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Lillian Faderman has done it again. She has done her research well and has written a very readable history of gays in LA.
I have never met nor have ever heard of this book's authors Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons. Gay culture and books in too many cases are full of fiction, undocumented info. and just made up stuff. If they decide to expand on this book, hopefully they will do the unusual in this gay-literature realm and actually talk to me. I am not a gay activist, as I am referenced (though I am a community activist) and their depiction of the Black community parade I was involved in is absolutely incorrect.
Too often San Francisco is noted as being the leader in the contemporary Gay/Lesbian movement in California. This book, GAY L.A., proves that there was and is more than one large city in our fine State that has played a significant role in the gay movement. Succinct and fascinating, Gay L.A. is a must read.
Style, image and politics of the modern gay liberation movement began there and flourish there to this day.The history of gay L.A, was formulated by the authors who interviewed over 300 people--some famous and some just regular people. Here is both a necessary and essential contribution to our history. Beginning in the early history of our country that take us back to pre-America where we learn of gender roles among the Indians and Spanish missionaries. rightfully deserves to wear the crown designating her "The Queen City".This is not the first book about L.A. parallels the history of gay America.
So much of what is part of gay American history happened in Tinseltown that L.A. The fact that Los Angeles was an important place in the struggle for us to gain equal rights is emphasized and often drawn upon.Faderman and Stout include information that other writers have omitted or for some reason decided not to write about. Basic Books, 2006.Amos Lassen We so badly need a sense of history and Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons give a bit of one in their sprawling study of "Gay L.A." Los Angeles is responsible for much of what we know of as gay life today, so it is fitting that the history of gay L.A. It is from what they heard in these interviews that the authors claim that L.A, and her suburbs ultimately launched the modern age of gay life.
As they move into the modern age they bring us up to date with all of our history on the West coast. There is so much information here that other books will pale in comparison. and there have been other books that have claimed that gay life really began inside of their borders but after reading this book it is hard to imagine anywhere else holding title to the term of the city that began the modern gay world. By using this as a basis for their book, they provide a new way of looking at our history and our culture which gives L.A. as well as what was not.
GO WESTFaderman, Lillian and Timmons, Stuart, "Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians". Perhaps the work is not academic or scholarly but it presents so many facts that are just amazing to read. It is a wonderful study of a wonderful place where we, quite early in our history, were allowed to be who we are. Most important of all the book shows how we, the gay community, developed a political conscience. The writers are well grounded in their fields and write with authority. It is an important book because in order to understand the mindsets of today's gays and lesbians we must know the past. Beginning in the 188os gay culture took root in Los Angeles and it really has not moved from there.
Keep in mind that the past becomes the present and the present becomes the future and that all these periods of time are relative. the designation she so rightfully has earned and deserves.Looking at his book as part of our historical heritage, I am forced as well as pleased to call it definitive. The information presented is endless and the book makes you want to go on and do more research yourself. This is the story of what was good in L.A. Yet the periods of time in the history of Los Angeles coincide with the same periods of time elsewhere and I wonder if we still would have had the same events if Los Angeles had not had them first.
Gay men and women in the post-war era could be arrested simply on suspicion of being gay. is fascinating from beginning to end, from the history of gay and lesbian actors in the 1920s to the LGBT community's political power and media visibility today. Gay L.A. Gay activists were hindered by a legal system that forbade the mailing of any kind of publication that mentioned homosexuality until 1958, when the Supreme Court ruled they too had freedom of speech and press, something a lower court had denied. A surprising number of gay and lesbian cultural institutions had their start in Los Angeles: the Advocate magazine, churches and synagogues, groups representing the diverse ethnic communities in L.A., and countless others. The history of oppression in the 1940s, '50s, and early '60s is especially chilling. If you read the sections on the mid-20th century along with books about that era like The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the DecadesBefore Roe v. Wade, about pregnant unmarried women who were forced to leave home to give birth and relinquish their children, it becomes clearer why nuclear families seemed ubiquitous during the 1950s: Everyone else had been silenced or exiled.
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