Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging »

Atkins (communication, Seattle U.), tracing 100 years of history, narrates a the process of moving from invisibility and legal "exile" to increasingly vocal demands for the inclusion in the community of Seattle's gay and lesbian community. He tells the story from the perspective of the gay and lesbian community, describing early days of discrimination and legal persecution, the establishment of semi- legitimate clubs and societies, and the current claim of Capitol Hill as a liberated zone. Issues of communication and geographic space run throughout the discussion. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

San Francisco and Seattle both began as frontier towns, and both are ports on the U.S. Pacific Coast, but they are as different as the Transamerica Tower and the Space Needle, and their respective queer communities have evolved along parallel but diverging paths. In Wide-Open Town, Boyd (women's studies, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) depicts a San Francisco where a bar-based gay culture emerged from roots in the all-male saloons and drag shows of the notorious Barbary Coast and Tenderloin, which was later mimicked by lesbians after the repeal of Prohibition. Faced with increasing civic harassment after World War II, both male and female communities politicized, mutated, and eventually collaborated in the homophile movement of the Fifties and Sixties. Boyd provides deeply detailed context by relating the broader American social and historical forces at work, as well as the personal perspective of oral histories. The only flaw in this excellent chronicle is that it ends in 1965, before the heyday of gay liberation in the Seventies and the rise and assassination of Harvey Milk in the city. Atkins (communication, Seattle Univ.; coauthor, Reporting with Understanding) begins his fine Gay Seattle in the 1890s, at roughly the same time as Boyd's book, and in outline the first part of his book is not dissimilar. Seattle has never had San Francisco's "wide-open" reputation, however, and the author's choice to begin with Washington State's 1893 sodomy law indicates a darker story. Atkins takes a more parochial approach, focusing on queer life in the city through the mid-1990s, mostly implying the larger social forces Boyd details explicitly, but his broader chronological coverage permits a vivid description of the devastation wrought by AIDS. Both books compare favorably with works such as George Chauncey's Gay New York and Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis, and both are recommended for gay studies collections. But as San Francisco is virtually gay Mecca, Wide-Open Town is recommended for large public libraries as well, while Gay Seattle is optional outside the Pacific Northwest.-Richard J. Violette, Special Libs. Cataloguing, Victoria, B.C. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.