When Brooklyn Was Queer

Read for a book club, wish I liked it better. It was fine. I'm very grateful to have histories like this written for me to read. Just wish it was beter!

There's the rare kind of history book which is strongly written and has a clear narrative and thesis throughout. This book isn't quite that. The author does have a story, one I'm quite interested in. The way LGBT visibility and awareness at times has led to more oppression or conformity or stigmatization. I loved the parts of the book that talk about early Brooklyn queer culture hiding in plain site, or at least between the cracks.

But a lot of the book feels a bit more vague and rambling. Part of the problem is just organization. Each chapter is chunked by eras but the lines are not so clear between, say, 1920s and 1930s. And then within each chapter it's a muddled stream. The book could have done well with subheadings inside the chapter, one every few pages for a new subject / theme. Instead it's all mixed together in a confusing way.

The research is interesting! Some really excellent deep dive scholarship, particularly in the Kinsey archives getting first person narratives. The material from Thomas Painter is particularly interesting.) So were the escapades of Alfred Gross and Dr. George Henry and their 1950s efforts at "helping" homosexuals. The Quaker Emergency Services would make a great book in itself. So I'm grateful to the author for bringing these bits of history to life.

But it's not quite a deep enough book. It's inevitable to compare this to Chauncey's tremendous Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940. But, well, it doesn't quite have the same weight.