Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement
Randy Shilts, Mark Thompson
ISBN 10: 0312131143 / ISBN 13: 9780312131142
Published by St Martins Pr, 1995
Bibliographic Details
Title: Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History ...
Publisher: St Martins Pr
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Good
About this title
Synopsis:
News stories, essays, cartoons, interviews, and more than one thousand photographs, all culled from the pages of the leading homosexual publication,
chronicle the gay rights movement over the past twenty-five years. Reprint.
From Kirkus Reviews:
This handsomely produced large-format volume traces over 25 years of the gay and lesbian movement's history through the pages of its foremost
newsmagazine, the Advocate. (Thompson is senior editor). This is an appropriate choice for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, generally
considered the birth of the modern gay and lesbian movement in the US. Going year by year, this volume offers a survey of major political, cultural,
social, and medical events in the history of the gay and lesbian movement, as reported in the Advocate since its inception in September 1967. Each year
receives a single chapter, with an opening essay by a prominent gay or lesbian journalist or author, a chronology of key events of the year, and a selection
of articles drawn from the magazine. The book takes readers from a time when homosexuality was treated as a pathology, and when gays and lesbians
were for the most part unorganized and deep in the closet, to 1992, when a vocal gay and lesbian movement helped elect Bill Clinton president. The book
is relentlessly honest about the divisions within the gay and lesbian communities (particularly concerning the growing AIDS crisis as it broke in the mid-
1980s) and earnestly self-critical in its evaluation of the magazine's coverage of many issues (shortchanging lesbians and people of color in its earlier
days). Many interviews are excerpted, with subjects as diverse as Jesse Jackson, Christopher Isherwood, Milton Berle, and Michel Foucault. Readers can
also see the Advocate itself evolve from a spirited amateurism into a magazine of exceptionally high journalistic standards. A useful and relatively
comprehensive guide to nearly 30 years of gay and lesbian history, but one wishes for fewer and longer excerpts. Also, the magazine's excellent
cartoonists get somewhat short shrift. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
