Synopses & Reviews
2007 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleAlthough the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City symbolically mark the start of the gay rights movement, individuals came together long before the modern era to express their same-sex romantic and sexual attraction toward one another, and in a myriad of ways. Some reflected on their desires in quiet solitude, while others endured verbal, physical, and legal harassment for publicly expressing homosexual interest through words or actions.
Long Before Stonewall seeks to uncover the many iterations of same-sex desire in colonial America and the early Republic, as well as to expand the scope of how we define and recognize homosocial behavior. Thomas A. Foster has assembled a pathbreaking, interdisciplinary collection of original and classic essays that explore topics ranging from homoerotic imagery of black men to prison reform to the development of sexual orientations. This collection spans a regional and temporal breadth that stretches from the colonial Southwest to Quaker communities in New England. It also includes a challenge to commonly accepted understandings of the Native American berdache. Throughout, connections of race, class, status, and gender are emphasized, exposing the deep foundations on which modern sexual political movements and identities are built.
Review
“Half the 14 essays in this interdisciplinary study of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century America are reprints—though its useful to have work that appeared in academic journals collected in one place. Among original work, Ramon A. Gutierrez's revisionist perspective on Native American berdache will raise the most eyebrows: rather than exalt their same-sex spirituality, fashionable among gay liberationists and radical faeries alike, the author's theory is that they led lives of sexual 'humiliation and endless work, not of celebration and veneration.' Among the reprints, Caleb Crain's account of a romantic triangle among three Philadelphia men that began in 1786, culled from their diaries, is the sweetest. Several essays draw on court records dating back as far as three hundred years to unearth queer lives, while others glean an intriguing and instructive glimpse of the past through a reading of Colonial-era fiction and journalism.”
-Q Syndicate,
Review
“Thoughtful, persuasive, solidly constructed, and likely to endure the test of time.”
-Choice,
Review
“Illuminate[s] the complexity, breadth, and social impact of sexuality in history.”
-The Gay and Lesbian Review,
Review
“An excellent introduction to the dynamic new work on sexuality in colonial and early national America, which not only expands our understanding of early America but forces us to rethink paradigms and periodizations that have long governed histories of sexuality in the U.S. A valuable contribution.”
-George Chauncey,author of Why Marriage?
Review
"This splendid collection illustrates the maturation of lesbian and gay history. The early American era emerges as a rich period for understanding same-sex desire in both law and culture. It also proves critical for reevaluating the dominant interpretations of the emergence of modern homosexual identities." - Estelle B. Freedman, author of Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics
Review
“A powerful interdisciplinary compilation that will keep specialists and general readers thoroughly engaged. . . . Long Before Stonewall redirects our attention to a period of American history that for too long has been undervalued as a field for scholarly inquiry into sexuality.”
-Journal of the Early Republic,
Review
"In editing this collection, Martha Hodes has performed an invaluable service to those of us in the profession who endeavor to teach what has been the focus of our own scholarship: race and sex." -The Journal of Southern History,
Review
"Important. . . . The breadth of human experience and historical subfields traversed by the authors is astonishing." -Journal of Social History,
Review
"Hodes has compiled a thoughtful collection of essays which explore the implications of interracial sexual activity from the colonial period to the late 20th century."-Virginia Quarterly Review,
Synopsis
Since pre-colonial days, America has been both torn apart and united by love, sex, and marriage across racial boundaries. Whether motivated by violent conquest, economics, lust, or love, such unions have disturbed some of America's most sacred beliefs and prejudices.
Sex, Love, Race provides a historical foundation for contemporary discussions of sex across racial lines, which, despite the numbers of interracial marriages and multiracial children, remains a controversial issue today. The first historical anthology to focus solely and widely on the subject, Sex, Love, Race gathers new essays by both younger and well-known scholars which probe why and how the specter of sex across racial boundaries has so threatened Americans of all colors and classes.
Traversing the whole of American history, from liaisons among Indians, Europeans, and Africans to twentieth-century social scientists' fascination with sex between "Orientals" and whites, the essays cover a range of regions, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. In so doing, Sex, Love, Race, sketches a larger portrait of the overlapping construction of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities in America.
About the Author
Thomas A. Foster is associate professor of history at DePaul University, in Chicago, and author of Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America and the editor of Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America (NYU Press, 2007).