Title: Bears on Bears: Interviews and Discussions Author: Ron Jackson Suresha Publisher: Alyson A Bear, for readers unfamiliar with gay subcultures, is traditionally a big and/or hairy man. If you’re still puzzled about who or what is a Bear, Allen Ginsberg with his beard and belly and lustiness big enough to match can be seen as an earlier Bear, a Grizzly Adams in a leather beret. Emerging as a definable subgroup in the late 70s and early 80s, the subsequent community groupings were seen as both a reaction against the clone-like slim-lined gays of the time and as an affirmation of masculine health during the early onslaught of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Now with bars, magazines, rallies and even a Survivor winner (remember Richard Hatch?) amongst them, the Bear communities face the challenges that confront most identity-based groups today, such as the massive splintering of subcultures within subcultures, the relationship between identity and liberation politics, and the social, cultural and political positions that can include or exclude large numbers of people based on definitions of acts and occasions. With this is mind, Suresha, a contributor to American Bear magazine, has interviewed a large (no pun intended) variety of Bear-identifying and other men to discover how the communities are engaging with these issues and how they as individuals see themselves as members of the Bear and gay communities. Suresha’s book then is a fascinating collection. With well over 40 interview and roundtables, he’s been able to speak to some of the founders of the “movement” as well as those who are newly identifying and who use the internet as their principle source of community communication. Suresha also talks to those who have been able to make their living through Bear-focused identities such as Bear porn and Bear-focused magazines, the latter often setting the agenda for issue-based discussions on what does or doesn’t constitute a Bear, for example. And if that’s not enough, there’s also discussions with male-identifying female Bears, Bear-chasers (those attracted to but not defined as) and with non-Anglo located Bears who give incisive descriptions about what it’s like to be on the fringe of fringedom. Where Bears on Bears shines through though is its often-unintentional deconstruction of identities, whether gay, Bear, straight, masculine etc, which is amazing considering the book in and of itself is focused on fundamental questions about the nature of those identities it eventually disassembles. It’s not in purely the conversations about post-beardom, a form of thinking that sits alongside post-queer and post-gender theories ie what will define us if we dissolve all identities, if we blur all boundaries enough so that we can’t label or construct? The deconstruction also resides heavily (again, no pun intended) in the discussions with those who have identified as bears for twenty or thirty years and are now asking themselves about their positionings within a community that may no longer want or need them, and vice versa. Bears on Bears is insightful, often hilarious, stimulating and thought provoking. The right balance between conversation and philosophising is maintained throughout and Suresha is to be commended for his commitment to recording and representing such a diverse cross section of Bears. As interesting to non-Bears as it is to Bears, in terms of the questions and challenges it asks all of us about where we see ourselves and who we see ourselves belonging with, Bears on Bears is an important addition to a still-under theorised yet growing range of post-identity material in an era where the question where does one fit in is still unanswered and the possibilities quite rightly endless.