Eyes of Desire by Raymond Luczak

Eyes of Desire Reviews

• 
  Monique

  I found this book in my work's library which is open to the public so if anyone would like to borrow it let me know :)
  
  This book was a brilliant introduction into the amazing history of deaf gay and lesbian culture in the US! It's published by the same company that published A Persistent Desire and includes poetry, prose and interviews from lesbian, bisexual and gay people who are deaf. Written in 1993, I'm sure it's very dated now but I enjoyed reading about this quite specific moment in time. Writers discussed a really wide range of topics - how they discovered their sexual identities, overcoming barriers to communication in a sound-based world, what it means to be black, gay and deaf, dating and cruising when deaf, navigating relationships with deaf people, navigating relationships with hearing people, interpreting and the motives of hearing people who get involved with the deaf community, the diversity of identities that fall under the label 'deaf', how the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980's affected the deaf community in the US, dealing with abuse and sexual assault, navigating consent and sex and so much more.
  
  
  
• 
  J

  This was really interesting! It's a combination of non-fiction (essays, interviews in various formats) and fiction (prose, poetry) by and about deaf and gay people, largely in America during the 60s, 70s and 80s. There was also a section of interviews with Hearing people who currently or have in the past dated someone deaf or Hard of Hearing. Overall, I greatly prefered the non-fiction to the fiction, which tended to be kind of peculiar or just not to my taste; the notable exception being Raymond Luczak's poetry, with 'How to love a deaf man' being my favourite poem of the book.
  
  It taught me a lot about attitudes among the deaf gay, deaf straight, and hearing gay community towards queer deaf people in the 1960s-1980s. And just about the gay community in general because... wow.. there was a LOT of having sex in bathrooms/trains, damn. There was also an interesting chapter about this deaf gay American (I assume) guy travelling all over Europe and.. talking about the different attitudes to gay people and gay sex.
  
  It was surprising and kind of sad, some of the time. Like this one deaf guy being taken advantage of by these teenagers when he was only a kid, and how some Hearing guys only want to learn some signs from ASL to get deaf guys into bed. Apparently there was also the positive discrimination that deaf guys are terrific in bed, which is kind of sad when it's at some point linked to the idea that some Hearing guys are attracted to deaf people because they're often non-verbal.
  
  I thought it'd be quite dry, but it was actually really absorbing. The fiction wasn't good enough for me to give it five stars, and I'd also really like something more current. Looking forward to reading the sequel.
• 
  danielle

  A little bit dated but pretty much amazing/affirming anyways.
• 
  Colleen

  As far as I can tell, this book is the only one of its kind.