Pain Before the Rainbow

Pain Before the Rainbow: a biomythographical anthology by Jack Cooper is a collection of stories anchored by Anthony's Sin. The anthology includes poetry, essays, and eloquent explorations of life and love. Cooper describes his work as Biomythography, which means weaving together myth, history, and biography in epic narrative form, a style of composition that represents all the ways in which we perceive the truth. He says that Biomythography is not our truth told simply and in a mundane way, but a writing down of our meanings of identity, with the materials of our lives. He asserts that we are the culmination of it all; experiences are painted with imagery, perception, and mostly emotions. Details that become true in the telling. This gripping book chronicles the life of a man who was acutely aware of being gay as a boy in an unaccepting world-a time before the rainbow. Cooper presents an eloquent narrative through a series of stories that engage the reader's mind and heart in this skillfully composed exploration of identity and compelling perspective through the lens of a man who lives and loves outside the lines of the oppressive heterosexual boxes that society and religion drew and that condition boys to think and act according to a preset definition of masculinity. Cooper brilliantly navigates the shame and secrecy, tragedy, and trauma, as well as strength and courage, that grow out of living one's truth in a disapproving and often hurtful world.