Never By Itself Alone

Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944—Present

Bibliographic Data

ID23786366
AuthorsDavid Grundy (0000-0003-3974-7390, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2024
Publication date2024-07-17
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueQueer Poetry Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area 19 (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780197654842.001.0001
OpenAlexW4400797178
ISBN9780197654842
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited70

Never By Itself Alone changes our sense of both the American literary and political landscapes from the postwar period through to the present day. Presenting the first comprehensive history of postwar queer writing in Boston and San Francisco, the book begins with Robert Duncan’s courageous 1944 essay, ‘The Homosexual in Society’, one of the first significant public defences of homosexuality in the United States and ends with the War on Terror. Along the way, readers will encounter Adrian Stanford’s Black and Queer, the first book by an out, Black gay poet published in the United States; the Boston collective Fag Rag, whose radical reconsideration of family, private property and the state remain both ahead of their time and timely; the Combahee River Collective, whose Black Feminist analysis drew together race, class, and sexuality in new ways; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, in which women of colour spoke truth to power, together; and New Narrative writing, which audaciously mixed Marxism, porn, and gossip while uniting against the New Right. Drawing on extensive archival research, Never By Itself Alone reclaims a host of neglected writers, especially writers of colour and those with gender non-conforming identities; challenges the Stonewall exceptionalism of queer historiography, recovering pre-1969 activist and literary community and its anticipations of ‘queer’ identity; and insists on the continuing importance of radical accounts of race, class and gender in any queer studies worthy of the name.

Australian History and Society · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society