Ten years ago The Advocate's summer reading issue celebrated a groundbreaking season for gay literature.

Ten years ago The Advocate's summer reading issue celebrated a groundbreaking season for gay literature. Among the titles profiled were lesbian activist Joan Nestle's The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, which arrived upon the cusp of a widespread reevaluation and embrace of butch and femme identities, and Essex Hemphill's Ceremonies, a now-classic work exploring Hemphill's admit life as a black gay HIV-positive man. The lead story focused onward Paul Monette, who had just published the National work Award-winning Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, an autobiographical coming-out narrative.

Monette told reporter Michael Lassell that writing Becoming a Man took an emotional toll. "By the time I got to page 150 I deliberation Nobody should do this," he said.

Monette's soulful writing ultimately helped him preserve loving. "I'm glad to say I can rise to my best self still but it's a great challenge," he said. "I can be as angry as I am at this pig-shit native land and all the things that are done to us and yet I'm happy."

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