Ann Bausum is no stranger to social-justice history.
She has written more than half a dozen books focusing on the topic in the last two decades. However, she had never focused on the LGBT community and spent the majority of her resources on women's rights, the right to vote and the African-American civil rights' movement since the 1960s. She had an interest in the LGBT struggle for equal rights, but had never felt herself able to write about the topic.
Bausum is straight.
In 2010, following the death of Tyler Clementi, Bausum had a new perspective that, as she described it, "gave her permission to write a book on LGBT social justice." Clementi's story deeply moved her, not only from his vantage but also from the viewpoint of Clementi's parents. "It was the parental connection for me. That did it. My own children are not gay, but to lose a child? I can only begin to imagine how wrenching that would be. Clementi's death lit a fire under me to write this book," Bausum told Windy City. So she began the research for Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights.
Even in 2010, Bausum was not sure that any publisher would be interested in the format for Stonewall. "I just wasn't sure that they would find this story compelling," she said. "I wanted the book to serve as an introduction to the LGBT social-justice movement, particularly for young people."
Bausum's Stonewall is a page-turner. She very clearly and deliberately made the story of the Stonewall Riots in the summer of 1969 a narrative that people, but especially the younger generations would find riveting. "I wanted a book that would be hard to put down and also teach people something, not only about Stonewall but about the entire LBGT movement," she said. The book really does bring a tremendous amount of history to the table for any age group. The history of LGBT equality began before Stonewall and continues even now.
Bausum pointed out that the Stonewall Riots were a catalyst for a movement that had already started slowly moving in the late 1950s. "If people discovered the truth about a person's homosexuality at that time, it would have been disastrous for the person who actually was gay," said Bausum. "It was illegal to be gay. Just being gay could mean losing your job and the rest of your life with it too. These early LGBT civil-rights leaders, who encouraged greater visibility in the 1960s, were particularly courageous. They were giving up everything."
Although she had not intended for Stonewall to be a reminder to the LGBT community concerning the purpose and function of a riot, with the growing racial tensions in the United States surround police violence against people of color and the resulting protests and riots, this book is acutely perfect for its timing. In the book, Bausum brings up the social status of LGBT individuals in the time just before Stonewall. "This was a population that was ghettoized if those who were gay did not live a lie of heterosexuality," she said. "In a very similar way that African-American's have no ladder out of the lives that they are in, gay and lesbian men and women during the time of Stonewall and even today, had no way to get out of their loop."
Bausum stressed the importance that social cries for justice are heard, then as now. "I think stories can provide the strength for doing what needs to be done. We all need to be reminded of those stories, especially the younger generations," she said. She noted that this was not just about reminding the young where they came from but was also about giving them the drive to move forward. "I find what the youth of today have to face is incredibly daunting," Bausum commented. "They have the social justice problems we have always faced along with the terrifying environmental and political issues of the modern world. We should be providing the younger generations with all of the help and inspiration that they can get.
Bausum also had a secondary reason for writing the book for young people; as she pointed out, LGBT youth are insular. There are no role models in their homes to show them "how to be gay" or to teach them their history. As Bausum explained, "gay, lesbian and transgender youth are not frequently raised in households run by gay parents or even socially similar parents. If you grow up Catholic, you usually have Catholic parents or if you are African-American usually so are your parents. You learn about your culture and your history at home. But with LGBT youth, they have to find all of this out on their own and that is a difficult thing to do." Stonewall provides one more voice in the historical and cultural chorus of voices trying to reach the younger generations.
Stonewall is the story not only of the famous riots in 1969 but is also a unique device to bring the struggle from simply being able to dance with people of the same gender to now being able to marry people of the same gender alive in a way that has not been told before. Bausum's Stonewall, while not offering new historical information, offers a unique voice and narrative that makes the discovery and re-discovery of these stories fascinating for all ages.
