Indecent advances : a hidden history of true crime and prejudice before Stonewall
Polchin, James2019
Books, Manuscripts
'Indecent Advances' is a skilful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the often-coded portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall. New York University professor and critic James Polchin illustrates how homosexuals were criminalised, and their murders justified, in the popular imagination from 1930s 'sex panics' to Cold War fear of Communists and homosexuals in government. He shows the vital that role crime stories played in ideas of normalcy and deviancy, and how those stories became tools to discriminate against and harm gay men. J. Edgar Hoover, Kerouac, Burroughs, Patricia Highsmith, James Baldwin, Alan Ginsberg, and Gore Vidal all feature. Published around the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, this book investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalised them.
Main title:
Author:
Polchin, James, author
Imprint:
London : Icon, 2019.
Collation:
244 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white) ; 23 cm
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references.
Audience:
Specialized.
ISBN:
9781785785658 (hbk)
Dewey class:
364.155086642
LC class:
HV6250.4.H66
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
2500161