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Books of All Time Leading the Parade
The Gay Crusaders, Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker (1972). I obtained my precious copy in 1994 at the International Gay and Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood, and paid $15 for a small paperback originally priced at $1.25. In retrospect, I think I made a great deal. Leading the Parade interviewee Kay Tobin interviewed 15 of the most important lesbian/gay activists of the late '60s/early '70s for this book (Wicker admitted to me, "I think I wrote one page in [The Gay Crusaders], of which one paragraph was not changed. So this book is Kay Tobin's book"), and it may be the gay history book Leading the Parade most closely resembles.
Her profiles gave readers a fine sense of each person's influences, and a concise description of their actions. During my journey around the country for Leading the Parade, I had my copy signed by both authors, and six of the ten living subjects (two have retired completely from movement participation). It is one of my great treasures that no amount of money could ever replace.
The Mayor of Castro Street, Randy Shilts (1982). Gay journalist Randy Shilts wrote only three books, but each one greatly impacted the gay community upon its release. And the Band Played On detailed the foibles of the first years of the AIDS pandemic, and Conduct Unbecoming followed the American military's anti-gay policies and unwarranted hysteria. While Shilts thought Conduct Unbecoming would be his masterpiece and legacy, I still feel his first book, The Mayor of Castro Street, is his best work. However, I will acknowledge my prejudice: I grew up in the Bay Area in the 1970s, and the events chronicled in The Mayor of Castro Street portraying the mythic legend of gay politico Harvey Milk's life (and death in 1978), and the drama and pathos contained therein, are still heartbreakingly real to me more than two decades later. (For those who don't enjoy reading, the real-life events are also displayed in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.) San Francisco in the 1970s was a different world than any of us had seen. Perusing The Mayor of Castro Street returns readers to the daffiness, the hedonism, and the somewhat naïve hopes of a community on the rise. Threatened by right-wing threats in the mid-'70s, it emerged briefly victorious in November 1978 before its titular head (Milk) was assassinated, and AIDS threatened to stop the party altogether. I would argue that it's the most powerfully resonant book on my list.
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, John D'Emilio (1983). In Leading the Parade, I wrote, "Without [gay pioneer and archivist] Jim Kepner, I would never have found the people I needed to interview to make this book a reality. But without John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, I would never have known where to start. SPSC remains the best and most comprehensive book regarding the first two decades of the American lesbian/gay movement." D'Emilio interviewed the movers and shakers of the early gay movement about 20 years before I did, and wrote the best and most thorough book detailing its leaders and their actions from 1940-1970. So while its spirit is pre-Stonewall, SPSC certainly put to rest the myth that the movement sprang ex nihilo from the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. If you already know your post-Stonewall history, consider digging into this book to learn what set the scene for the movement's transformation.
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Vito Russo (1987). While other countries have gotten in on the act, moviemaking remains a quintessential American pursuit. And gay and lesbian characters have played a perceptible role almost since its inception. Books about Hollywood and/or the movie industry came before (Parker Tyler's Screening the Sexes) and after (David Ehrenstein's Open Secret), but I find myself returning to The Celluloid Closet again and again. Russo, himself a militant gay activist in the '70s and AIDS activist in the '80s, analyzed hundreds of films to see how movies portrayed gays on the Silver Screen, and what they said (and didn't say) about us. I think Vito would be pleased to see how much progress has been made since his death in 1992. (This also became a documentary in 1996, narrated by Lily Tomlin. While the film clips and interviews enhance one's experience, I would still recommend that those who enjoy reading not miss Vito's prose.)
Making History, Eric Marcus (1992). Making History convinced me that it was not only possible, but necessary, to write Leading the Parade. Marcus conducted 50 interviews with people involved in the gay movement between 1945-1990 (some only tangentially, others at its forefront), and organized them chronologically. It provides a fantastic cross-section of people of all sexual orientations who contributed to the movement in big and small ways. My quibble with Making History was that, as a reader, I felt I grasped only a small part of who these people were, and why they did what they did. Because I wanted to read a book that profiled the lives of influential lesbians and gays, I wrote Leading the Parade. But, as Alison Bechdel often states in her Dykes to Watch Out For series, I certainly owe my "tip o' the nib" to Eric Marcus.
Unspeakable, Rodger Streitmatter (1995). Again, I'm prejudiced here. Streitmatter wrote the only serious book I know about the gay media generally (although I hear a new one is coming out soon), and it is wonderfully well done. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's both a good resource and a good read. Unspeakable traces the history of gay journalism from Lisa Ben's Vice Versa in 1947-48 to today's contemporary gay journals, as well as highlighting the principals involved, and the controversies that still influence it today. If you want a more serious read that traces the evolution of a writer-driven movement, Unspeakable is for you.
The Girls Next Door, Lindsy Van Gelder and Pamela Robin Brandt (1996). Not enough men read books by or about women. (That's one reason why J.K. Rowling, a woman, used her initials when writing the Harry Potter series.) And not enough people know much about lesbian history. (Frankly, most gay male history writers haven't bothered to learn, and, except for Lillian Faderman and Joan Nestle, too few lesbians have entered the field.) While several books have been written, few received much publicity. (Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon's Lesbian/Woman, a classic in its time (1972), is now somewhat dated. And Bonnie Morris's Eden Built by Eves covers the music festival scene very well.) But probably the most entertaining book profiling the lesbian movement in recent years is The Girls Next Door. Van Gelder and Brandt, a long-term couple, write with great wit and humor about some of the personalities in the lesbian movement, as well as providing a revealing snapshot of the Lesbian Nation in the mid-1990s, during that moment when "lesbian chic" was all the rage. It's a light read, but a rewarding one.
The Other Side of Silence, John Loughery (1998). In The Other Side of Silence, John Loughery proves himself a good word painter on a gigantic canvas: gay male American history in the 20th Century. Despite the breadth of his work, it successfully provides a carefully and artfully selected overview of the evolution of homosexual experience. It's probably the most scholarly book on this list, and perhaps the most challenging read. Yet I think it's still accessible for people who want a broad picture of gay male life in the last century, and it provides more analysis than most of the other works included herein.
Out for Good, Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney (1999). After conducting my initial research and interviews by the end of 1995, I thought I knew most of what there was to know about the American movement of the prior 50 years (including some secrets I'm still keeping). Clendinen and Nagourney ferreted out a lot of other secrets, and they spilled more beans than I did. Many of Leading the Parade's interviewees criticized Out for Good upon its release, but I thought it told the story of the movement from 1969 to 1988 about as thoroughly as any book could. It's big (716 pages), and it's comprehensive (unlike so many books, it covers movement activity outside of San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles), but it's well worth your time. I found a few factual errors, but no book is perfect. If you want to go backstage to see what happened behind the scenes of two decades of movement activity, then Out for Good is for you. But be careful - Julia Phillips was warned "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again," and Clendinen and Nagourney likely won't be welcomed at every activist's table. Nevertheless, I think the book is brilliant. And, like Leading the Parade, it exposes the movement's personalities, "warts and all."
Happy Reading! But for those of you, like myself, who enjoy such like books, my five favorites in that category include Rita Mae Brown's Rita Will, Kate Millett's The Loony-Bin Trip, Judy Nelson's Choices, John Preston's Winter's Light, and Dick Schaap's Gay Olympian (profiling Tom Waddell). Paul D. Cain is the author of a newly-published history, Leading the Parade: Conversations with America's Most Influential Lesbians and Gay Men (Scarecrow Press, 2002) Foreword by GayToday's editor, Jack Nichols. |
Paul D. Cain