Description: This collection of thoughtful, courageous, and honest essays explores the relationships among class background, social status, and "queerness" with passionate sensitivity and sharp political insight. Queerly Classed challenges the often narrow and rigid definition of gay and lesbian community by highlighting the voices of those whose experience of class, combined with race, ethnicity, gender, ability, and age, explodes stereotypes of queers aspiring to assimilate into the mainstream of the American middle class. Rather, these authors address the radical impact of intertwined forms of inequality on identity, empowerment, and activism.

In essays on money (and the lack of it), relationships, family, and home, the writers showcased here address complicated and conflicting emotions surrounding privilege and poverty, pride and shame, community and alienation. They discuss the painful yet vital aspects of coming out and becoming politicized, of passing and "arriving", of acquiring material possessions and sharing strength. At the same time, they reveal the richness and joy that sustains them through the craft of writing and the pursuit of pleasure. Together, they redefine what class and queerness mean in our society.

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