THE EVENING CROWD AT KIRMSER'S: A Gay Life in the 1940s
Ricardo J. Brown, edited by William Reichard
"Kirmser's was the underground queer bar in St. Paul, a hidden sanctuary for homosexual men and women in the 1940s. It was the haven I found in 1945 after being drummed out of the navy for being a homosexual." This extraordinary memoir of postwar, pre-Stonewall Midwestern gay life is as historically crucial as it is eloquent. Born in 1926, Brown died in 1999 before publishing it. Growing up in a poverty-stricken Catholic family outside of St. Paul, he realized he was gay early in high school. He fled to Greenwich Village at 18, but, upset by its openly gay culture, joined the navy and was dishonorably discharged after announcing his sexual orientation to his superiors. While Brown's life is the spine of his brief narrative, its flesh is in the stories of the women and men who frequented Kirmser's, the working-class bar run by an old German couple that was "a fort in the midst of a savage and hostile population."
SOURCE- www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8166-3621-1
(Courtesy Contributor #47001358;Nov 28, 2022 )
Ricardo J. Brown, edited by William Reichard
"Kirmser's was the underground queer bar in St. Paul, a hidden sanctuary for homosexual men and women in the 1940s. It was the haven I found in 1945 after being drummed out of the navy for being a homosexual." This extraordinary memoir of postwar, pre-Stonewall Midwestern gay life is as historically crucial as it is eloquent. Born in 1926, Brown died in 1999 before publishing it. Growing up in a poverty-stricken Catholic family outside of St. Paul, he realized he was gay early in high school. He fled to Greenwich Village at 18, but, upset by its openly gay culture, joined the navy and was dishonorably discharged after announcing his sexual orientation to his superiors. While Brown's life is the spine of his brief narrative, its flesh is in the stories of the women and men who frequented Kirmser's, the working-class bar run by an old German couple that was "a fort in the midst of a savage and hostile population."
SOURCE- www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8166-3621-1
(Courtesy Contributor #47001358;Nov 28, 2022 )
THE EVENING CROWD AT KIRMSER'S: A Gay Life in the 1940s
Ricardo J. Brown, edited by William Reichard
"Kirmser's was the underground queer bar in St. Paul, a hidden sanctuary for homosexual men and women in the 1940s. It was the haven I found in 1945 after being drummed out of the navy for being a homosexual." This extraordinary memoir of postwar, pre-Stonewall Midwestern gay life is as historically crucial as it is eloquent. Born in 1926, Brown died in 1999 before publishing it. Growing up in a poverty-stricken Catholic family outside of St. Paul, he realized he was gay early in high school. He fled to Greenwich Village at 18, but, upset by its openly gay culture, joined the navy and was dishonorably discharged after announcing his sexual orientation to his superiors. While Brown's life is the spine of his brief narrative, its flesh is in the stories of the women and men who frequented Kirmser's, the working-class bar run by an old German couple that was "a fort in the midst of a savage and hostile population."
SOURCE- www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8166-3621-1
(Courtesy Contributor #47001358;Nov 28, 2022 )
Ricardo J. Brown, edited by William Reichard
"Kirmser's was the underground queer bar in St. Paul, a hidden sanctuary for homosexual men and women in the 1940s. It was the haven I found in 1945 after being drummed out of the navy for being a homosexual." This extraordinary memoir of postwar, pre-Stonewall Midwestern gay life is as historically crucial as it is eloquent. Born in 1926, Brown died in 1999 before publishing it. Growing up in a poverty-stricken Catholic family outside of St. Paul, he realized he was gay early in high school. He fled to Greenwich Village at 18, but, upset by its openly gay culture, joined the navy and was dishonorably discharged after announcing his sexual orientation to his superiors. While Brown's life is the spine of his brief narrative, its flesh is in the stories of the women and men who frequented Kirmser's, the working-class bar run by an old German couple that was "a fort in the midst of a savage and hostile population."
SOURCE- www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8166-3621-1
(Courtesy Contributor #47001358;Nov 28, 2022 )
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