Making Trouble

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 JAN. 1992

D'Emilio authored one of the pioneering studies of the birth of the gay movement, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. In this collection, he expands on that work, with forays into gay historiography, the rise of gay and lesbian studies in the university and further explorations of the history of gay and lesbian activism in the U.S. One of the author's greatest strengths is his ability to relate the personal to the political, using an illuminating detail from his own life where applicable to make a larger historical point. Thus, his own early sexual experiences in Times Square come into play in an incisive essay on Women Against Pornography, and the introduction recalls movingly his trajectory from working-class white ethnic kid to gay activist and scholar. Because it is a collection of essays, papers and speeches drawn from a fairly narrow period of time, the book is occasionally repetitive. However, D'Emilio is an engaging writer and a superb historian. The final essay, one of the longest in the book, is a quick history of the movement with particular attention to post-Stonewall (1969) activism; one fervently hopes that it is a hint of what D'Emilio's next book project will be.