The Stonewall Reader

Stonewall one of the few gay clubs in the Village where patrons could dance drew a devoted young clientele. Many cross-dressed, wearing makeup or their own personal mix of men s and women s attire.

The police routinely raided the Stonewall, but the management, always mysteriously tipped off in advance, would turn up the lights to warn the crowd to stop any open displays of affection, slow dancing, or use of illicit drugs. According to most historians, the Stonewall s management bribed the police for protection, and the raids were merely for show. But on Tuesday, June 24, 1969, there was another kind of raid, orga- nized by the NYPD s First Division, rather than the usual and local Sixth Precinct. When the club was back up and running a few days later, the police decided to go in again on Friday, June 27, and shut it down for good.

The police were accustomed to handling a large gay crowd with only a handful of officers, but this night the raid went very differently. Rather than leave, a crowd of patrons and on- lookers gathered in front of the bar and waited for their friends held inside to be released. When the police van came to take away those who had been arrested, the crowd fought back, forcing the police into the bar. The riot gathered force from onlookers, who turned on the barricaded bar with garbage cans and fire. The drag queens were said to have given the po- lice both the fiercest resistance and a dose of humor, facing them down in a chorus line as they sang, We are the Stone- wall Girls . . . The crowd was controlled and dispersed in the early hours of Saturday morning, only to reemerge later that night as several thousand people took to the streets chanting, Gay power! and Liberate Christopher Street! Riots and demonstrations continued throughout the following week. In the end, the arrests and damage were minimal.

to history. The inclusion of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in the During and After sections also subtly underlines the role of transgender people, as they tell the story first of that night and then of how their abandonment by the movement began almost immediately. The book s mix of familiar and unfamiliar didn t just re-contextualize the riots for me. I came to understand myself and my life differently. I didn t even know what I d lost or gained from these stories and their contexts. The Stonewall Reader seems designed to be widely adopted in classrooms and should be, but, to be sure, it is for anyone, even those who think they know this history.
Alexander Chee, The New Republic

An essential read for any member of the community who wants to learn about those who paved the way before us.
Harper s Bazaar

Brush up on your LGBTQ history with this definitive collection of first-hand accounts, diary entries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented the years leading up to and immediately following the Stonewall riots.
Queerty

The Stonewall Reader, a collection featuring works by figures such as the writer Audre Lorde and the activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya, demonstrates this expansiveness in the variety of experiences it chronicles. The book is named for one of history s most powerful displays of queer protest, but focuses instead on intimate self-reckoning. The pieces in it ponder visibility, self-understanding, and the development of queerness as an identity.
The Atlantic

A compilation of first-person accounts and diary entries from activists and participants, along with news articles, essays and more, this work tells the story of events that surrounded the 1969 Stonewall riots, largely seen as the start of the nation s LGBT civil rights movement.
CNN.com

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riot, Jason Baumann, New York Public Library coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, edited a volume drawing from the NYPL archives that includes first accounts, diaries, newspaper articles, and more chronicling the years leading up to the riots and documenting the fight itself. It also spotlights iconic activists who were pivotal to the movement, giving room and space for the forgotten figures of the fight. It features a ton of diverse voices and interviews and helps to paint a crucial moment in queer history in the voices and contexts of the people who were there.
Book Riot