Gay thor Douglas Stuart has won the Booker Prize for his tobgraphil but novel Shuggie Ba, tellg the story of a queer teenager.
Contents:
- GAY THOR WS THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR ’EMOTIVE’ BUT NOVEL ABOUT GROWG UP QUEER 1980S GLASGOW
- DOUGLAS STUART: “THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR A YOUNG GAY MAN TO TURN”
- STTISH GAY WRERS
GAY THOR WS THE BOOKER PRIZE FOR ’EMOTIVE’ BUT NOVEL ABOUT GROWG UP QUEER 1980S GLASGOW
* gay scottish author *
Gay thor Douglas Stuart has won the Booker Prize for his tobgraphil but novel Shuggie Ba, which tells the story of a queer youth livg wh his alholic mother 1980s Glasgow. Gay thor Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize for his ’emotive, nuanced’ but novel Shuggie Ba.
The thor grew up Glasgow when there was ‘a real stigma’ to beg gay. Speakg to the New Yorker January, Stuart said there was “a real stigma” to beg gay the hog scheme where he grew up Glasgow. On growg up gay, he said: “When I was 17, I had all the puzzle piec and no way of ftg them all together.
“Beg gay and g of age at that time meant everythg was about fillg the blanks. The ltle that I knew about gay sex felt llaged om random sourc.
DOUGLAS STUART: “THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR A YOUNG GAY MAN TO TURN”
It’s a fictnal, early-’90s story set a Glasgow riven by sectarian nflict, a tale of star-crossed, young, gay love – the kd he never got to experience. Growg up, homosexualy beyond his own experience felt unfaiar to Stuart.
“Even the ‘good’ people society got away wh murr when me to homophobia.
STTISH GAY WRERS
There was nowhere for a young gay man to turn.
” At 16, Stuart was vicly beaten up by a group of “about 12” teenagers spewg homophobic slurs. Even after his mother’s ath and he advanced towards adulthood, explorg gay life whout the prsure of fay honour and school bulli still felt stilted. “I tried gog to the gay clubs Glasgow, but I didn’t know anybody, and the clubs bee really sexual too quick, and that was too much for me, ” he rells.
In Found Wantg, a 17-year-old boy early-’90s Glasgow, tached om all forms of gay culture, meets a solicor (who claims to be 38) for sex via the only means available to him: personal ads the pag of a “youth magaze, a glossy that I voured bee the nights were too quiet and I uld not afford the pany of a televisn”. The Englishman chronicl a young man’s journey om the Wtern Isl to London, to take up a posn as a “hoeboy” that was advertised a gay magaze. But also appli, on a micro level, to the gay characters sperate to flee, yet held back by both poverty and homophobia.