States of Desire: Travels in Gay America was published by E.P. Dutton in 1980. White traveled across the United States in the late 1970s, visiting gay communities in major cities (San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Boston) and smaller towns, interviewing men about their lives, observing the institutions and cultures they had built, and creating a composite portrait of gay male America at a particular historical moment.
That moment — between Stonewall (1969) and AIDS (first cases 1981) — was brief and extraordinary. Gay men had emerged from the closet with explosive energy, building visible communities, political organizations, cultural institutions, and sexual cultures of unprecedented openness. White documents all of this: the bathhouses and bars, the political organizations and churches, the artists and activists, the drag queens and leathermen, the couples and the cruisers.
The book’s value has only increased with time. Much of what White documented was destroyed by AIDS within a few years of publication. The men he interviewed, the institutions he described, the sexual culture he celebrated — much of it simply vanished. States of Desire became, inadvertently, the record of a world on the eve of catastrophe.
White’s method combines journalistic reporting with personal essay. He is not a detached observer — he is a participant in the culture he describes, and his own desires, encounters, and reflections are woven into the documentary material. This gives the book an intimacy and honesty that purely journalistic accounts lack.
Collecting States of Desire
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $40–$100
- Very good/very good: $15–$40