AustLit

'The unrequited love foregrounded in the title of Dennis Altman’s memoir refers to his attachment to the United States, an attachment that in some ways reflects the postwar relationship between Australia and what until recently we were calling ‘the world’s remaining superpower’. Altman’s recollection of his and, more generally, Australia’s unreciprocated passion for the US stays true to his longheld conviction that the recording of personal experience should incorporate political analysis and vice versa. Altman’s interests rove far beyond this not-so-special special relationship, however, gathering up multiple manifestations of the global and local sexual politics with which his name is now associated. Altman became involved in the gay liberation movement while living and studying in New York in the early 1970s and his Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1971) was one of the most sophisticated accounts to emerge from that movement. A long and celebrated career as an academic, writer, and activist in gay politics and AIDS organizing followed. Altman’s books have mainly continued his interest in sexual politics and include The Homosexualization of America (1982), AIDS in the Mind of America (1986), Global Sex (2001), and The End of the Homosexual? (2013). He has also published on the more ‘general’ Australian political scene, including a previous book 51st State? (2006) that also tackled the relationship between Australia and the US. A regular contributor to venues such as The Conversation and ABC Radio, Altman remains one of Australia’s most consistently insightful and interesting political commentators.' (Introduction)