Summary

Chapter 5 – Byrd is well-liked at school because he doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. He keeps his father’s homosexuality quiet, preferring not to dwell on it. He also wonders how his mother managed to stay with his father for ten long years. As he has gotten older, Byrd, like most children, finds his father annoying. Lee, meanwhile, feels his time as a poet has come to an end so he shifts into literary criticism. The changing times also bring changes to campus in the way students act and dress, and the way in which conventional authority and institutions are now challenged.

A lesbian Maoist feminist on campus leads a protest against Lee’s magazine because he publishes any poetry at all by men. The student editors of his magazine propose an all-women’s issue, publicly recited by all...