When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History

Ryan, founder of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, debuts with a lively, character-filled portrait and well-researched analysis of Brooklyn’s queer social landscape between Walt Whitman’s 1855 publication of Leaves of Grass and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. Ryan asserts that queer communities develop where there is available work for queer people and identifies the Brooklyn waterfront as offering appealing opportunities for the “sailor, artist, sex worker, entertainer, and female factory worker.” In the late 19th century, Ryan recounts, when culture was highly segregated by gender, sex between sailors and “Boston marriages” among women went largely unnoticed. Queerness became more visible in the decades prior to WWI, when psychologists labeled gay people as “inverts” (i.e., having inner traits of the “opposite” sex), gender-nonconforming behavior was criminalized, and female drag performers challenged gender roles. In the 1930s and ’40s, Brooklyn saw the flourishing of a vibrant artistic community whose queer players included magazine editor George Davis, novelist Carson McCullers, and poet Marianne Moore. Postwar, Brooklynites such as Curtis Dewees and Edward Sagarin founded early “homophile” activist organizations. Ryan acknowledges that much well-known history focuses on cis white gay men and is careful to curate available materials about the experience of lesbians and black people, drawing from letters and reading between the lines of reports of crime or deviance. This evocative and nostalgic love song to the borough and its flamboyant past offers a valuable broadening of historical perspective. Photos. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)