Cigarettes & Wine

1. Chapter 20

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 97-101

2. Chapter 21

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 103-108

3. Chapter 22

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 109-114

4. Chapter 23

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 115-116

5. Chapter 24

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 117-119

6. Chapter 25

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 121-124

7. Chapter 26

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 125-129

8. Chapter 27

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 131-132

9. Chapter 28

   • J. E. Sumerau

   Pages 133-136

10. Chapter 29

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 137-138

11. Chapter 30

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 139-143

12. Chapter 31

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 145-146

13. Chapter 32

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 147-149

14. Chapter 33

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 151-154

15. Chapter 34

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 155-157

16. Chapter 35

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 159-161

17. Chapter 36

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 163-166

18. Chapter 37

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 167-172

19. Chapter 38

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 173-177

20. Chapter 39

    • J. E. Sumerau

    Pages 179-183

Imagine the terror and exhilaration of a first sexual experience in a church where you could be caught at any moment. In Cigarettes & Wine, this is where we meet an unnamed teenage narrator in a small southern town trying to make sense of their own bisexuality, gender variance, and emerging adulthood. When our narrator leaves the church, we watch their teen years unfold alongside one first love wrestling with his own sexuality and his desire for a relationship with God, and another first love seeking to find herself as she moves away from town. Through the narrator’s eyes, we also encounter a newly arrived neighbor who appears to be an all American boy, but has secrets and pain hidden behind his charming smile and athletic ability, and their oldest friend who is on the verge of romantic, artistic, and sexual transformations of her own. Along the way, these friends confront questions about gender and sexuality, violence and substance abuse, and the intricacies of love and selfhood in the shadow of churches, families, and a small southern town in the 1990’s. Alongside academic and media portrayals that generally only acknowledge binary sexual and gender options, Cigarettes & Wine offers an illustration of non-binary sexual and gender experience, and provides a first person view of the ways the people, places, and narratives we encounter shape who we become. While fictional, Cigarettes & Wine is loosely grounded in hundreds of formal and informal interviews with LGBTQ people in the south as well as years of research into intersections of sexualities, gender, religion, and health. Cigarettes & Wine can be read purely for pleasure or used as supplemental reading in a variety of courses in sexualities, gender, relationships, families, religion, the life course, narratives, the American south, identities, culture, intersectionality, and arts-based research. “I suspect that many people who have even unrecognized ambivalences about sexual and gender binaries mightfind in it an illuminating reflection of their own paths. This fast-paced, introspective romp through high school and beyond keeps the pages turning with love, sex, and an understanding grandma.” Dawne Moon, Ph.D., Marquette University, and author of God, Sex and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies “Cigarettes and Wine is entertaining, thrilling, heartbreaking, while also a bit educational about the often invisible members of the LGBTQ community – bi and pan sexual, trans and gender non-conforming, and polyamorous folks. You won’t want to put it down!” Eric Anthony Grollman, Ph.D., University of Richmond and editor of Conditionally Accepted at Inside Higher Ed J. E. Sumerau is an assistant professor and director of applied sociology at the University of Tampa. Zir writing and research focuses on the intersections of sexualities, gender, religion, and health in the interpersonal and historical experiences of sexual, gender, and religious minorities.

• Young Adult Fiction
• LGBT Studies
• Coming of Age
• Sociology
• Gender & Sexualities

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