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A review by emdowd
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
3.0
I finished it a whole two weeks before the class I teach starts, do I get a gold star?
I'm curious what my students will think of this - It's denser than I had anticipated but I think my seniors will be able to grapple with it just fine. They won't be reading all of it as much of it falls outside the scope of our class, but I think for the 20th Century it'll do nicely (supplemented with a whole bunch of outside sources including Susan Stryker's "Transgender History" and some film).
I'm disappointed that not only did this center whiteness pretty thoroughly especially after 1492, but ace and bi+ people were left out. Could Bronski not at the very least acknowledged Brenda Howard, Mother of Pride? Or Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known trans woman in the US? I expected more from a book with "queer" in the title.
But you know what, I just got done planning a class on queer identities and activism throughout the 20th Century and that alone was over ambitious of me, maybe I'm being slightly too harsh. It's a lot and it's an ambitious book I'm glad is out there.
I'm curious what my students will think of this - It's denser than I had anticipated but I think my seniors will be able to grapple with it just fine. They won't be reading all of it as much of it falls outside the scope of our class, but I think for the 20th Century it'll do nicely (supplemented with a whole bunch of outside sources including Susan Stryker's "Transgender History" and some film).
I'm disappointed that not only did this center whiteness pretty thoroughly especially after 1492, but ace and bi+ people were left out. Could Bronski not at the very least acknowledged Brenda Howard, Mother of Pride? Or Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known trans woman in the US? I expected more from a book with "queer" in the title.
But you know what, I just got done planning a class on queer identities and activism throughout the 20th Century and that alone was over ambitious of me, maybe I'm being slightly too harsh. It's a lot and it's an ambitious book I'm glad is out there.