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Staff Pick
I was looking for a book to "teach me my history" (and then some) and this book was it!
Expanding well beyond the famous event itself, author Duberman explores not only Stonewall and the pre-Stonewall queer rights movement, but also the day-to-day life of LGBTQ+ individuals in a pre-Stonewall world. The details of these events are shown through the eyes of six people who lived through it all. In making this work part-history and part-biography, Duberman is able to offer exquisite insight and emotional weight to the oft joyous, oft tragic, always lavish history that laid the foundation for, and that is, the Stonewall Uprising. Recommended By Nickolas J., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The definitive account of the Stonewall Riots, the first Gay Rights March, and the LGBTQ activists at the center of the movement.
"Martin Duberman is a national treasure."--Masha Gessen, The New Yorker On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life.
In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history. With riveting narrative skill, he recreates those revolutionary, sweltering nights in vivid detail through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Their stories combine into an unforgettable portrait of the repression that led up to the riots, which culminates when they triumphantly participate in the first Gay Rights March of 1970, the roots of today's Pride Marches.
Fifty years after the riots, Stonewall remains a rare work that evokes with a human touch an event in history that still profoundly affects life today.