The Stonewall Reader

The Stonewall Reader is a collection of firsthand accounts, diaries, newspaper articles, and more chronicling the years leading up to the riots and documenting the fight itself. It also spotlights iconic activists who were pivotal to the movement, giving room and space for the forgotten figures of the fight. It features a ton of diverse voices and interviews and helps to paint a crucial moment in queer history in the voices and contexts of the people who were there.

The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Most importantly, this anthology shines a light on forgotten figures who were pivotal in the movement, such as Lee Brewster, head of the Queens Liberation Front and Ernestine Eckstine, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s.

The Stonewall Reader is edited by Jason Baumann, coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections at the New York Public Library. Baumann has curated two exhibitions—1969: The Year of Gay Liberation and Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism. He is also coordinating a major Stonewall photography exhibition at NYPL to open in January 2019.

The book is named for one of history’s most powerful displays of queer protest, but focuses instead on intimate self-reckoning. The pieces in it ponder visibility, self-understanding, and the development of queerness as an identity.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot, Jason Baumann edited a volume drawing from the NYPL archives that includes first accounts, diaries, newspaper articles, and more chronicling the years leading up to the riots and documenting the fight itself. It also spotlights iconic activists who were pivotal to the movement, giving room and space for the forgotten figures of the fight.

The Stonewall Reader gives us a richer, messier, more dangerous picture of the Stonewall uprising, its foreground, and aftermath. The book wonderfully reflects how revolutionary moments rarely get portrayed accurately through single voices, and Baumann has produced here a history worth revisiting again and again.

The anthology is named for one of history’s most powerful displays of queer protest, but focuses instead on intimate self-reckoning. The pieces in it ponder visibility, self-understanding, and the development of queerness as an identity.