Below is my review of Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman published by Yale University Press. You can view the video on BookTube or read the review below that.
His death changed a lot of lives — including mine, including yours.
–Janet Mason booktube
When I first listened to the audiobook of Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman published by Yale University Press in 2018, I thought I knew about Harvey Milk and would just be getting a refresher, something I could pass along. Harvey Milk is the gay leader who was assassinated in 1978 when he was 48. Having held a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for nearly a year, he was the first openly gay man to hold elected office in the United States. He was dubbed the Mayor of Castro Street — the gay neighborhood in San Francisco where Milk eventually moved and made his home. As is described in the epilogue of the book, Milk was larger in death than he was in life. His murder — along with the then San Francisco Mayor George Moscone — galvanized the LGBT community across the nation and the world. The anger that erupted after his murderer received a less than two-year sentence was too long-suppressed gay anger and it could not be denied. His death changed a lot of lives — including mine, including yours. The new information that I found in this book was in the details of his complex background and in the Jewish identity of this man who was raised in Long Island New York, a place that was rife with anti-Semitism during the holocaust when he and his family would listen to the news on the radio, fearful that the Holocaust could spread to America. The book, which is part of Yale University’s Jewish Lives series, points out that Harvey Milk was informed by Tikkun olam — the Jewish philosophy of repairing the world. After he came out and was radicalized in San Francisco, he was always concerned about the disenfranchised and rose to elected office by building coalitions. He was, in many ways, ahead of his time in understanding the power of uniting — or what is now called intersectionality. He was accused by the (largely unsuccessful) gay establishment of the time as muddying the waters by focusing on the rights of all oppressed groups and not only on gay rights. But Harvey persisted. And he succeeded in furthering gay rights only as someone who was not concerned with “fitting in” and upending the status quo could. When I read Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman published by Yale University Press, I knew I was reading about an important part of LGBTQ history but I didn’t know how important it was until the last page was turned. This is Janet Mason with reviews on You Tube and Spotify. |
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The Unicorn, The Mystery now available from Adelaide Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT
Janet Mason, author 