Creating a Place For Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories

The study of gay and lesbian history has, during the past two decades, grown enormously. Early work such as Jonathan Katz's 1978 Gay American History and Allen Bérubé's 1990 titleComing Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two have paved the way for more historically detailed work. Creating a Place For Ourselves is a fine anthology of 11 essays that detail the formation of specific queer communities across a wide historical and geographic span including Buffalo, New York, in the 1940s; Washington, D.C. in the 1950s; and Philadelphia in the early 1970s. While the essays are by academics, they are accessible, readable, and highly informative.