I found Night Kites in the teenage fiction section of a local mobile library. It was the very pleasant cover design that caught my eye and then the blurb which mentions AIDS.
the story is about the relations of a teenage boy (Ricky) with his peers. He is a typical American youth, interested in girls and having a good time, his older brother is ‘Gay’ and has AIDS. This character and the parents – who react badly to the annunciation of the illness – are cliched.
Night Kites will not revolutionise the public’s view of Gay people, AIDS or sex. Indeed, it reinforces some of the stigmas, however, the fact that a work of fiction on this subject is in a mobile library, on the teenage readers’ shelves is a sign of hope in itself.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers (1 May 1986)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0060232536
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060232535
Links:
Kinderkill brings into print the subject of “snuff” movies, and the related topics of child sex fanatics. The characters whether cops or child molesters are stereotypes, of no real depth or interest. The story development is progressive, with one or two hiccups due to the author’s attempts to assign qualities to his characters that are not necessary to the story. Indeed the author’s preoccupation with having clear black and white characters gives the book an unreal quality.
In the Court proceedings against Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960, the jury was invited by the prosecution to consider whether “It is a book that you wish your wife or servants to read?”
It is all very well for them to think along these lines, but the fact remains that the advocacy of repressive measures aimed at depriving people of the right to the reading of material of their choice could all too easily result in the targeting of the ‘gay’ community as purveyors of “material likely to deprave and corrupt”. It is not long since HM Customs used their draconian powers to seize material from gay book shops (
The Portsmouth Defence – every solicitor and barrister knows the traditional defence to utilize when defending a client accused of murdering a gay man when there is no other legitimate defence available. Its name indicates that it originated in medieval times in seaports when mariners were caught on rolling/robbing their homosexual clients or victims.
Who Lies Inside by Timothy Ireland, deals with a young man’s struggle to come to terms with his sexual attraction to other men. Martin Conway comes from a typical English working-class family in which any manifestation of emotion meets with rental disapproval. Martin or “Jumbo”, is a rugby player, and a wimp, and an 18 year old sixth former. He becomes increasingly alienated from his parents and from his straight friends, and, despite his initial unwillingness to confront the ‘stranger’ inside him he eventually decides that the ‘stranger’, i.e. his gayness, must ‘step out into the light and be seen’, if he is to be truly happy.
Kinsella’s Overisght by Tommy Dwyer is a riposte to ‘Butcher’s Dozen’, a poem written by the Eire establishment poet Thomas Kinsella. It commemorated the thirteen people killed by the Para at a pur4ely peaceful demonstration in January 1972, organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in Derry City, against the continuation of internment without trial. As the introduction says, “If the poem also commemorated the innocent Protestant dead, and worked up emotions against the political process which killed them, it would be as useful a contribution to the cause of progress as a bourgeois poet could make in this day and age.” Kinsella abuses the Ulster Protestant as Britains … ‘rubbish … slaps and scraps …,’ and works up purely Nationalist hatred for the ‘Brits’ and especially the Ulster Protestant community. Despite this Kinsella says “They, even they, with other nations have a place”.
‘Jack Robinson’ is a pseudonym, I assume, though given the sweep fo ‘Teardrops On My Drum’, anything is likely, parts of it are so unlikely they must be true! It chronicles the life of a Liverpool slummie from 5 to 15, when he joins the Army. The BA in the 20s seems to have been very gay.
discussion of them. the journal exudes a ‘Glad to be Gay’ tone which is to be applauded; equally necessary is a facility for self-criticism and a questioning approach to many aspects of current gay lifestyles. 
Arrangement 92019) starts off with a character in the shadows texting – with a musical song sung by Garth Ross (My Time Is Your Time) playing in the background indistinctly. The first verse of the song sets up the story in a number of ways:
Though our copy of the Boys on the Rock by John Fox is a proof copy, I could find very little that was in need of correction; except for the basis of the story.