A Queer History of the United States

By: Michael Bronski

Narrated by: Vikas Adams

Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction

The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.

In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to “Publick Universal Friend,” refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. In the mid-nineteenth century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.” And in the late 1920s, Augustus Granville Dill was fired by W. E. B. Du Bois from the NAACP’s magazine the Crisis after being arrested for a homosexual encounter. These are just a few moments of queer history that Michael Bronski highlights in this groundbreaking book.

Intellectually dynamic and endlessly provocative, A Queer History of the United States is more than a “who’s who” of queer history: it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history. Drawing upon primary documents, literature, and cultural histories, noted scholar and activist Michael Bronski charts the breadth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from 1492 to the 1990s, and has written a testament to how the LGBT experience has profoundly shaped our country, culture, and history.

A Queer History of the United States abounds with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history—the ineffectiveness of sodomy laws in the colonies, the prevalence of cross-dressing women soldiers in the Civil War, the impact of new technologies on LGBT life in the nineteenth century, and how rock music and popular culture were, in large part, responsible for the devastating backlash against gay rights in the late 1970s. Most striking, Bronski documents how, over centuries, various incarnations of social purity movements have consistently attempted to regulate all sexuality, including fantasies, masturbation, and queer sex. Resisting these efforts, same-sex desire flourished and helped make America what it is today.

At heart, A Queer History of the United States is simply about American history. It is a book that will matter both to LGBT people and heterosexuals. This engrossing and revelatory history will make readers appreciate just how queer America really is.

Very insightful!

I enjoyed this book as it gives a much more in depth history of queerness than I have found anywhere else

Am intriguing and important history of the U.S.

honestly, this was a great title. There were definitely some issues that I had with some of the language being outdated, but I also have to remember that this book came out 10 years ago, and much of the language in the LGBTQ community has changed since then.

Keeping that in mind, this is one of the more informative and interesting looks at the history of the United States of America through the lens of its LGBTQ population, which has been and always will be there. I would highly recommend this to anyone, especially those who feel that there's no history for queer individuals. This book nicely lays out how vital the LGBTQ community has been to the formation of this country.

Thought Provoking

This book was consistently interesting and thought-provoking. I found the epilogue to be particularly well written and challenging. In it, Bronski makes persuasive arguments, drawing on and giving new life to the elements from the history he had introduced in the body of the book. I was, honestly, surprised by some of his arguments. He caught me leaning toward simpler, cliched ways of thinking about our moment in history. I might end up clinging to some of my simpler thoughts about lgbt assimilation, but I enjoyed and cannot easily dismiss his way of framing queer history. The reader is talented, but I found the performance distracting (to me, some aspects of the performance seemed mismatched to the content).

Methodical & Comprehensive

There are moments where the narrative was a bit dry. However digging in I found the the dry bits were crucial for a better understanding of the inevitable point.

Even better than I expected

At first I thought I might never actually get through this much book, but it actually went by quick due to the compelling content and skillful reading. We're here, we're queer... oh, you know the rest.