Ricky
Imagine hearing the story of Marsha P Johnson and queer and trans liberation from a drunk millennial on an Instagram live. That is the experience of reading this book.
More of hagiography/pep talk/folk history than a true biography. It's really all over the place. meandering, and every anecdote is related like an inspirational story. The breathless tone is mostly to its detriment. If Marsha had any foibles or flaws, you would not be able to tell from this book. She is the Mother Teresa of the tristate area. It's interesting because in the other accounts of her that I have experienced, people have been very unanimous in that she was quite the storyteller and that is something that we don't really see reflected here. It's unfortunate that we need this person to be a hero so much that we can't tolerate their actual humanity. It's one thing to shoe-horn the past into 2020s language, but the way the author presents Johnson's mental health struggles feels patronizing.
I'm always interested to see how Stonewall is described in narratives about Johnson since what people like to believe seems to be quite different from what actually happened. To her credit, the author here hedges before reinforcing the myth. Presenting the myths but acknowledging that they may not be true, before ultimately doubling down. I was excited to see this had come out, but there's a lot of millennial excess going on here. It falls into the trap of presenting history as though it is shaped by individuals instead of groups. More the anything, the fever for casting the event as the setting for a one woman show deemphasizes the crucial role of butches that first night.
I gave this book 2 stars just for existing and having good intentions, but I really dislike it and feel that it would have benefited from having a cowriter more experienced in writing about history. There's just no sense that this author understands the historical context very well at all, which is bizarre because she isn't that young and she seems to have done a lot of research for this book.
Imagine hearing the story of Marsha P Johnson and queer and trans liberation from a drunk millennial on an Instagram live. That is the experience of reading this book.
More of hagiography/pep talk/folk history than a true biography. It's really all over the place. meandering, and every anecdote is related like an inspirational story. The breathless tone is mostly to its detriment. If Marsha had any foibles or flaws, you would not be able to tell from this book. She is the Mother Teresa of the tristate area. It's interesting because in the other accounts of her that I have experienced, people have been very unanimous in that she was quite the storyteller and that is something that we don't really see reflected here. It's unfortunate that we need this person to be a hero so much that we can't tolerate their actual humanity. It's one thing to shoe-horn the past into 2020s language, but the way the author presents Johnson's mental health struggles feels patronizing.
I'm always interested to see how Stonewall is described in narratives about Johnson since what people like to believe seems to be quite different from what actually happened. To her credit, the author here hedges before reinforcing the myth. Presenting the myths but acknowledging that they may not be true, before ultimately doubling down. I was excited to see this had come out, but there's a lot of millennial excess going on here. It falls into the trap of presenting history as though it is shaped by individuals instead of groups. More the anything, the fever for casting the event as the setting for a one woman show deemphasizes the crucial role of butches that first night.
I gave this book 2 stars just for existing and having good intentions, but I really dislike it and feel that it would have benefited from having a cowriter more experienced in writing about history. There's just no sense that this author understands the historical context very well at all, which is bizarre because she isn't that young and she seems to have done a lot of research for this book.