Telling one's own story has always been central to American gay culture. Yet until now there has been no extensive history of gay American autobiography. This volume provides the first comprehensive study of this crucial genre in all its complexity and diversity. Its lively and insightful analyses of a wealth of gay American autobiographical texts attend both to their historical significance and to the qualities that make them worth reading. Covering works produced over the past 200 years, the book vividly conveys how the identities of same-sex-attracted men have shifted over time and intersected with class, race, ethnicity, and occupation. Taken together, the essays in this volume demonstrate how gay life writing has contributed invaluably to the historical struggles against the subordination and persecution of same-sex sexuality and to its establishment as a legitimate form of self-expression.