Harper Lee answered 'gay' qutn :: Bay Area Reporter

Contents:

• HARPER LEE ANSWERED 'GAY' QUTN
• WAS ‘TO KILL A MOCKGBIRD’ AUTHOR HARPER LEE GAY?
• LOTS OF PEOPLE LOVE ‘TO KILL A MOCKGBIRD.’ ROXANE GAY ISN’T ONE OF THEM.

HARPER LEE ANSWERED 'GAY' QUTN

"In Nelle's annoyance at speculatn about whether she is gay, Mills screws up her nerve to ask each sister, neher of whom married or had children, whether the other ever dated, " acrdg to a Washgton Post review. The qutn "Is Harper Lee gay or straight? We don't know for a fact whether Harper Lee is gay, bisexual or straight.

"No lbian or gay rear of To Kill a Mockgbird me away om the book whout feelg that there was someone else like him or her, be Sut or her iend Dill, " Victoria Brownworth wrote the July issue of Lambda Lerary. "And so beloved and ld are the fictnal characters of Sut and Dill the Amerin LGBTQ lerary non that To Kill a Mockgbird ranked 67th on the Publishg Triangle's list of The 100 Bt Lbian and Gay novels.

WAS ‘TO KILL A MOCKGBIRD’ AUTHOR HARPER LEE GAY?

" And if Lee is to be judged by the pany she kept, her childhood iend Tman Capote, thor of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, was famoly gay, and he was the basis for the fictnal character Dill. However, the story of Lee's unrequed csh on married lerary agent Mrice Cra, who enuraged her to try wrg a novel after readg several of her short stori, is all we some many Harper Lee fans, I too have wonred if she was a lbian, and only bee of how difficult mt have been for her and other LGBTQ Amerins the 1950s, when McCarthyism was a tool for policg not only "munists" but also genr and sexual relatns -- through nstant police harassment and untls gay bar raids.

Sufferg a stoke 2007 is what sent Lee home to Monroeville, his Huffgton Postarticle "Growg Up Gay Harper Lee's Mayb, " Michael Lambert shar his thoughts on how LGBTQ people small Southern towns were intified. "A later, my mother has begun to tell me of other men and women om Monroe County who 'never married' -- the pole reference to gays and lbians among the small-town South.

LOTS OF PEOPLE LOVE ‘TO KILL A MOCKGBIRD.’ ROXANE GAY ISN’T ONE OF THEM.

"The public will never know the answer of whether Lee was gay or straight. Lee wanted this answer hidn om the public, but her reclivens and annoyance wh the qutn only ntributed to the as doggedly silent as Lee was on this qutn, the Amerin public has not qutn “Is Harper Lee gay or straight? "Sut’s tomboyishns and Dill's quasi-effemate mannerisms extribly nnected LGBT rears to the novel — and to Harper beloved and ld are Lee's fictnal characters the Amerin LGBT lerary non that "To Kill a Mockgbird" ranked 67th on the Publishg Triangle’s list of The 100 Bt Lbian and Gay ’s genr-nonnformg ways, an obv rebe of the cult of domticy and marriage, and her chewg the trappgs of 1950s femy raised never-endg queri about her sexual orientatn, pecially for a woman who grew up before the send wave of the femist ’s close iend Tom Butts, a Methodist mister, shared his thoughts on the topic a Marja Mills bgraphy: "Sut was a tomboy, and so was [Lee], and she kd of kept that almost-mascule way about her as an adult.