an experience of confluence whereby individual love, lust and identity are constantly in tandem and conflict with collective mores, customs, codes and trends. In a sense, we are all gay ... inasmuch as we all seek the right to be different, as well as to be the same. For some, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is recognition and acceptance ; and for others it is perhaps the excitement of covert intimacy and adventure. This book is dedicated to all gays, including those who flaunt their sexual orientation freely and those who still remain secretive or inactive due to still ongoing risks of abuse, harassment and execution. One day, men all over the world will be able to proudly quote from Catullus 16 - this time with pride and loving spirit: “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo” .

Dr. Santosh Kumar (Editor of The Taj Mahal Review, India) has written the following about Gaytude: Albert Russo and Adam Donaldson Powell´s «Gaytude, a poetic journey around the world», makes it evident that gay poetry always has a distinctive voice, because a gay poet suffers from a sense of ostracism, of being excluded by others due to differences ... The poems by Russo and Powell are marked with outsiderhood, the sense of being different from the fashionable or ´straight´ writing.

Gaytude est une vision poétique, tant de la diversité, que de l’universalité de l’expérience gay ... elle est la confluence dans laquelle l’amour individuel, le désir et l’identité, sont à la fois, constamment en tandem et en conflit avec les moeurs, les coutumes, les codes de conduite et les tendances de la société. D’une certaine manière, nous sommes tous gay ... dans la mesure où nous voulons tous jouïr du droit d’être différent, et en même temps, de rester ce que nous sommes essentiellement. Pour certains, la plus belle chose qui soit au monde est la reconnaissance et l’acceptation, pour d’autres, c’est l’aventure qui prime, l’excitation d’une intimité secrète. Ce livre est dédié à tous les gays de la terre, aussi bien à ceux qui proclament haut et fort leur homosexualité, qu’à ceux qui ne la mettent pas en avant, ou qui la cachent, de peur d’être pointés du doigts, de subir quolibets et agressions, voire pire, de se faire emprisonner, fouetter ou même tuer, dans ces pays, encore si nombreux, aux régimes régressifs, qui les considèrent encore comme des malades ou des criminels. Un jour, les gays du monde entier pourront citer Catulle sans rougir : “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo”.

Visit both authors´ websites:

www.albertrusso.eu

www.albertrusso.com

www.authorsden.com/albertrusso

www.adamdonaldsonpowell.com

About the Author

A bilingual author, Albert Russo writes in both English and French, his two ‘mother tongues’. He is the recipient of many awards, such as The American Society of Writers Fiction Award, The British Diversity Short Story Award, several New York Poetry Forum Awards, Amelia Prose and Poetry awards, an honorable mention at the 13th Writer’s Digest International Awards, and the Prix Colette, among others. He has also been nominated for the W.B. Yeats and Robert Penn Warren poetry awards. His work, which has been praised by James Baldwin, Pierre Emmanuel, Paul Willems and Edmund White, has appeared worldwide in a dozen languages. His African novels have been favorably compared to that of V.S. Naipaul, who was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. He is a member of the jury for the Prix Européen, and sat in 1996 on the panel of the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Literature, which often leads to the Nobel Prize for Literature. For more information, see the author's website: www.albertrusso.com