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A review by emmeline
Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two by Allan Bérubé
challenging
emotional
informative
I found this to be a great resource for learning about a specific element of queer history. I don’t have a star rating for this since I don’t think it applies.
Coming Out Under Fire is written similarly to a history textbook in the way information is provided. I liked the stories and personal statements from gay and lesbian veterans the best. I wish there were more of these or that those sections were longer. I also liked that Berube discussed intersectionality in terms of racism and homophobia in the military. I again wish these segments were longer and discussed in more detail as they tended to be along the lines of “and also the military was racist as well as homophobic.” I feel that overall this is a fantastic book and a good starting point for better understanding of the history of homophobic policies in the US military.
Just a small final note the ebook edition is not formatted well. Early on the footnote text is placed in the middle of a random paragraph on the next page which caused some confusion. Also the way the photos and descriptions were placed often put them in the middle of a paragraph so you have to scroll through pages of photos and unrelated text to get back to the topic at hand. Finally the ebook I had didn’t count the page numbers correctly, this is a small thing and easy to ignore but it counted the pages in the 6,000 range instead of 300 which freaked me out a little. Overall good book but a physical copy would probably be more enjoyable and easier to read.
Coming Out Under Fire is written similarly to a history textbook in the way information is provided. I liked the stories and personal statements from gay and lesbian veterans the best. I wish there were more of these or that those sections were longer. I also liked that Berube discussed intersectionality in terms of racism and homophobia in the military. I again wish these segments were longer and discussed in more detail as they tended to be along the lines of “and also the military was racist as well as homophobic.” I feel that overall this is a fantastic book and a good starting point for better understanding of the history of homophobic policies in the US military.
Just a small final note the ebook edition is not formatted well. Early on the footnote text is placed in the middle of a random paragraph on the next page which caused some confusion. Also the way the photos and descriptions were placed often put them in the middle of a paragraph so you have to scroll through pages of photos and unrelated text to get back to the topic at hand. Finally the ebook I had didn’t count the page numbers correctly, this is a small thing and easy to ignore but it counted the pages in the 6,000 range instead of 300 which freaked me out a little. Overall good book but a physical copy would probably be more enjoyable and easier to read.