How To Be a Real Gay takes its title from a series of workshops organised by gay activists in the small town of Ermelo, South Africa. Focusing on everyday practices of gayness in hair salons, churches, taverns, and meeting halls, the book explores the ambivalent space that homosexuality occupies in the newly democratic South Africa: on the one hand, protection of gay rights is a litmus test for the country's constitutional democracy, yet on the other, homosexuality is seen to threaten traditional values, customs, and beliefs.

The book is the first to emerge that recounts how...