Introduction

We come το know our place within the world through the stories we hear and retell. Our images of lesbians and gay men are shaped by stories learned from school, family, and community. These communal stories develop and become authorized versions of how lives were lived and parables on how we should live our lives. Documenting, writing, and reading narratives of our communities provide lesbians and gay men with a collection of sacred, communal stories that for too long have been lost or devalued in the larger canon of heterosexist history—presented to us as fact.