The other side of silence

Description

At the time of its publication, this was the only study of gay male history covering the United States since World War I. Based on hundreds of interviews, new and classic texts, and little-known archival sources, an award-winning writer offers the first narrative history to consider signal moments, general trs, and the multiple meanings of "gay identity" in the whole United States from World War I to the AIDS era and "queer" activism. The most readable, authoritative, and comprehensive investigation ever, The Other Side of Silence combines history and anecdote, politics and theory to reveal the personalities and textures of a largely unknown culture. A dramatic chronicle of seventy-five years of persecution and accomplishment, the book addresses both in equal detail: witch hunts in schools and the military, crusades of psychiatrists, the resistance long before Stonewall, the inspiring pioneers and activists. From Newport and the private-party networks of Nebraska and Florida's Emma Jones Society to gay rodeos, athletes, and support groups, here are first-hand accounts of what it has meant (and might mean in the future) to be a sexual outsider in the United States.

First Sentence

In the spring and summer of 1919,only a few months after the Armistice was signed ending the war to end all wars, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, found himself grappling with the embarrassing issue of homosexual sex in the military.

Description

Based on hundreds of personal interviews and archival sources, with close attention to portrayals of gay life in literature, theater, and film, the book begins with the entrapment of gay sailors in Newport, Rhode Island, following World War I. Loughery traces the impact of homosexuality on the century's turbulent times: Jazz Age America, the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, and the present day, when many thousands of Americans have turned the AIDS catastrophe into a moral example of caring for others. Though John Loughery's narrative bears witness to persecution, it turns aside stereotypes about the isolation and loneliness of victims to reveal gay men as accomplished participants in some of the century's most momentous dramas. Vivid portraits abound: Alain Locke, godfather of the Harlem Renaissance; Henry Gerber, founder of ill-fated gay-rights groups in the 192Os; Harry Hay, 195Os visionary; moral-majority foe Bob Kunst; Harvey Milk; Perry Watkins; Larry Kramer; Michael Callen; and many other little-known activists.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The other side of silence: men's lives and gay identities : a twentieth century historyH. Holt1998-01-01
• The Other Side of Silence; Men's Lives and Gay Identities: a Twentieth-Century HistoryHenry Holt and Company1998-07-08
• The other side of silenceH. Holt1999-01-01
• Men's lives and gay identities, a 20th century history.H. Holt1999-01-01
• The Other Side of SilencePaperbackOwl Books1999-06-15