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Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the
Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of
Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe
SECRET
MATTER: updated, revised & expanded edition from Lethe Press
with Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into
Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story
Books on Gay Spirituality:
Articles
and Excerpts:
Read
Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The
Dimensional Structure of
Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San
Francisco"
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Wedding Cake Liberation
Gay Marriage in Texas
What's ironic
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
The
cause of homosexuality
What is homosexuality?
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
What the Bible Says about
Homosexuality
Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
Joseph Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
Emptiness & Religious Ideas
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
The way to get to heaven
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection
Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.
"The Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the Cross &
the
Dark Night of the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me Tell You a Secret
Religious Articulations of the
Secret
The Collective Unconscious
Driving as Spiritual Practice
Meditation
Historicity
as Myth
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
The Life is in the Blood
Gay
retirement and the "freelance monastery"
Seeing with Different Eyes
What
are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?
The
mystical
experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding Your Tiger Face
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
About Alien Abduction
In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
The
Rainbow Flag
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
There is a short version of this press release at Two Spirits Press Release (short)
New book by noted anthropologist/historian and gay
culture
scholar documents “same-sex marriage” as indigenous to the
American continent.
Re: Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo
Authors: Walter L. Williams & Toby Johnson
Published by Lethe Press, 102 Heritage Ave, Maple Shade, NJ 08052
lethepress@aol.com
609-410-7391
Contact: co-author Toby Johnson -- 210 403 0989, toby@tobyjohnson.com
With its sweet tale of inter-racial romance between a young Civil War
survivor from Virginia and a Navajo berdache/two-spirit healer of the
Old West, Two Spirits: A Story of Life With the Navajo demonstrates
gender variance as a source of spiritual power and documents “same-sex
marriage” as indigenous to the American continent.
Twenty years after his influential and ground-breaking perennial
bestseller The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American
Indian Culture, the book that first popularized the berdache tradition
among Native American cultures, historian-anthropologist Walter L.
Williams has produced a new work on gender and sexual variance -- this
time teaming up with award-winning novelist and gay spiritual writer
Toby Johnson.
Striking in its evocation of Navajo philosophy, culture and
spirituality, this book is a story of tragedy, oppression, and
discrimination, but also an enlightening tale of love, personal
discovery, and natural beauty. It illuminates the truth of what the
United States did to the largest tribe of indigenous people in the
Americas. Full of suspense, plot twists, and endearing romance, Two
Spirits will captivate readers with its positive approach to life and
love.
This novel, based in the historical facts of the fabled West, tells a
tale of adventure of a hapless young man from rural Virginia, who is
assigned to be the Government Indian Agent on the Bosque Redondo
Reservation after the Civil War and discovers himself and so much more.
In the 1860s, the Navajo Indians were held as virtual prisoners of war
in the desolate New Mexico desert in an "experiment in Indian
management" under the command of an unscrupulous Civil War general who
was later removed for swindling money sent by Washington for the
Indians’ food and lodging, making himself and his cronies rich at the
Indians’ expense.
This story recounts how the fictional Indian Agent develops a romantic
relationship with a Two-Spirit healer among the Navajos, and so comes
to appreciate personally the plight of the Indians on the reservation.
The Two-Spirit Person is modelled on the revered character in certain
Native American cultures who blended masculine and feminine genders and
so was honored as exemplar of spiritual values.
Through a series of adventures, shot through with Navajo mysticism, the
two lovers expose the general’s chicanery and bring about the Indians’
return to their ancestral homeland in eastern Arizona. In the process,
the young Virginian learns Native American spirituality and discovers a
positive context for his own emotional and sexual development.
His marriage to his Two-Spirit partner demonstrates historical
precedent for same-sex marriage on American soil. "Gay marriage" is not
new to America. The indigenous cultures on this continent had honored
same-sex relationships long before Europeans immigrated here.
The book includes an Afterword: About the Historical Accuracy of this
Novel and A Commentary by Navajo/Diné scholar Wesley Thomas.
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo was awarded a development
grant in the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation competition for
Gay-positive Art Projects based on Historical Subjects.
Two Spirits is available from gay community bookstores nationwide,
major wholesalers, the usual Internet outlets, barnesandnoble.com &
amazon.com, and from www.tobyjohnson.com
Published by Lethe Press ISBN 1-59021-060-3 $18.00, 332 pages,
Paperback, July 2006 release
Walter L Williams, Ph.D. is professor of anthropology, history and
gender studies at the University of Southern California, where he
teaches gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender studies, and also
American Indian Studies. He is past president of ONE Institute
International Gay and Lesbian Archives, and is currently editor of the
International Gay And Lesbian Review. For the past two decades, he has
been speaking on the berdache (now more preferably called Two-Spirit)
phenomenon and has been well-received both by fellow anthropologists
and by general audiences. He is author of more than eight books. His
The Spirit And The Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culturee
is a basic staple of any gay reading list and is stocked in bookstores
well beyond the network of gay stores.
Toby Johnson, Ph.D. is a writer and former bookseller in the gay genre.
He was a counselor in San Francisco in the 1970s and one of the
developers of gay-oriented psychotherapy. For almost seven years, he
and his partner operated Liberty Books, the lesbian and gay community
bookstore in Austin. From 1997 to 2004 Johnson was editor and publisher
of the small but respected quarterly journal of gay men’s spirituality,
White Crane. He has had published three gay novels and five non-fiction
works about the ideas of renowned religions scholar Joseph Campbell.
Johnson, only half-joking, refers to himself as "Joe Campbell's apostle
to the gay community."
Recently Toby Johnson and Kip Dollar, partners of 23 years, have run
gay Bed & Breakfasts first in the Rocky Mountains and then in the
Texas Hill Country. Kip and Toby were the first male couple registered
as Domestic Partners in Texas.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, click here
For a hi-res pdf of the cover
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