Goes On Without the World's Understanding

<h2 class=ql-align-center><strong>Compassionate. Provocative. Moving. </strong></h2><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>In this new collection Thomas Westerfield challenges our expectations about the stories that can be told regarding sexuality race love abuse trauma art and intergenerational relationships.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>We meet among others a men's sexual abuse group in rebellion against their earth mother therapist; a ninety-six-year-old gay cult writer who confronts a young queer interviewer; a burnt-out white professor playing dangerous academic games with his Black lesbian colleague; a teenager in a small Kentucky town in 1971 who experiences gay life for the first time through the movie <em>The Boys in the Band</em>; a retired man sharing a Las Vegas roulette table with a lonely drunk college student celebrating his twenty-first birthday; a little boy terrified of what his Barbies will do to him in the dark of night; and a sex-trafficked young man now free explaining why he will never return to his family.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Some find acceptance even peace within the many contradictory and often warring elements of their hearts; some do not. But all are embraced with compassionate acceptance as they go on without the world's understanding.</p><p><br></p>