BOOKS: STONEWALL IN PRINT
June 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York and American publishers have embraced this landmark with new releases.
BETWEEN April and June, a diverse range of books highlighting the defining moment in US LGBT history hit the shelves.
Award-winning historian Martin Duberman published Stonewall: The Definitive Story Of The LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America back in 1993, and it’s being reissued with a new introduction by the author and an updated title. Duberman re-creates five days of riots and its aftermath through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights.
James Polchin explores the period prior to Stonewall in his book Indecent Advances: A Hidden History Of True Crime And Prejudice Before Stonewall. He recounts stories from the crime pages that were often lurid and euphemistic and, in the process, reveals the hidden history of violence against gay men. Victims were often reported as having made “indecent advances” which effectively reduced murder charges to manslaughter in court.
Rainbow Warrior: My Life In Colour is a memoir by Gilbert Baker, famous for designing the universal symbol of gay pride, the rainbow flag. He relates a repressive childhood in 1950s Kansas, a harrowing stint in the US Army, and, finally, his arrival in San Francisco where he bloomed as both a visual artist and activist. In 1978, Harvey Milk asked him to create a unifying symbol for the growing gay rights movement, and on June 25 of that year, Baker’s rainbow flag debuted at San Francisco’s Gay Liberation Day Parade.
Both The New York Times and the New York Public Library are getting in on the act. The renowned newspaper is partnering with Abrams to publish Pride: Fifty Years Of Parades And Protests From The Photo Archives Of The New York Times. The photos are paired with descriptions of major events from each decade as well as selected reporting, showcasing the victories, setbacks and ongoing struggles of the LGBTQ community.
The Library has edited The Stonewall Reader, drawing from their archives to present a collection of firsthand accounts, diaries, periodic literature and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that document both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. The Library has teamed with publisher Norton to publish a visual survey that showcases the work of photojournalists Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies. Love And Resistance: Out Of The Closet Into The Stonewall Era presents dozens of images that have never been published before, and captures the energy, humour and humanity of the ground-breaking protests that surrounded the Stonewall riots.
Another photography book, We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power And Pride In The History Of Queer Revolution has been produced by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, curators of the Instagram account @lgbt_ history. The book traces queer activism from its roots in late-19 Century
Europe to the gender warriors of today. The book features over 300 images from more than
70 photographers and
20 archives and comes highly recommended by historians like George
Chauncey and Susan Stryker, but also the likes of Anderson Cooper, and Dustin Lance Black.
Oxford University Press are publishing
Out In Time: The Public Lives Of Gay Men From Stonewall To The Queer Generation by Perry N Halkitis, which explores the life experiences of three generations of gay men: the Stonewall, AIDS and Queer generations. Despite generational differences in the lived experiences of young gay men, each era confronts its own unique historical events, realities and sociopolitical conditions, revealing consistencies across time that define and unify the identity formation of gay men. Halkitis also includes the oral histories of 15 diverse gay men, five from each generation.
Marc Stein takes a different approach in his book Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History for NYU Press. Stein does not construct a neatly streamlined narrative of the people and the protests. Instead, he allows multiple truths to find their voices and speak to one another. He also offers stories of queer resistance, courageous accounts of protests, powerful narratives of police repression, and lesser-known stories that were lost in the historical record.
Art historian Jonathan Weinberg has edited a coffee table book for Rizzoli, Art After Stonewall 1969 To 1989, a 20-year visual history of the art that emerged in the wake of Stonewall. Illustrated with more than 200 works, the book focuses on openly LGBT artists like Nan Goldin, Harmony Hammond, Lyle Ashton Harris, Greer Lankton, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie and Andy Warhol, as well as artists such as Diane Arbus, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Karen Finley who engaged with queer subcultures.
Younger readers are not forgotten with a kids’ non-fiction picture book being published by Random House, Stonewall: A Building, An Uprising, A Revolution by Rob Sanders and illustrator Jamey Christoph. Aimed at 5- to 8-year-olds, it is movingly narrated by the Stonewall Inn itself.
Stonewall Riots: Coming In The Streets by Gayle E Pitman is for young adult readers and describes American gay history leading up to the riots, the actual riots and their aftermath. The book includes her interviews with people who were involved or witnessed the protests, and is profusely illustrated with photos, newspaper clippings and other period objects.
While for the young adult market, Michael Bronski and adaptor Richie Chevat have produced A Queer History Of The United States For Young People. Its focus is that queer history didn’t start with Stonewall and explores how LGBTQ people have always been a part of the American identity, contributing to the country and culture for over 400 years. Kicking off with Thomas Morton, who celebrated same-sex love in Boston’s Puritan community in the 1620s!
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