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A review by rebeccacider
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
3.0
This was a solid, well-researched book, and basically readable even though it skewed academic in its language. I didn't get a lot out of it, but it's a good introductory text.
One thing to note is that the book is very much a history not of the United States in totality, but of the contemporary LGBTQ community. It's a "how did we get here" kind of read. This is all well and good, but I thought there could have been better coverage of racial minorities (especially non-Black people of color), indigenous communities, the Latin American world, and rural/working-class/non-visible folks whose experiences didn't survive to become the "gay community" as we now imagine it.
As an example of what I was hoping to see: I remember my American women's history professor including lessons on Native American and West African women. Even though these histories were subsumed by European imperialism, we still studied them. In Bronski's defense, I'd hazard a guess that we don't have enough academics writing about the queer history of marginalized people, sad face.
One thing to note is that the book is very much a history not of the United States in totality, but of the contemporary LGBTQ community. It's a "how did we get here" kind of read. This is all well and good, but I thought there could have been better coverage of racial minorities (especially non-Black people of color), indigenous communities, the Latin American world, and rural/working-class/non-visible folks whose experiences didn't survive to become the "gay community" as we now imagine it.
As an example of what I was hoping to see: I remember my American women's history professor including lessons on Native American and West African women. Even though these histories were subsumed by European imperialism, we still studied them. In Bronski's defense, I'd hazard a guess that we don't have enough academics writing about the queer history of marginalized people, sad face.