July 6, 2015
Faderman (Naked in the Promised Land), a scholar of lesbian history and literature, renders the slow transformation of culture into a sweeping narrative of the American struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. She digs deep into media and legislative archives to construct a comprehensive narrative, beginning in the 1950s with the scapegoating of homosexuals under “vag-lewds” law and the first formulation of homosexuals as a minority group, and continuing to the current and recent legal fights around the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), hate crime legislation, and marriage equality. Faderman depicts the struggle as a conflict between “suits and streets,” offering balanced coverage of both meticulous lobbying from the government, military, and professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association, and the rapid changes wrought by historical radicalizations such as the Stonewall riots, the Harvey Milk riots, and the aggressive medical activism of ACT UP. First-person accounts from over 100 interviews conducted as original research for the book punctuate this extraordinary story. Faderman’s immense cultural history will give today’s LGBTQ activists both a profound appreciation of their forebears and the motivation to carry the struggle forward.
Starred review from August 1, 2015
A Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Awardwinning author, scholar, and retired college professor, Faderman has crafted an epic yet remarkably intimate work that belongs among the most definitive civil rights titles, LGBTQ-specific or otherwise. Based on more than 150 interviews and the author's exhaustive research, The Gay Revolution begins by recalling the government's gay witch hunts of the 1950s and spans the next six and a half decades of the ongoing struggle for legal and societal equality. All of the prominent landmarks of the gay rights movement (the Stonewall riots; Anita Bryant's Save Our Children political coalition; Don't Ask, Don't Tell) are covered thoroughly, but Faderman's writing conveys such fresh passion that readers will feel like they are experiencing these history-altering moments in real time. However, it's the lesser-told storiessuch as the rise and eventual decline of the early gay rights group, the Mattachine Society, and its founder, Harry Hay, who went on to start the Radical Faeries movementthat bring voice to the brave, trailblazing heroes who risked so much to help chip away at the hostile and pervasive intolerance that once singularly defined the homosexual American experience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This book is destined to be one of the lasting contributions to the literature of the gay rights movement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
April 1, 2015
Winner of six Lambda Literary Awards, two Stonewall Book Awards from the American Library Association, and Yale's James Robert Brudner Memorial Prize and Lecture for Exemplary Scholarship in Lesbian/Gay Studies, Faderman is clearly the person to write a history of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, from the 1950s onward. Drawing on extensive research, as well as 150 interviews; likely to be engrossingly written and seen as definitive.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from July 1, 2015
One of queer history's founding scholars, Faderman (Gay L.A.), has written a sweeping and moving narrative that chronicles the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) citizenship rights from World War II to the turn of the milennium. In ten thematic, roughly chronological sections, the author offers readers familiar names and events masterfully woven to show how a scrappy postwar homophile movement grew into the politically conscious and politically diverse community we have today. Across nearly 70 years of political organizing, an abiding tension emerges between assimilationists and sexual radicals: those who want to be seen as "normal" and those who argue that "gay is good" and culturally distinct from a heteronormative way of life. As Faderman shows, this intramovement tension remains evident today. If this work has a weakness it is a by-product of Faderman's laudable ambition: big-picture narratives inevitably shortchange individual stories. Nonurban, nonpoliticized queer experiences also continue to be underexplored. Still, this volume will deservedly become a standard in the field. VERDICT Well suited to undergraduate courses in LGBTQ history, this book is highly recommended for readers interested in the 20th-century politics of sexual identity and the history of social justice activism. [See Prepub Alert, 3/9/15.]--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from July 15, 2015
The history of the struggle for gay rights in the United States. In this superbly researched book, acclaimed LGBT scholar Faderman (My Mother's Wars, 2013, etc.) examines the roots of the sociopolitical movement that, for the last 60 years, has worked to achieve justice for LGBT people. The author begins in the 1950s, when "the government, the law, the church, [and] the psychiatric profession all colluded to tell homosexuals they were guilty just by being who they were." Yet a brave few individuals-e.g., Harry Hay, Phyllis Lyon, and Del Martin-took action by creating organizations intended to offer safe alternatives to gay and lesbian bars. In these groups, homosexuals could offer each other support and seek the respect they desired from mainstream heterosexual society. As the organizations grew, they assimilated ideas from such political catalysts as the burgeoning civil rights movement. By 1969, the Stonewall riots revealed a far more radicalized community, contingents of which created political groups that actively agitated for civil rights rather than simple respect. Mainstream society responded with "family values" movements led by such icons as Anita Bryant. Her anti-gay zeal actually worked to unite the LGBT community and help its members push for political change at the local and then, into the 1980s and beyond, national levels. Faderman documents the tragedy of AIDS and how that epidemic also brought together gays and lesbians and created a still greater sense of solidarity among homosexuals, who, by the 1990s, had begun to press for workplace protections as well as recognition of gay and lesbian families. The author concludes with the Supreme Court's 2013 decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, specifically its provision that marriage be defined in heterosexual terms only. Throughout this engaging and extremely well-documented book, Faderman clearly shows that for the LGBT community, equality is not a completed goal. Yet the ideal of fully integrated citizenship is closer to becoming reality than ever before. Inspiring and necessary reading for all Americans interested in social justice.
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