Synopses & Reviews
An essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans’s subterranean gay community.
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of 31 men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic — families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors’ needs — revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.
Review
“Robert W. Fieseler has given us a profoundly moving and deeply researched reminder of the tragic and ghastly costs of bigotry, silence, and the closet. We must never go back. Tinderbox is more than a memorial. It is a call for our ongoing struggle to build movements for love and dignity for everyone everywhere.” Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, Volumes 1–3
Review
“This vital book chronicles one of the worst outrages against gay people in modern America, and it does so with fantastic vividness. It restores a forgotten chapter of horror to our national narrative of rights. Robert W. Fieseler reminds us how deep prejudice was, not only on the part of the man who set the fire at the Up Stairs Lounge, but also in the media that ignored the story and the population that took no interest in it.” Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
Review
“In his impressive, meticulously reported debut as a nonfiction author, Robert Fieseler vividly recreates the world that produced a galvanizing tragedy, a fire at a New Orleans bar in the summer of 1973 that took 32 lives. In reminding us of the furtiveness of gay life even in a tolerant city, and of the official culture’s hostility to it, Tinderbox is riveting and unforgettable.” Nicholas Lemann, author of The Promised Land
Review
“Journalist Robert W. Fieseler salvages [an] unsettling moment in American history from the edge of forgetfulness in a remarkable, potent remembrance....It's indescribably moving to learn in a final author's note that survivors hesitant to speak on the record for Tinderbox came forward with urgency after the Pulse massacre. Their testimonies, Fieseler's rigorous research and his amiable prose make this a vital, inspiring volume in the annals of gay history.” Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness
Synopsis
Winner of Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers
Named a Best Book of the Year by
Kirkus Reviews,
Library Journal and
Shelf AwarenessAn essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans' subterranean gay community.
Synopsis
Winner - Edgar Award (Best Fact Crime)
Winner - Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers
Best Book of the Year: Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Shelf Awareness
Longlisted for the Housatonic Book Award (Nonfiction)
An essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans' subterranean gay community.
Synopsis
Winner - Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers
Finalist - Housatonic Book Award (Nonfiction)
Best Book of the Year:
Kirkus Reviews,
Library Journal and
Shelf AwarenessAn essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans' subterranean gay community.
Synopsis
Winner - Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers
Finalist - Housatonic Book Award (Nonfiction)
Finalist - Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
A Stonewall Honor Book in Nonfiction (American Library Association)
Best Book of the Year:
Kirkus Reviews,
Library Journal and
Shelf AwarenessAn essential work of American civil rights history, Tinderbox mesmerizingly reconstructs the 1973 fire that devastated New Orleans' subterranean gay community.
Synopsis
Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic--families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors' needs--revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.
About the Author
Robert W. Fieseler is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing. A writer for The Big Roundtable, Narratively, and elsewhere, he lives in Boston.
Robert Fieseler on PowellsBooks.Blog
On June 24, 1973, an arsonist lit a fire that destroyed a gay bar in New Orleans called the Up Stairs Lounge. Though the blaze would burn for less than 20 minutes, it claimed 32 lives and injured 15 others. This was the deadliest fire on record in New Orleans history, and the largest mass murder of homosexuals in U.S. history until the 2016 massacre at Pulse...
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