An intimate look at one of culture's most enduring taboos: public sex.
Park Cruising takes a long look at the men who cruise for sex in urban parks. Human rights lawyer Marcus McCann uses park cruising as a point of departure for discussions of consent, empathy, public health, municipal planning, and our relationship to strangers. Prompted by his work opposing a police sting in a suburban park, McCann's ruminations go beyond targeted enforcement and police indifference to violence to examine cruising as a type of world-building.
The result is a series of insightful and poetic walks through history, law, literature, and popular representations of cruising in search of the social value of sex. What McCann ultimately reveals is a world of connection, care, and unexpected lessons about the value of pleasure.
MARCUS McCANN (he/him) is a lawyer who has been involved in a number of high-profile legal projects in the areas of sexuality and LGBTQ rights. He is a former managing editor of Xtra in Toronto and Ottawa. The author of three previous books, his writing has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and Robert Kroetsch awards, and won the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal for poetry. Born in Hamilton, Marcus now lives in Toronto.
Anansi publishes very good books.
Check out this PARK CRUISING excerpt in @XtraMagazine! In it, author @mmccnn looks at the at the history of Toronto's Marie Curtis Park that was the site of a police sting in 2016. https://t.co/Nsvym88Lfh
Queering the conversation. Fierce, proud and independent LGBTQ2S+ journalism, since 1984. 🌈✨ | 🥇DPA winner for General Excellence 2023
In his new book 'Park Cruising,' author @mmccnn looks at the forces that triggered a police sting of Toronto’s Marie Curtis Park. https://t.co/UXCOlBKyxP
Writer/Poet. New book, ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE, out now. Assistant Professor @tcdenglish. @matthewmarland looks after me. He/him.
This Sunday I'll be chatting to Jack Parlett and Marcus McCann about their books 'Fire Island' and 'Park Cruising' for @ILFDublin, all in the lovely setting of Merrion Square. Come along if you fancy it https://t.co/ejOAKOjdgO
Park Cruising feels immediate and personal in the exact way orator and rhetoritcian Isocrates counselled millennia ago: the emotion and the facts become a combined triumph that delivers McCann's argument straight to the heart.
-- "Xtra"[McCann] shows us the past and the present, and provides us with a vision of how the views of park cruising could and should evolve in the future.
-- "In Magazine"McCann's strong prose explores sex and sex laws in Canada. Park Cruising shows how those laws shape our behaviours and contribute to our urban fabric, but most importantly how they demonize an act that he argues should be joyous and full of pleasure.
-- "The Grind"