Book-It 'o9! Book #50
More of the Fifty Books Challenge! This was a Goodwill find from a year or so ago.
Title: Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights : 1945-1990 : An Oral History by Eric Marcus
Details: Copyright 1992, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "PRAISE FOR MAKING HISTORY
'Making History is one of the definitive works on gay life. Through this collective testimony we may come to understand what it is to be "the other"; in short, the other part of ourselves.'
-- Studs Terkel
'Make no mistake about it: Making History is a far richer entertainment than its academic title might suggest. I picked it up idly and just kept reading until my eyes grew bleary, riveted by its sheer Dostoevskian sweep; the living breathing, fallible human souls who emerge on every page, their stories interlinking magically to create a saga of conflict and growth spanning half a century. As in the best of novels, there's a little bit of everything along the way: humor, anger, sensuality, poignant self-revelation, and transcendent courage. Eric Marcus not only writes with grace and clarity but makes it look so easy-- the ultimate measure of historian and novelist alike.'
-- Armistead Maupin
'Eric Marcus has created a vivid panorama of 45 years of gay and lesbian struggle. These wide-ranging personal histories provide an indispensable record of where we've been and the apin and joy that have brought us to where we are today.'
-- Neil Miller, author of In Search of Gay America"
Why I Wanted to Read It: The book seemed like essential reading for any student of civil rights.
How I Liked It: This book has taken me almost all year to get through, although it's less than 550 pages. The sadness shook me to my core and stayed there. I had to keep supplementing this book with many happy GLBT books as you've seen on this list.
The book sets out to correct the pre-Stonewall/post-Stonewall divide of generations and take the story straight through forty-five years both pre and post. So we begin in an era intensely unfriendly to the GLBT: post WWII and the rampant McCarthyism (which frequently equated communism with homosexuality and vice versa). These were the stories that bothered me the most, obviously. I'm aware of the if not friendly, then more tolerant attitudes towards the GLBT community during the post WWI era and into the Jazz Age and it's so stultifying to see history "move backward" and for progress to be eroded, akin to AIDS in the 1980s (which when you consider the book is framed in these eras explains the tragedy inherent).
The book isn't stuck in the 'forties and 'fifties, however, not does it only concentrate on any one class, profession, ethnicity, or religion. The stories in the book aren't even told solely by gays and lesbians. Many who tell their tales are supportive straights, a psychologist risking her professional career by testifying that homosexuality is something other than a disease (Evelyn Hooker), a file clerk who finds herself at the center of several civil rights demonstrations in the '60s (Nancy May), a legendary advice columnist who was one of the first straight prominent persons to come out in support of gays and lesbians (Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren), a supportive mother who came to help found PFLAG after seeing her son abused during a gay rights march while the police did nothing (Jeanne Manford), a bishop that equated heterosexism to racism and performed gay civil ceremonies (John Shelby Spong), and many more.
Horror stories of parents who take out an obituary in the paper and buy a headstone when their daughter comes out to them as a lesbian, restaurateurs who refuse to even serve a couple seated together, a fundamentalist Christian daughter who thanks her newly-out lesbian mother with a handshake for being her biological mother before informing her that she intends to never see her again, and the like populate the book and remind us how far we've come-- and how far we've left to go.
The style occasionally grates: "an oral history" doesn't always translate well to text, particularly when the author interviews two people in a chapter. But it largely stays readable and the air of personalization the author no doubt wanted to capture by having each chapter told in the first person by the individual(s) that narrate their stories definitely stays intact.
I would love to see this book updated as it cuts off in the midst of the AIDS crisis. A reprint is only available from a year after the original (and with no new material).
All in all, an essential volume and a priceless capture in the history of the civil rights movement.
Notable: The subject of AIDS comes up, particularly in the fifth and final section of the book. The last page offers a memoriam of individuals interviewed in the chapters that died before the book made it to print: four of the six died of AIDS; we can only imagine how many more there have been since.
Another aspect of the book that marks the era is the separation of gay and lesbian from the other two letters of the GLBT, the bisexual and transgender communities respectively. In at least one instance, an activist is derided for being "only" bisexual. The only mention made of the transgendered are the lamentations of a lesbian activist who wishes that the lesbian community had been more accepting of the trans community. You do get a strong feeling that the idea of uniting the lesbian struggle with the gay male struggle is still somewhat revolutionary and new at the time of the book's publishing. This book has fueled my desire to read up on when the unification of the movement took place and the history of the term "GLBT".
The amazing Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon are mentioned, as well they should be.
Title: Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights : 1945-1990 : An Oral History by Eric Marcus
Details: Copyright 1992, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "PRAISE FOR MAKING HISTORY
'Making History is one of the definitive works on gay life. Through this collective testimony we may come to understand what it is to be "the other"; in short, the other part of ourselves.'
-- Studs Terkel
'Make no mistake about it: Making History is a far richer entertainment than its academic title might suggest. I picked it up idly and just kept reading until my eyes grew bleary, riveted by its sheer Dostoevskian sweep; the living breathing, fallible human souls who emerge on every page, their stories interlinking magically to create a saga of conflict and growth spanning half a century. As in the best of novels, there's a little bit of everything along the way: humor, anger, sensuality, poignant self-revelation, and transcendent courage. Eric Marcus not only writes with grace and clarity but makes it look so easy-- the ultimate measure of historian and novelist alike.'
-- Armistead Maupin
'Eric Marcus has created a vivid panorama of 45 years of gay and lesbian struggle. These wide-ranging personal histories provide an indispensable record of where we've been and the apin and joy that have brought us to where we are today.'
-- Neil Miller, author of In Search of Gay America"
Why I Wanted to Read It: The book seemed like essential reading for any student of civil rights.
How I Liked It: This book has taken me almost all year to get through, although it's less than 550 pages. The sadness shook me to my core and stayed there. I had to keep supplementing this book with many happy GLBT books as you've seen on this list.
The book sets out to correct the pre-Stonewall/post-Stonewall divide of generations and take the story straight through forty-five years both pre and post. So we begin in an era intensely unfriendly to the GLBT: post WWII and the rampant McCarthyism (which frequently equated communism with homosexuality and vice versa). These were the stories that bothered me the most, obviously. I'm aware of the if not friendly, then more tolerant attitudes towards the GLBT community during the post WWI era and into the Jazz Age and it's so stultifying to see history "move backward" and for progress to be eroded, akin to AIDS in the 1980s (which when you consider the book is framed in these eras explains the tragedy inherent).
The book isn't stuck in the 'forties and 'fifties, however, not does it only concentrate on any one class, profession, ethnicity, or religion. The stories in the book aren't even told solely by gays and lesbians. Many who tell their tales are supportive straights, a psychologist risking her professional career by testifying that homosexuality is something other than a disease (Evelyn Hooker), a file clerk who finds herself at the center of several civil rights demonstrations in the '60s (Nancy May), a legendary advice columnist who was one of the first straight prominent persons to come out in support of gays and lesbians (Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren), a supportive mother who came to help found PFLAG after seeing her son abused during a gay rights march while the police did nothing (Jeanne Manford), a bishop that equated heterosexism to racism and performed gay civil ceremonies (John Shelby Spong), and many more.
Horror stories of parents who take out an obituary in the paper and buy a headstone when their daughter comes out to them as a lesbian, restaurateurs who refuse to even serve a couple seated together, a fundamentalist Christian daughter who thanks her newly-out lesbian mother with a handshake for being her biological mother before informing her that she intends to never see her again, and the like populate the book and remind us how far we've come-- and how far we've left to go.
The style occasionally grates: "an oral history" doesn't always translate well to text, particularly when the author interviews two people in a chapter. But it largely stays readable and the air of personalization the author no doubt wanted to capture by having each chapter told in the first person by the individual(s) that narrate their stories definitely stays intact.
I would love to see this book updated as it cuts off in the midst of the AIDS crisis. A reprint is only available from a year after the original (and with no new material).
All in all, an essential volume and a priceless capture in the history of the civil rights movement.
Notable: The subject of AIDS comes up, particularly in the fifth and final section of the book. The last page offers a memoriam of individuals interviewed in the chapters that died before the book made it to print: four of the six died of AIDS; we can only imagine how many more there have been since.
Another aspect of the book that marks the era is the separation of gay and lesbian from the other two letters of the GLBT, the bisexual and transgender communities respectively. In at least one instance, an activist is derided for being "only" bisexual. The only mention made of the transgendered are the lamentations of a lesbian activist who wishes that the lesbian community had been more accepting of the trans community. You do get a strong feeling that the idea of uniting the lesbian struggle with the gay male struggle is still somewhat revolutionary and new at the time of the book's publishing. This book has fueled my desire to read up on when the unification of the movement took place and the history of the term "GLBT".
The amazing Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon are mentioned, as well they should be.