Stephen S. Mills

A History of the Unmarried Stephen S. Mills

In A History of the Unmarried, Lambda Award winner Stephen S. Mills questions the idea of marriage--as a right, as a relationship, as a contract. Mills juxtaposes the lives of housewives--from his mother to Mad Men's Betty Draper--with the lives of gay men--from Raymond Burr, to Frank O'Hara, to the poet himself. He explores his own conflicting thoughts about marriage against the backdrop of the political fight for marriage equality over the last decade. He asks, "...what does it mean to become / a housewife voluntarily? /.../ And what does it mean to be married / yet remain queer?"