Out and Proud in Chicago takes readers through the long and rich history of the city's LGBT community. Lavishly illustrated with color and black-and white-photographs, the book draws on a wealth of scholarly, historical, and journalistic sources. Individual sections cover the early days of the 1800s to World War II, the challenging community-building years from World War II to the 1960s, the era of gay liberation and AIDS from the 1970s to the 1990s, and on to the city's vital, post-liberation present.

Lillian Faderman tells the compelling story of lesbian life in the 20th century, from the early 1900s to today's diverse lifestyles. Using journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous interviews, she relates an often surprising narrative of lesbian life. "A key work...the point of reference from which all subsequent studies of 20th-century lesbian life in the United States will begin."--San Francisco Examiner.

The fight for gay, lesbian and trans civil rights is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, The Gay Revolution tells this unfinished story not through dry facts but through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind.

Long before the rise of the modern gay movement, an unnoticed literary revolution was occurring between the covers of the cheaply produced lesbian pulp paperbacks of the post-World War II era. In 1950, publisher Fawcett Books founded its Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the reign of lesbian pulp fiction. These were the books that small-town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions -- cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers. Forwomen leading straight lives, here was confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, "gay" places like Greenwich Village existed. Some -- especially those written by lesbians -- offered sympathetic and realistic depictions of "life in the shadows," while others (no less fun to read now) were smutty, sensational tales of innocent girls led astray. In the overheated prose typical of the genre, this collection documents the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America.

Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay Writing is a lively and accessible biographical guide to lesbian and gay literary culture, from Sappho to modern pulp fiction. Featuring authors of works with lesbian or gay content as well as known lesbian and gay writers, this volume opens the boundaries of this field to include the writers of popular cultural fiction. It places these alongside the canon of poets, dramatists and novelists, to acknowledge the importance of pop culture to gay and lesbian communities. It includes fascinating entries on authors from W.H. Auden to Alice Walker, James Baldwin to Virginia Woolf. Also included are those such as Judith Butler who have theorised lesbian and gay culture and writing, or have contributed to the uncovering and charting of this vibrant literary history. Fully cross referenced, and with suggestions for further reading, this book offers an invaluable guide to a rich and varied literary culture and is indispensable for anyone with an interest in lesbian and gay writing.

Why is shame so central to our identity and to our culture? What is its role in stigmatizing subcultures such as the Irish, the queer or the underclass? Can shame be understood as a productive force? In this lucid and passionately argued book, Sally R. Munt explores the vicissitudes of shame across a range of texts, cultural milieux, historical locations and geographical spaces - from eighteenth-century Irish politics to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, from contemporary US academia to the aesthetics of Tracey Emin. She finds that the dynamics of shame are consistent across cultures and historical periods, and that patterns of shame are disturbingly long-lived. But she also reveals shame as an affective emotion, engendering attachments between bodies and between subjects - queer attachments. Above all, she celebrates the extraordinary human ability to turn shame into joy: the party after the fall. Queer Attachments is an interdisciplinary synthesis of cultural politics, emotions theory and narrative that challenges us to think about the queerly creative proclivities of shame.

A richly illustrated cultural history of the midcentury pulp paperback "There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."--a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951) American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities. Drawing on extensive original research, Paula Rabinowitz unearths the far-reaching political, social, and aesthetic impact of the pulps between the late 1930s and early 1960s. Published in vast numbers of titles, available everywhere, and sometimes selling in the millions, pulps were throwaway objects accessible to anyone with a quarter. Conventionally associated with romance, crime, and science fiction, the pulps in fact came in every genre and subject. American Pulp tells how these books ingeniously repackaged highbrow fiction and nonfiction for a mass audience, drawing in readers of every kind with promises of entertainment, enlightenment, and titillation. Focusing on important episodes in pulp history, Rabinowitz looks at the wide-ranging effects of free paperbacks distributed to World War II servicemen and women; how pulps prompted important censorship and First Amendment cases; how some gay women read pulp lesbian novels as how-to-dress manuals; the unlikely appearance in pulp science fiction of early representations of the Holocaust; how writers and artists appropriated pulp as a literary and visual style; and much more. Examining their often-lurid packaging as well as their content, American Pulp is richly illustrated with reproductions of dozens of pulp paperback covers, many in color. A fascinating cultural history, American Pulp will change the way we look at these ephemeral yet enduringly intriguing books.

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems.

From homicidal homos to locked-up lesbians, and almost every sexually dangerous combination in between, Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback is the first complete expose of queer sexuality in mid-twentieth century paperbacks. Compellingly written by historian Susan Stryker, Queer Pulp gives a complete overview of the cultural, political, and economic factors involved in the boom of queer paperbacks. With chapters covering gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexually oriented books, a lively overview of the genres, and loads of scorching paperback covers, Queer Pulp reveals the complicated and fascinating history of alternative sexual literature and book publishing. Featuring the work of well-known authors such as W. Somerset Maugham and Truman Capote to the low-brow and no-brow scribes who worked under several names, Queer Pulp is the entertaining and informative introduction to these lost, salacious literary genres.

A three-volume survey of more than 400 years of lesbian and gay history and culture in the United States, presented through over 500 alphabetically arranged entries. Coverage includes people, public policy, economics, social issues, identities, and culture, among many others. For students, researchers, and general readers.

The classic pulps were detective stories, horror, fantasy, and science fiction, but in the midst of this melange developed a significant subcategory of lurid, titillating tales of lesbian love. Aimed primarily at a heterosexual audience they offered readers a glimpse into a secret world of illicit passion and scandalous sex between delicious and devilish dames. This book is the first to be devoted to the cover art of these wildly wicked novels. Bold, kitschy, colourful, they are fraught with sexual tension. Includes 200 full colour illustrations.