“When I first realized I was homosexual,” Rechy writes, “I prayed to be changed. I wrote about this in June, when the Supreme Court dispensed with the Defense of Marriage Act, but it bears restating: “City of Night” was an essential early step in the integration of gay life into the American mainstream, a subversive book in the best sense of the word because it provokes a profound empathy. Yet lest his influence appear diminished, let’s just think about the seismic shifts in our attitudes toward gay rights over the last 50 years. Rechy is 82 now, and last published a book, the memoir “About My Life and the Kept Woman,” in 2008. Woman,” with its refrain of “city at night”), as well as Rechy himself. Sponsored by UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, the event was organized by professor Héctor Calderón, and also featured Doors drummer John Densmore (who traced the influence of “City of Night” on the song “L.A. writer,” in a series of presentations on the author and his work. And even though I am excluded from several anthologies of homosexual writers, I am often designated as ‘a gay writer.’”Īt UCLA, the panel discussed Rechy “the Mexican American writer, the gay writer, and the L.A. “Today,” he once lamented, “I find myself a ‘Texas writer’ left out of discussions of Texas writers, a ‘Chicano writer’ omitted from anthologies of Chicano writers, a ‘California writer’ ignored in books about California. And yet, Rechy remains misunderstood, even marginalized, an outsider even in the cultures of which he is a part.

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