Lit Hub shares an excerpt of Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer, an examination of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond.
In this excerpt alone, Ryan examines Victorian morals, the social makeup of 1800s Brooklyn, the constraints of being different in the Comstock era, and the secret codes gay men used to make one another’s acquaintance. The book is an interesting resource for diverse characters forced to live beneath common society.
Comments