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The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.
In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to “Publick Universal Friend,” refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. In the mid-nineteenth century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.” And in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter. These are just a few moments of queer history that Michael Bronski highlights in this groundbreaking book.
Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, noted scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s, and has written a testament to how the LGBT experience has profoundly shaped our country, culture, and history.
A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history—the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the nineteenth century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Most striking, Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex. Resisting these efforts, same-sex desire flourished and helped make America what it is today.
At heart, A Queer History of the United States is simply about American history. It is a book that will matter both to LGBT people and heterosexuals. This engrossing and revelatory history will make readers appreciate just how queer America really is.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
May 10, 2011 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780807044667
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780807044667
- File size: 361 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from January 17, 2011
This enthralling history spans 500 years of evolving perspectives on sexuality in America—from the European settlers' violent responses to the more fluid gender roles of Native Americans to how the birth control pill, which separated sex from reproduction, contributed to the cause of LGBT liberation. Bronski (Pulp Friction), senior lecturer in women's and gender studies at Dartmouth, argues that a queer history of the U.S. is inextricably tied to the more well-known accounts of migrations, wars (his book describes hundreds of Civil War soldiers who were women disguised as men), economics, and philosophical evolutions. Attitudes to sexuality in the U.S. embody a characteristically American "tension between securing personal freedom for individuals" and "desire to protect people." In chapters that deftly balance narrative and history, personal stories and trivia gems (Dr. John Harvey Kellogg promoted Corn Flakes as a diet capable of curbing "the pernicious habit of onanism"), he chronicles not only the public and private lives of gays in America but the changing attitudes toward sex and marriage in the mainstream population. A savvy political, legal, literary (and even fashion) history, Bronski's narrative is as intellectually rigorous as it is entertaining. -
February 1, 2011
Illuminating history lesson integrating the homosexual movement into America's historical landscape. This is the first book in the publisher's ReVisioning American History series.
LGBT expert Bronski (Women's and Gender Studies, Jewish Studies/Dartmouth Coll; Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps, 2003, etc.) contends that gay men and women's contributions to the nation's historical fabric have not always been recognized for their impact. To prove his point, the author ambitiously chronologically traces five centuries of significant, transformational events, people and places in gay history. Bronski reaches back to 1492 to highlight the sexually progressive European influence explorers like Christopher Columbus had on colonial culture and how those ideals locked horns with Puritanical mores. The author equates the injustice of slavery to homosexual oppression and explores the Revolutionary era's strict ideas of gender conformity and the proliferation of same-sex "romantic friendships" in the 18th century. Drawing on countless references from literary texts, gay classics, poetry, journals, newspaper articles and letters, Bronski gives readers a grand tour of queer cultural vantage points. These include the "outlaw culture" of San Francisco, the erotic prose of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, the homoerotic novels that indelibly shaped American literature and the pivotal revolution at the Stonewall Inn riots. The author suggests that as the United States grew in size, so did the tyrannical promotion of the heterosexual union as the "ideal relationship." Evidence of abundant gay soldiers in World War II surprises almost as much as the lengths they took to interact with one another. Considering more recent events, Bronski ends with the AIDS activism of late-'80s radical group ACT UP and the still-simmering gay-marriage argument.
A lucid, cerebral treatise on gay culture from the point of view of a clever historian who maintains that "the heritage of LGBT people is the heritage of Americans." Required reading for both established and newly emerging members of the gay community—and far beyond.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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April 15, 2011
This panoramic survey is less a history of homosexuality in the United States than a reexamination of American mores through a queer lens, a thematic analysis of the ways in which same-sex desire has reflected and shaped American morality over the past 500 years. Calling to mind Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, this is the first title in Beacon's new "ReVisioning American History" series. Bronski (women's and gender studies and Jewish studies, Dartmouth Coll.), who has been writing on LGBT topics for several decades, emphasizes the recurring historical tension between integrationist and anarchist paradigms of homosexuality, and he explores how various political and social movements--including transcendentalism, feminism, progressivism, and the labor and Civil Rights movements--have intersected with and diverged from the struggle for sexual freedom. The epilog covers the past two decades, which Bronski deems too recent to be treated as history. VERDICT Bronski does an impressive job weaving together existing LGBT scholarship with his own theoretical analysis. Recommended for anyone interested in gender, sexuality, or American history and culture.--David Gibbs, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 1, 2019
In this adaptation of his 2011 book for adults, Bronski suggests that the Stonewall riots were precipitated by a great many LGBTQ Americans making their own strides toward liberty. Bronski opens with a discussion of the gender fluidity embraced by some indigenous North American tribes before providing brief biographies of queer individuals from history, along with discussion of changing views on sexuality throughout time. Some figures—Emily Dickinson, Jane Addams, Harvey Milk—will be familiar to readers. More obscure subjects include Jazz Age blues singer Gladys Bentley; 19th-century actor Charlotte Cushman; activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya; and Jose Sarria, the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in the U.S., in 1961. Chavet’s adaptation includes chapters devoted to modern coming-out stories, profiles of contemporary activists, and a look into “the future of queer history.” Readers seeking role models from the past will find an edifying resource and invitation for further exploration into untold stories. Ages 12–up. -
February 1, 2011
Illuminating history lesson integrating the homosexual movement into America's historical landscape. This is the first book in the publisher's ReVisioning American History series.
LGBT expert Bronski (Women's and Gender Studies, Jewish Studies/Dartmouth Coll; Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps, 2003, etc.) contends that gay men and women's contributions to the nation's historical fabric have not always been recognized for their impact. To prove his point, the author ambitiously chronologically traces five centuries of significant, transformational events, people and places in gay history. Bronski reaches back to 1492 to highlight the sexually progressive European influence explorers like Christopher Columbus had on colonial culture and how those ideals locked horns with Puritanical mores. The author equates the injustice of slavery to homosexual oppression and explores the Revolutionary era's strict ideas of gender conformity and the proliferation of same-sex "romantic friendships" in the 18th century. Drawing on countless references from literary texts, gay classics, poetry, journals, newspaper articles and letters, Bronski gives readers a grand tour of queer cultural vantage points. These include the "outlaw culture" of San Francisco, the erotic prose of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, the homoerotic novels that indelibly shaped American literature and the pivotal revolution at the Stonewall Inn riots. The author suggests that as the United States grew in size, so did the tyrannical promotion of the heterosexual union as the "ideal relationship." Evidence of abundant gay soldiers in World War II surprises almost as much as the lengths they took to interact with one another. Considering more recent events, Bronski ends with the AIDS activism of late-'80s radical group ACT UP and the still-simmering gay-marriage argument.
A lucid, cerebral treatise on gay culture from the point of view of a clever historian who maintains that "the heritage of LGBT people is the heritage of Americans." Required reading for both established and newly emerging members of the gay community--and far beyond.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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