The Gay Gift

About the Book

Near the end of the 20th Century, in Northeastern Ohio, two baby girls — one Black, one white — were born on the same day, in the same hospital, to two different mothers, who decided to raise them as twins. They were named Kalila Muhammed and Shayna Cohen. The twin daughters united a happy, loving double-family, one Black-Muslim, one Jewish. When they became teenagers, Shayna discovered she was a Lesbian; Kalila was not. After their first year of college at Kent State University, Shayna suddenly found she was able to begin building a socially-Progressive, solar-powered, urban-village in Cleaveland Heights, Ohio; where she could make it possible for Poor or low-income people — Black, of varied ethnicities, and/or LGBTQ — with or without children, to buy their own homes, and not be trapped in having to rent all their lives. Shayna and the Village she built faced many difficulties over the years: fire, Global-Warming, COVID, huge snow storms, the loss of her first Lover, people who objected to the Village because she managed to make a small profit, traumatic arrest for fraud and larceny, public accusations that she was secretly a Socialist (because she obviously valued Poor people), or that she was a pedophile (because she was Gay). There was a woman who attacked her for cutting-down a large old tree rotting in the Village. Over their lifetimes, the twins came to learn exactly what the Gay Gift really was. . . .

About the Author

Anais Nin once wrote that "We write to taste life twice." In her first life, Barbara G Louise was born Barbara Louise Whittum in Niagara Falls, New York in November of 1943, to ordinary, white, lov-ing, bookish, middle-class parents. She has one brother, a retired Marine Sargent, who was very upset January 6th, 2021, and wanted to lead an armed squad of Marines to Washington, DC to beat-back the attack on Congress. In Barbara's second life, lived while tasting the pleasure of writing The Gay Gift, herself as Shayna Cohen was a much finer human being, and a lot more attractive. At the time the book-in-hand was published, Barbara was 78, in shaky health, living in Cleaveland Heights, Ohio with her long-time same-gender Partner and a cat suffering from PTSD.