Books To Read In A Troubled Time

It's time to dust off our copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William Shirer), 1984 (George Orwell), Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Lord of the Flies (William Golding), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), and other dystopian books. They will help us cope with the dark, far right- leaning days ahead. And, I hope, they will motivate us to find ways to overcome them.

If you don't own a copy of these books, visit your local independent bookstore or the public library.

We Shouldn't Cherry-Pick History

 The News Briefs column in the January 17-23, 2003 issue of the Gay City News had an item headlined "We Don't Want Him." The him being referred to is none other than Adolf Hitler. The news brief, written by Andy Humm, announced that HBO was "developing a documentary called The Pink Fuhrer" that explored "whether or not Adolf Hitler was homosexual." 

Seventeen years later, the film, which I have not seen, should by now be available on DVD. I would like to see it to judge for myself if what is discussed is credible.

The thing that interests me more is the headline--"We Don't Want Him" instead of "Was Hitler Gay?" I can understand the urge to reject Hitler because of his genocidal, anti-Semitic pronouncements and behavior. But if he was a closeted homosexual, then he becomes part of gay history, like it or not.

Gay history has the tendency to celebrate only those deemed the good guys while ignoring those identified as villains like J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderers Leopold and Loeb.

If we're going to study gay history, it should be studied like all other histories, warts and all; the good, the bad, and the ugly; the sacred and the profane. By sanitizing and cherry-picking history, it becomes distorted and valueless. Looking at history in its fullness makes it possible for us to more accurately analyze and evaluate people, attitudes, actions, and events.

We can't do that if we hide the historical record. The history exists and we have to deal with it.

The Community Within The Black Community

There's an old saying, "Dead men tell no tales." How many wonderful and intriguing stories of black gay men and lesbians have been buried with their possessors? Stories that would give us a special perspective on black life and culture overall. Stories that the black press and academia have largely given short shrift to out of prejudice and ignorance.

I have long supported Black Studies. And in the last 20 plus years, I have developed an interest in the gay and lesbian aspect of it, "the community within the [black] community," as Lloyd Williams, a  Harlem civic leader, has described it on "The Gary Byrd Experience," a weekly talk show simulcast on WBLS and WLIB, two New York radio stations.

I hope to continue doing articles, interviews, and essays concerning this community via this blog and the print media.

A TV Program About Blacks In Latin America

In the fourth and final episode of historian Henry Louis Gates's PBS program, Black in Latin America, which dealt with the African diaspora in Mexico and Peru, Gates neglected to mention that the Mexican painter Diego Rivera had a black grandmother, per Langston Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if Gates does a  Black in Europe series on PBS. That would be an eye-opening program, revealing how much influence African descended individuals have had in various European countries throughout the centuries up to present times.

Note: Today is National French Fry Day!

One Hundred Women Hidden From History

I recently started reading She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolution, & Massively Crushed It by Hannah Jewell, a Washington, D.C.-based writer (Sourcebooks,2018).*

The book is intriguing although the author's use of profanities, anachronistic comments, and levity got under my skin a bit. I'm old-fashioned when it comes to books of biography and history. I prefer a serious, scholarly approach. I suppose in order to grab and hold the attention of millennials (the intended audience, I suspect), you have to be as entertaining and irreverent as possible.

The thing that drew me to the book, other than the provocative and attention-getting title, was the subject matter. This was the opportunity to learn the names and the life stories of women heretofore unknown. (I should point out that a few of these women are not as unknown as the book's subtitle would have us believe, such as actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.)

The book spans continents, time periods, races, and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the black female mathematicians featured in the hit movie Hidden Figures are missing from the table of contents. Despite that oversight She Caused a Riot is a useful introduction to the accomplishments and concerns of one hundred women hidden from history. They are potential role models for young women and maybe young men as well.


*The book was published in 2017, in the United Kingdom, with the title 100 Nasty Women of History. Obviously a reference to Donald Trump's characterization of Hillary Clinton at one of the 2016 presidential debates.

Re-Creating The Pearl Harbor Attack On The Radio

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, the 75th anniversary of the Japanese air attack that pushed the United States into the second world war.

On Pearl Harbor Day in 1965 or 1966, I was in my teens and living in Southern California. I recall that a local radio station, whose call letters I don't remember, did a re-creation of the broadcast day in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

This re-creation included actual programs, news bulletins, and probably commercials, from that time. This brought the event to life for me, a person not alive when the attack happened. I remember being riveted to the radio.

I wish some enterprising radio station would do something similar during future Pearl Harbor Remembrance Days.