I have always liked love stories, and to me, even if you only spent one day in blissful happiness, then it was a love story. Moreover, love stories blossoming despite everything have always fascinated me, when they should not, when it was unlikely and dangerous.
I see Days of Love like a family photo album, the enlarged LGBT family sharing their memories: you will read about couples who managed to stay together for more than 70 years, but also those who were able to have only some days of happiness. 70 years or 1 day, those men and women fought, and some are still fighting, for their love, and that is what makes them special.
Going through the names you will think, “what about her? And him?” This is not a comprehensive catalogue of who was gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender in history, I tried to feature couples, with, most of the time, long-term relationships. Moreover, each entry is like a postcard, and so to feature them I needed a suitable portrait. Not always it was easy to find one, and I really need to say thank you to two wonderful men, and their companions: Jonathan Silin, Robert Giard’s surviving partner, who allowed me to use Bob’s archive; and Stathis Orphanos and his partner Ralph Sylvester, who not only contributed with their own love story, but gave me access to the photos Stathis did of their friends.
Of course, there is someone else I need to include in my thank you, my friend Vincent Virga, who one day, to my nth post on a LGBT couple from the past, said it was a shame they were lost on the net, without a place where people can go and browse them, easily… at that time I had collected so many of those couples that in 2 days the first draft of Days of Love was ready.
There are other artists I want to pay homage to, even if, or course, they will never know how helpful they were to me: Carl van Vechten, whose 1000s of portraits of the LGBT community between US and Europe is now partially available at the Library of Congress, an invaluable gift to researchers; John Singer Sargent, whose portraits of middle class and aristocracy “hide” a treasure of hidden LGBT history (John Singer Sargent may have or not have been homosexual, but for sure he portrayed many who are now out of that closet in which their time forced them); Arnold Genthe, the photographer of the Gilded age, the one who immortalized many of those daring American heiresses and heirs who refused the cage society planned for them, and found their happiness in the arms of a same sex lover.
And last, but not least, my thank you goes to all those wonderful couples who replied to my call, sharing their love stories and their family portraits, sometime professionally taken, sometime the photo of a friend with a little camera at a family gathering. Each of you is in my heart, and you are the heart of this book.
At today Days of Love is: – Winner in the LGBT Non-Fiction Category of the 3rd Annual Beverly Hills International Book Awards – Finalist in the GLBT Category of the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards – Honorable Mention in the Gay Category of the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival – Finalist in the LGBT Non Fiction Category of the 9th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards – Finalist in the Gay & Lesbian Non Fiction Category of the 6th Annual International Books Awards – Honorable Mention in the General Non Fiction Category of the 2015 New York Book Festival Moreover:
– is now included in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, hosted inside the Thomas Jefferson Building: part of the acquisition the Library of Congress did of Sylvester & Orphanos’s archives, included in the “special titles”, the curator of the collection kindly required me to sign the print copy they acquired.
– Days of Love is also included in the Virginia Commonwealth University Resource Library, under the section LGBTQ. Virginia Commonwealth University is a comprehensive, public university whose mission is to provide a fertile, stimulating environment for teaching, learning, research, comprehensive medical care and service; to promote the pursuit of knowledge; and, to disseminate professional skills.
Elisa Rolle
‘DAYS OF LOVE’ CELEBRATES LGBT HISTORY ONE LOVE STORY AT A TIME
A new book chronicling 2,000 years of same-sex love stories, from Alexander the Great to the latest Literary Award winner, makes the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Days of Love, created and Edited by Elisa Rolle, makes inspiring reading and lays to rest the myth that LGBT couples are not capable of sustaining life-long relationships. Packed full of beautiful photos and illustrations it lovingly features the personal stories of 700 LGBT couples from the dawn of history to the present day. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of the families they have started together. Days of Love is also a great source of LGBT trivia and stories that have all-too-often been written out of history. For example, did you know that Sir Isaac Newton, who laid the foundation for modern physics, may have had a relationship with a Swiss mathematician, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier? That the British author of 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke had a 13-year partnership with a male Sri Lankan teenager, and they are buried together? This is only a fraction of the fascinating facts that you can discover. What comes across is an alternative cultural history of LGBT people. As we celebrate growing social acceptability and the increasing introduction same-sex marriage, we are reminded that many people past and present paved the way for our civil rights, not the least of which is the right to love whoever we want. Elisa Rolle explains in the introduction to Days of Love why she decided to compile this book: “I have always liked love stories, and to me, even if you only spent one day in blissful happiness, then it was a love story. I see the following pages like a family photo album, the enlarged LGBT family sharing their memories: you will read about couples who managed to stay together for more than 70 years, but also those who were able to have only some days of happiness.”
Elisa’s website — http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/ — is one of the most comprehensive online journals dedicated solely to LGBT literature, art, and film ever created. A successful, multi-lingual career woman in her own right, Elisa’s job takes her all around the world, yet she somehow manages to find time to review books, run competitions, write articles and interview authors for her site. In the last few years, Elisa also launched the Rainbow Awards, an online annual awards event that judges hundreds of LGBT titles in dozens of categories.
For further information please contact: elisa.rolle@libero.it
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
