Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging

Atkins, Gary. "Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging", University of Washington Press, 2003. A Fascinating Look at Seattle Amos Lassen I really enjoy reading about gay communities in places where I don't live because I get ideas on how to deal with where I do live. Of course. it is hard to compare Little Rock, Arkansas to anywhere else because we have no gay community. We have gays and lesbians but there is no sense of community and I suppose that has something to do with the fundamentalism of the state. Seattle, on the other hand, has quite a history and I learned a great deal from the book. Sure the history is local but it is interesting and is, in a sense. a look at gay life anywhere. We get a look at the anti-sodomy laws and how they weighed heavily on the community. We get to see something of the political organizations that have sprung up and we meet some fascinating people. Sometimes it is difficult to make history interesting but Atkins does a great job of it. I imagine the book will be painful for some people from Seattle to read but they should also be very proud of the strides their city has made.

I'm just finishing off Gay Seattle, by Gary Atkins, and can't recommend it too highly. The history is local, but the "general" history is good, gripping and valuable, and serves as a microcosm for gay history across the country. I'd forgotten how dreadful the '70's were, and how close we came to losing a lot of very solid gains. The religionists and the conservatives took over, and for a while there it was pretty bleak - quite like now: defeats all over, then slow progress. The politcal end of the book is good to read too, and reads like a good discussion of the various "how's" of political/social progress. Well-written, immediate, and hard to put down. Highly recommended. NRB

The journey that I have been led is a difficult one - from the mud flat, a detour to Steilacoom, a small climb up to Denny's knoll, and the courage ascend to the Hills.The tearing, triumphs, grindings of teeth, and the celebrations -as words capture the emotions of the past, they captivate my consciousness and draw out parallel emotions from within myself.The author has told his own story, keeping little distance between himself and his words, creating a close intimacy between story of the past and myself:As Francis Framer was straitjacketed and carried off, it was my own scream for help that I hear. When her eyelid was pulled open and her eyeball stared right into a spearing ice pick, it was my eyes that are forcibly shut.The vaudevillian movements underground come through my ingertips as I touch these words on the pages. And I gyrate my hips on Shelly's Leg.Triumph comes to my face when it was down on 13. Shadow clouds my emotion when it was down on Cal'sbill.Reading the book was a difficult journey for me, because, well, it had been a difficult journey indeed for those who had walked the path. But it is a journey well deserving of its travelers. As I look about Seattle, I find the reflections of my past: I hear my own language speaking through the many entrances that I have not entered. I see pictures of myself hung on the walls of places that I have never been. My heart echoes the steps taken by people whose names I have scarcely known. Today, I have, I own a sense a dwelling.