Queer Angels in Post-1945 American Literature and Culture: Bad Beatitudes

From Allen Ginsberg’s “angel-headed hipsters” to angelic outlaws in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, angelic imagery has been pervasive in queer American art and culture. This book examines how authors in the post-WWII period expanded a unique mixture of sacred and profane angelic imagery to fashion queer characters, primarily gay men, as embodiments of ‘bad beatitudes’
This book looks at how American authors across diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, including John Rechy, Richard Bruce Nugent, Allen Ginsberg, and Rabih Alameddine, sought to find the sacred in the profane and the profane in the sacred.