"I went through a period of looking back and wondering if all that wrestling with Ben was what made me a homo!" (5)

I left my book out on the living room counter over the weekend, and someone got a conversation started by commenting: "Are you really reading a comic book for your class?". I assured them It was for my southern literature class and that this wasn't too weird for an English class to do. They then picked it up and randomly flipped it open to a scene in the middle of the book. It had naked men in bed together. Everyone then concluded I was lying, being further confused when I told them it was really all about the civil rights movement of the 60's, and the parallels of being pro-civil rights and being homosexual during that time. I can't really blame them for the confusion.

This novel is in a unique genre of literature, and this uniqueness is what makes it do what it does so well. It pokes and prods at our social norms, while poking and prodding at social norms of the southern 60's. We are thrown into one of the most controversial groups of people you could probably hang out with in that time, in a genre that is not widely read and, given the substance of this one, controversial. The surprise I got when I first found out Toland was gay (above quote), that same surprise, runs throughout the book. It was a pretty shocking first section to a pretty shockingly ignorant and hateful time period towards both gays and blacks. It is fit for its task.

Q: So, does this being a comic book then make it more accessible?

-Hunter