The Stonewall Reader
Edited by The New York Public Library
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.
Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, presented by The Publishing Triangle
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June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This expansive collection of documents from the New York Public Library's LGBTQ history archive constructs a vital and dynamic narrative of the early days of gay liberation through the words of activists, writers, and other eyewitnesses. The book follows the movement through the years just before Stonewall, the event itself, and the years after. Plenty of the essays and excerpts are not specifically about Stonewall, but provide a broader picture of inequality and persecution, as with the salacious press coverage of trans woman Christine Jorgensen's transition. The riots are revisited from multiple perspectives: in one piece, activist and journalist Dick Leitsch recounts the events in more or less direct prose; the following piece, by a former Stonewall patron, more lyrically describes the incident as "Mother Stonewall giving birth to a new era." This collection is significant for its inclusion of essays and selections from memoir that provide a more intimate understanding of the movement's history. In a selection from Karla Jay's memoir, the activist recalls protesting homophobia in the feminist community, and an interview with Kiyoshi Kuromiya explores the misogyny and racism in the early stages of the LGBTQ movement. This window into the daily lives of activists and ordinary people fighting passionately against injustice is illuminating and inspiring.
