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It sounds simple but it's a very important factor in why he's perhaps this countries' greatest historian. The book also explains why LGBT people can't 'hide' their minority sttaus and uniqueness the way many people think they can or expect them to.
Perhaps I exaggerate a tad, but he zeros in on a singular event in US civil rights history and creates a classic piece of historical reading. Martin Duberman's Stonewall should be required reading for everyone in the US.
This book explains why LGBT people are still fighting for rights that many straight people either disregard as essential or simply don't think "those people" deserve. Yes, LGBT struggles for acceptance and justice is part of our civil rights movement in the United States, along with the United Farm workers, Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson and the Equal Rights Amendment.
I grew up across the Bay from San Francisco/Castro so the LGBT was never an alien concept to me, yet even in the Bay Area homophobia existed and still does. Best of all though, Duberman is a gay historian who does NOT want 'to be straight.' Just as his most famous biographical subject, the African America radical entertainer, Paul Robeson, did not want to be white.
The photos are amazing, the book is exciting, as a straight woman, I cried tears of sadness and joy--don't miss out.
For those unfamiliar with the word, "Stonewall" was a gay bar of the 1960s Greenwich Village district in New York. While all their stories are interesting, several of the people involved were neither part of the pre-Stonewall movement nor a factor in the riot, and the result is less of the hard fact that we want to see in favor of an excessively "political correct" array of characters whose stories never really seem to add up to any cohesive statement. In a 282 page text, neither Stonewall nor the riots are mentioned until page 181--and Dubberman's account of the riots is all of twenty pages long.So what, then, is this book actually about.
The resulting confrontation spilled into the street and quickly exploded into a full-blow riot that continued on and off for several days.Although it received little coverage by mainstream media, the incident was quickly recognized by many in the gay and lesbian community as a turning point, and the gay rights movement suddenly became activistic in tone. In an effort to render a sprawling subject more manageable, Dubberman focuses on six individuals: Yvonne Flowers, Jim Fouratt, Foster Gunnison Jr., Karla Kay, Sylvia Ray Rivera, and Craig Rodwell. Like most gay bars of its place and time, it was mafia operated and kept its doors open through repeated pay-offs to a corrupt police beaurocracy; even so, in an era when gays and lesbians were considered intrinsically criminal it was subject to repeated raids and its staff and customers were often arrested.In the early morning hours of 28 June 1969, police officers conducted such a raid--but instead of encountering a fearful, easily managed crowd, they ran afoul of a handful of people who had had enough of police intimidation and harassment.
STONEWALL attempts to place the riots in historical context, and as such it is actually about the earlier gay and lesbian organizations, movememts, and leaders who by accident or design helped lead the gay community to critical mass. That activism would shape the drive toward decriminalization, an increasing openess, and a determination to obtain equal rights that continues to direct gay and lesbian issues to this day.Given its central role in a controversial social movement, the Stonewall riots are more than worthy of a detailed examination by a major historian, and certainly Martin Duberman is all of that, a highly respected academian and noted author who is particularly noted for his documentation of the gay experience in 20th Century America. But in truth, you will find out very little about the riots from his 1993 book STONEWALL.
In each instance Dubberman presents us with a general biography of each, interweaving one with another, showing how each person drifted into the movement--and then uses the overall narrative to create a portrait of gays and lesbians in the pre-Stonewall era and the impact the Stonewall riots had on their individual lives.It is an interesting concept, but there is a significant problem. While it will be interesting to any one who wishes to read in depth on the subject, this is not the text on the 20th Century gay rights movement with which to begin or end your reading.GFT, Amazon Reviewer
The bar itself is colorfully described as sleazy and small, much like William Burroughs' Interzone. Author Duberman traces the consciousness leading up to Stonewall-era Gay Power and Liberation through a carefully-selected (and politically correct) lens: the old gay guard, the new gay guard, the lesbian take, the TG take and the black take. "Suddenly they were not submissive anymore" - Deputy Inspector Pine, who commanded the Stonewall raid.Not a definite account, but a novel one, filled with 'great men and women of history,' sometimes participating, sometimes observing. No doubt, the acute history of the June 27-29 actions, recounted 'journalistically' here, are, and will be, forever debated, amended and venerated for many a decade to come. It rather adds up to the ostentatiously diverse format of the X-Men, and reads as entertainingly. Jim Fouratt is the 'Wolverine' of the group, and the dramatic center of the narrative, representing "the new kind of gay man beginning to emerge: the hippie, long-haired, bell-bottomed, laid-back, and likely to have 'weird,' radical views" - which, by association, places Stonewall securely into the mythology of the Sixties. Not a conclusive take, but one with a compelling pace. Great stuff.
The six people are Yvonne (Maua) Flowers, Jim Fouratt, Foster Gunnison Jr, Karla Jay, Silvia Rae Rivera, and Craig Rodwell. Finally, Craig Rodwell was a young member of the Mattachine Society and tried to turn it more radical and relevant by recruiting young members into it to infuse it with energy, and later opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore. So I picked up Stonewall to brush up on some Queer history, especially since the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York are often cited as being a turning point in the acceptance of anything but straight as an arrow by mainstream society at all. Anyone growing up has heard "fag" as a basic insult in the grammer of teenagers and beyond, and I really suspect there's a lot of people who are in the closet in some way that know that if they came out at all of even being remotely attracted to members of the same sex (however you want to define that), then they would become an instant target for former friends and family.
After this, the Gay Liberation Front was founded to push for confrontation and demand, not request, full equality with straight society. It all the sudden became alright to be out in the open. Today, nothing seems to polarize so many people. Some like Jim Fouratt were previously involved in radical left-wing groups like the Yippies before Stonewall brought gay issues as an issue to be seriously considered. Without going to far, the Stonewall Riots started when the police raided the notoriously seedy, and Mafia-run, Stonewall Bar.
The next day, as news of gays fighting back spread quickly, people took to the street and made a statement that they would no longer be silent second-class citizens. Stonewall details the lives of seven different individuals from their childhoods, to the day they came out of the closet, to their lives afterward and up until the stonewall riots, and the aftermath. Yvonne Flowers felt out of place wherever she went, being a black lesbian and therefore subject to homophobia and sexism in much of the black community and racism in much of the white lesbian community. Duberman switches between the individuals stories quickly and suddenly, but each story is indeed pretty interesting.
If there's any one thing that has the potential to evoke instant violence from individuals, it's the idea of homosexuality. Raids were common place and often were proceeded with warnings, bribes, and such, but this time after the police roughed up a few people, the crowd fought back. It escalated into a full scale attack on the police and lots of pent up rage was unleashed. The effects on the characters reminded me of the effect that the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization had on me when I was a teenager. Karla Jay was a student who became involved with left-wing activism but quickly was uncomfortable about male domination of the movement. Even today as there seems to be an enormous backlack by the Christian Right to attack the rights of people to be attracted to anyone, or to BE anyone, that they feel like, and to have access to all of the same health, jobs, and life that any straight person would, it really was the beginning of hope back in an age of closets and not being able to even talk. It's even worse in the countryside than in the cities, too.
This was a beginning of change, before even the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. Foster Gunnison Jr was the son of an industrialist, and became extremely involved in the moderate Mattachine Society, which sought to seek an understanding with straight society. Silva Rae Rivera defiantly strikes the reader as one of the most interesting, as she lives on the streets as a queen, and transvestite. The book itself can be a little confusing at points as Dr. Stonewall should be read by anyone who believes in the right of anyone to struggle for a better life for themselves and those they care about.
I got this book for a analytical book review for my social movements class and it did a good job in detailing the events before, during, and as well as after the Stonewall riots. David Carter evidently put a lot of hard work into creating what I think is a masterpiece. I believe this book has something to teach everyone, no matter who you are.
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