Defiant Desire records the lives of lesbian and gay South Africans of all races, lived in the face of censure, denial and oppression, from a drag salon in Woodstock to a gay shebeen’ in kwaThema; from a church in a Pretoria nightclub to Johannesburg’s lesbian and gay pride march; from Afrikaans love poetry to the new activism. Defiant Desire brings together South Africa’s most prominent gay and lesbian writers, activists and academics. The contributors set out to refute beliefs that homosexuality is a white, male or middle-class phonomenon. Their writing makes clear and vibrant the relationship between a growing lesbian and gay rights movement and the broader anti-apartheid struggle in a time of transition and upheaval South Africa, and challenges its people to build a new society that respects and cherishes all of its citizens. Defiant Desire is an articulate, engrossing and truly powerful testimony to the range of gay and lesbian experiences in South Africa. It is both a document of lesbian and gay struggle, and an indispensable book for those interested in the sexual politics coursing beneath the country’s troubled passage to democracy.