Communists in Closets

Queering the History 1930s-1990s
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-032-03584-0
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 270 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 396 g

Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s explores the history of gay, lesbian, and non-heterosexual people in the Communist Party in the United States.

The Communist Party banned lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from membership beginning in 1938 when it cast them off as "degenerates." It persisted in this policy until 1991. During this 60-year ban, gays and lesbians who did join the Communist Party were deeply closeted within it, as well as in their public lives as both queer and Communist. By the late 1930s, the Communist Party had a membership approaching 100,000 and tens of thousands more people moved in its orbit through the Popular Front against fascism, anti-racist organizing, especially in the south, and its widely read cultural magazine, The New Masses. Based on a decade of archival research, correspondence, and interviews, Bettina Aptheker explores this history, also pulling from her own experience as a closeted lesbian in the Communist Party in the 1960s and ‘70s. Ironically, and in spite of this homophobia, individual Communists laid some of the political and theoretical foundations for lesbian and gay liberation and women’s liberation, and contributed significantly to peace, social justice, civil rights, and Black and Latinx liberation movements.

This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and general readers in political history, gender studies, and the history of sexuality.

Zielgruppe

General, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Aptheker, Bettina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies: Homosexualität, LGBTQ+

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction - What is Found There: In the Archives & in Life 2. Stonewalled: Gay Liberation & Communist Silence 3. Harry Hay (1912-2002): "Welcome My Dears": A Communist, Radical Faerie in a Revolutionary Quest 4. Elizabeth (Betty) Boynton Millard (1911-2010): A Passion for Women & Global Sisterhood 5. Eleanor Flexner (1908-1995): Living the Unnamed: Scholar, Activist & A Boston Marriage 6. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965): Freedom in Mind 7. The Communist Party Ban Ends: Stories from the 1990s-2000s 8. Afterword: A Labor of Love

Über Autor(innen)

Bettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. She is the author of: Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech and Became A Feminist Rebel (2006); and The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis (1976; second edition 1999).