University of Wisconsin Press

Gay Bar: The Fabulous, True Story of a Daring Woman and Her Boys in the 1950s

annette — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Will Fellows has uncovered a gem with Gay Bar, a re-issue of the 1957 novel by Helen Branson. The original memoir, typed up on an old Polish typewriter, tells the tale of the gay establishment she operated in 1950s Los Angeles. The story revolves heavily around her clientele, a group of businessmen and entrepreneurs whom she affectionately refers to as “her boys.”

While most gay bars of the era were sketchy at best, Branson was committed to providing a clean and safe environment for her boys. She was notoriously strict about the men she allowed into her bar. Newcomers would be screened upon arrival and “troublemakers” would be thrown out without a moment’s hesitation. Helen’s commitment to maintaining her bar, combined with the affection she felt for her boys, are what garnered her loyal following. For the men that frequented her establishment, Branson was more than just a bar maid. She became a part of their lives, often acting as counselor and friend.

Branson’s book is notable for a few reasons. Aside from being one of the first-known publications written by a heterosexual to treat gay men with any semblance of respect, Branson’s portrayal of homosexuality stands in stark contrast to academic publications of the time. While most papers categorized homosexuals as “deviants,” Branson outlines the similarities between hetero and homosexuals. She makes a point to tell the individual stories of her clients, demonstrating a human side to a group that was generally thought of as selfish and unfeeling.

Fellows provides social commentary throughout the book alongside passages from era-appropriate, gay-friendly publications. This, in combination with Branson’s assertion that her boys grappled with “real problems”, help create an authentic snapshot of 1950s gay culture. Excerpts from ONE Magazine, the first pro-gay publication in the United States, outline the loneliness, anger, and frustration that some homosexual males endured.

Gay Bar is not an academic piece, but rather, a story of friendship and compassion. While Fellows’ commentary demonstrates how far gay rights have progressed, it also serves as a reminder that ignorance and stigma persist. Homosexuals continue to face enormous societal challenges, largely due to a lack of understanding. It is for this very reason that books like Branson’s are so important. I do not only recommend Gay Bar for its readability but also for its empathy.

We would all be better off if we learned to embrace one another as readily as Helen Branson.

Written by: Cheryl Santa Maria, December 6th 2010

The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Paul Shankman

University of Wisconsin Press

What do Phil Donohue, a New Zealand ethnologist, three anthropologist husbands, and a small handful of Samoan girls all have in common? The answer is: Margaret Mead and their roles in a debate that has rocked cultural anthropology since 1983.

The Trashing of Margaret Mead is a fine, funny, discriminating, and at times quite disturbing book. At the heart of the so-called Mead-Freeman Debate was the veracity, meaning, and political uses of the data that Mead collected in 1925 during the ethnographic research that she conducted in Samoa. Her central finding was that Samoan adolescence did not require the storm-and-stress widely seen as part of adolescence, the volatility that characterizes “teenaged” behavior. Mead’s work framed the “nature/nurture” debate: is nature (e.,g. biology and hormones) ultimately responsible for sexual maturation and behavior, or is it nurture (e.g., gender relations and child-rearing)? Is male dominance hard-wired biologically, or can egalitarianism be taught? Freeman chose the former, Mead the latter.

The Trashing of Margaret Mead consists of fourteen chapters arranged into five parts. It is filled with salacious talk, iconic photos, back-channel communication, and an impressive attention to nuance and detail. The two chapters comprising “The Controversy and the Media” remind the reader of the huge splash made in 1983 in anthropology and wider circles by the publication of Derek Freeman’s book, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Relatively few people actually read the book, but stories about Freeman and Mead, often wildly misunderstanding and misquoting the latter, circulated in the pages of Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and most memorably in the telling by the author, Paul Shankman, on The Phil Donohue Show. Shankman shows with great gusto and clarity that U.S. media and many academics were predisposed to accept Freeman’s claims, however fraudulent.

Part two exposes Derek Freeman the man, but more importantly, the mind. At least once in the early 1960s, while working in Sarawak, Indonesia, Freeman went quite off the rails. In a museum there he once hacked off the phalluses of wooden statues carved by fine Iban craftsmen. Freeman’s instability is near legendary, and Shankman shows this to us with grace and skill by revealing the manic tenor of his writings and the increasingly nasty tone of his correspondence until the very day he died.

The four chapters in part three, “Sex, Lies and Samoans,” cover the life of and influences upon the young Margaret Mead, the conditions of her first fieldwork in Samoa, and the publication in 1928 of Coming of Age in Samoa, which was an extremely popular (and popularizing) book. These chapters read like a scholarly detective story of what the Mead-Freeman debate meant (and continues to mean) to Samoans, and of what Samoan thought, belief, and behavior are like in terms of sexual matters. Special commentary is reserved for the place of the "taupou system" in Samoa by and through which female virginity is valorized and idealized. As in most cultures, Samoan brothers want to have virginal sisters, but Mead, Freeman, and Shankman show that they often want also to get into the pants (or back then, under the grass skirts) of other men’s sisters.

Shankman also revisits the effects of cross-cultural contact with the American military during World War II upon Samoan beliefs and behaviors. Whereas Mead said that Samoans were largely egalitarian, easy-going, and not hung-up about sex, Freeman argued that Mead had gotten it all wrong, that Samoan culture was riddled by status differentials, prone to violence, circumspect with regards to sex, and also “rape-prone.” Freeman contended that Mead was hoaxed during her fieldwork by two Samoan girls who jokingly indicated their usual hunts and haunts for boys. Shankman shows that Freeman was mistaken, concluding that “Freeman not only misrepresented the historical work of others but neglected his own personal experiences in the islands during World War II and his unpublished work on the taupou system.” Shankman shows that Mead got it largely right and that Freeman got it sloppily and willfully wrong on many, many counts.

The Trashing of Margaret Mead should be used in college courses ranging from media studies to cultural anthropology to women’s studies to Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific. Graduate-level seminars could be wrapped around the many significant issues raised here. Shankman’s bulldog-like dedication for many years is as laudable as his prose style is engaging.

Written by: Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D., March 8th 2010

Something to Declare: Good Lesbian Travel Writing

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Edited by Gillian Kendall

University of Wisconsin Press

Something to Declare is a wonderful collection of travel stories written to share a unique experience, traveling while lesbian. These stories bring a solid voice to the forefront for queer travel writing, showing the world that travel is indeed colored by the lens of being a lesbian. It lets readers know they no longer have to accept a straight perspective, and allows them to identify with the authors and the places in a way that has not been previously accessible through traditional travel writing anthologies.

Something to Declare has stories of travel from around the world and around the corner. They are stories of love, loss, and self discovery through adventure, mishap, and distance. My favorite story was “What happens after this day” by Hannah Tennent-Moore, which is about a young woman who sorts out her complicated love life while also leaving it behind and studying at an ashram in India. The descriptions of place and emotion and how we tie the to two together are so perfectly written; it is as if you are right alongside the author on her journey of self discovery.

Another standout story is Sandra Gail Lambert's “Looking for the V,” a short story written about a group of friends—two lesbian couples and one single woman in a wheelchair—who embark on a weekend kayaking trip. This story describes the peace that comes with being single, traveling down a wide stretch of river, and learning how to appreciate what you have. It shows how living in the moment brings much joy to the heart.

The stories in Something to Declare span the width and breadth of women’s experiences during travel. The diversity within the stories and authors makes is easily accessible, as well as a very enjoyable read for any lesbian who wants to travel, but is unable to at the moment. This book is the perfect item to squash your travel bug or awaken the adventurer within.

Written by: Jenny Greenfield, January 5th 2010

Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:18:00 +0000

By William H. Thomas Jr.

University of Wisconsin Press

Even the preface to Unsafe for Democracy makes William H. Thomas Jr.’s political stances abundantly clear, but impressively, his political leanings have no negative effect on either his literary voice or his scholarship. Unsafe for Democracy is a straightforward historical tract, delineating the disturbing specifics of a very specific time in history. Thomas uses only the preface to tie the events of the early twentieth century to the problems America faced in subsequent eras, from the actions of COINTELPRO, the FBI’s secretive, legally questionable “counterintelligence program” to spy on, disrupt and often destroy dissident political organizations in the mid-twentieth century, to those of the Bush Administration; the body of the book allows the reader to draw her own conclusions, a model of thorough research and admirable self-restraint.

Using the Espionage Act of 1917 as its legal base and the general paranoid wartime climate as its ethical base, the United States Justice Department committed innumerable violations of the civil rights of German-Americans, members of the Socialist Party, and many other American citizens under the umbrella of protecting American safety and security during World War I. Thomas skillfully depicts the anger and frustration present in the social climate at that time, and uses it to draw us into stories of the Justice Department’s behavior, each more shocking than the last, and the behavior it inspired in ordinary American citizens. The book ends with the startling chapter “Vigilantism,” describing many shocking incidents not commonly known and the Justice Department’s notable lack of focused response. The details of the book are fascinating and often terrifying.

More than many historical tracts, Unsafe for Democracy demonstrates the value of straightforward storytelling. Thomas makes no attempt to shock his readers or to beat them over the head with parallels to other periods of history or contemporary government. Rather, he tells us what happened, offers his compelling evidence that this was, indeed, the way it happened, and leaves us to frame the value of the story as we see fit. Even if the stories in Unsafe for Democracy were not so chilling, this skill would make the book worthwhile, and the stories themselves are stories that every American should understand in as much depth as possible.

Written by: Gemma Cooper-Novack, November 2nd 2009

Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman’s Harrowing Quest for Justice

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 03:57:00 +0000

By Bill Lueders

University of Wisconsin Press

Justice and rape have a horrible history of rarely being bedfellows. This is one of the best chronicles of how torturous the justice system can be to women who have been forced into sexual acts against their will. Equally inspiring is the fact that it was written by a man, Bill Lueders, who is a news editor for Isthmus, Madison, Wisconsin's newsweekly. He does a great job of telling Patty’s incredible and moving story taking the reader on a step-by-step journey from the rape through the medical examinations, police investigation and interrogation, and the aftermath of the trial.

Typical of systems built on money rather than justice, offensively insensitive tactics that were intimidating and disrespectful were used with unrepentant fervor. Somewhere along the line “innocent until proven guilty” turned into “innocent by shifting blame to the victim.” You will read about the damaging, emotional wounds Patty held in this revealing expose of our justice system, and how her struggle with depression that resulted from the rape was difficult to reconcile when she had to continually defend herself. Not only is this book worth buying; it is also worth reading several times.

Written by: Teri King, March 14th 2007