Local Book Notes: Queer Clout

Plus: Hitler, Hoodie & Staten Island

“The political mobilization of gays and lesbians in Chicago relied in part on a fragile alliance with the city’s black community,” Hunter Clauss writes for WTTW.
“That’s just one of many fascinating revelations captured in the book, Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics by Timothy Stewart-Winter, a University of Chicago alumnus who currently teaches history at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.
“Queer Clout follows the political rise of Chicago’s LGBT community, from fighting against police raids of the city’s gay bars to being courted by the city’s first African-American mayor, Harold Washington.”

You can read an excerpt at the link. Here’s the author on Chicago Tonight:

From the publisher:
“In postwar America, the path to political power for gays and lesbians led through city hall. By the late 1980s, politicians and elected officials, who had originally sought political advantage from raiding gay bars and carting their patrons off to jail, were pursuing gays and lesbians aggressively as a voting bloc – not least by campaigning in those same bars. Gays had acquired power and influence. They had clout.
“Tracing the gay movement’s trajectory since the 1950s from the closet to the corridors of power, Queer Clout is the first book to weave together activism and electoral politics, shifting the story from the coastal gay meccas to the nation’s great inland metropolis. Timothy Stewart-Winter challenges the traditional division between the homophile and gay liberation movements, and stresses gay people’s and African Americans’ shared focus on police harassment. He highlights the crucial role of black civil rights activists and political leaders in offering white gays and lesbians not only a model for protest but also an opening to join an emerging liberal coalition in city hall.”
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Latina/o Poetry Off The Shelf
“The poetry of Roberto Bolaño, Gabriel García Márquez and Eduardo Galeano is among the most vivid and haunting in contemporary literature,” the Poetry Foundation says.
“Watch some of Chicago’s finest actors bring to life some of the outstanding writings of these three uniquely Latin American artists. In conjunction with the upcoming premiere productions of José Rivera’s Another Word for Beauty and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (adapted for the stage by Robert Falls and Seth Bockley), Goodman Theatre presents an in-depth look at the remarkable range of contemporary Latina and Latino writers working in theater with ‘A Celebration of Latina/o Artists.'”
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BeachBook

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Posted on February 25, 2016