Boston's weekly Gay Community News was the center of the universe during the late 1970s, writes Amy Hoffman in this memoir of gay liberation before AIDS, before gay weddings, and before The L Word. Provocative, informative, inspiring, and absurd, with a small circulation but a huge influence, Gay Community News produced a generation of leaders, writers, and friends. In addition to capturing the heady atmosphere of the times--the victories, controversies, and tragedies--Hoffman's memoir is also her personal story, written with wit and insight, of growing up in a political movement; of her deepening relationships with charismatic, talented, and sometimes utterly weird coworkers; and of trying to explain it all to her large Jewish family.

More than a mere memoir, Hoffman's narrative of her years with the decidedly different Boston journal details the beginnings of what became the gay liberation movement. As she explains the workings of the Gay Community News and its various contributors, Hoffman also explains her relationships with what were to become leaders in a major civil rights movement, some of whom were dedicated to the point of distraction, while others were merely charmingly weird. She closely examines the fragmentation of the movement and its moments of cohesion, its range of goals and behaviors, and the motivations of people to be heard as they entered into what was then a new world and way of thinking. At the same time Hoffman gives an unflinching account of how she explained her lifestyle to her large and traditional Jewish family. The result is witty and deeply poignant. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)