August 2023 MBR The LGBT Fiction Shelf

The LGBT Fiction Shelf

Goes On, Without the World's Understanding
Thomas Westerfield
Rattling Good Yarns Press
https://rattlinggoodyarns.com
9781955826402, $15.95, PB, 146pp

https://www.amazon.com/Without-Worlds-Understanding-Thomas-Westerfield/dp/1955826404

Synopsis: "Goes On, Without the World's Understanding" is a new collection of short stories in which author Thomas Westerfield challenges our expectations about the tales that can be told regarding sexuality, race, love, abuse, trauma, art, and intergenerational relationships.

We meet, among others, a men's sexual abuse group in rebellion against their earth mother therapist; a ninety-six-year-old gay cult writer who confronts a young queer interviewer; a burnt-out white professor playing dangerous academic games with his Black lesbian colleague; a teenager in a small Kentucky town in 1971 who experiences gay life for the first time through the movie, The Boys in the Band; a retired man sharing a Las Vegas roulette table with a lonely drunk college student celebrating his twenty-first birthday; a little boy terrified of what his Barbies will do to him in the dark of night; and a sex-trafficked young man, now free, explaining why he will never return to his family.

Some find acceptance, even peace, within the many contradictory and often warring elements of their hearts; some do not. But all are embraced with compassionate acceptance as they go on, without the world's understanding.

Critique: Eloquent, inherently fascinating, deftly crafted, entertaining, memorable, and emotionally moving, "Goes On, Without the World's Understanding" by Thomas Westerfield is an original short story anthology that will have a very special appeal to readers from the LGBTQ community. While highly recommended for both community and academic library Short Story Anthology and LGBTQ Literature collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Goes On, Without the World's Understanding" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $6.99).

Editorial Note: Thomas Westerfield stories have been recognized as a finalist by the Saints and Sinners Festival, the New Millennium Writing Awards for Fiction, and the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. His plays, Catharsis and Monasteries, received productions and staged readings in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He was recognized as one of the "25 Unsung Heroes of the Gay Community" in 1988 by The Advocate magazine for his co-founding the Owensboro Gay Alliance in Kentucky. (https://rattlinggoodyarns.com/authors/thomas-westerfield

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