Description

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Histories of gay and lesbian urban life typically focus on major metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York, opportunity-filled destinations for LGBTQ migrants from across the country. Yet there are many other queer communities in economically depressed cities with majority Black and Hispanic populations that receive far less attention. Though just a few miles from New York, Newark is one of these cities, and its queer histories have been neglected—until now. 
 
Queer Newark charts a history in which working-class people of color are the central actors and in which violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire. Drawing from rare archives that range from oral histories to vice squad reports, this collection’s authors uncover the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches. Exploring the intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality, they offer fresh perspectives on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, community relations with police, Latinx immigration, and gentrification, while considering how to best tell the rich and complex stories of queer urban life. Queer Newark reveals a new side of New Jersey’s largest city while rewriting the history of LGBTQ life in America. 

 

About the Author

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WHITNEY STRUB is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark, where he co-directs the Queer Newark Oral History Project. His many books include Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression. 
 

Praise For…

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"While it amazes me to be part of any history, I was honored to have been included in the queer history of Newark, New Jersey. Working with the LGBTQ+ community, I had no idea I was helping to create a stronger, more resilient story. Queer Newark documents our journeys, with the end result being this must-read tome." 
— Gary Paul Wright