Accordingto Didier Eribon, melancholy is where it all starts and where it also ends: thelifelong process of mourning that each homosexual experiences, and throughwhich they construct their own identity. In this beguiling book, anintroverted, anxious, ambitious, artistically gifted queer Filipino-Canadianboy finds solace, inspiration, and a 'syllabus for living' in art - works ofliterature and music, from the children's literary classic Anne of Green Gables to the music of Maria Callas. But theircontribution to his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual edification beliesthe fact that they were largely heteronormative and white, which had the effectof invisibilizing him as a queer person of color.

Part memoir, part culturalcommentary, and a hybrid of besotted aesthetic appreciation and unsparingcritique, Double Melancholy is by turns a passionate love letter to artand an embattled examination of its oppressive complicity with the society thatproduces it, and the depths to which art both enriches and colonizes us.