Books
D.C. couple’s new book is spin-off of popular LGBT Instagram page
Project took on a life of its own since launching two-and-a-half years ago
Matthew Riemer is shocked how many people think the Stonewall Riots were the beginning of the LGBT liberation movement.
“We are teaching kids from the get-go that their history started in 1969. It’s ridiculous,” Riemer says. “As queer people, we’re this group who have been denied our history.”
He and his partner Leighton Brown, both attorneys and Washington residents, run the popular @lgbt_history Instagram account and are now coming out with a book on the history of LGBT activism. “We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation” (Ten Speed Press) will be released on Tuesday, May 7 and its two authors sat down with the Blade for an interview. They’ll be at Solid State Books (600 H St., N.E.) on Wednesday, May 8. It’s free and starts at 7 p.m.
The men created the account as a personal project after realizing they didn’t know much about their own history themselves.
Riemer does the text-based research and Brown finds photos for the account.
“We were just on a personal quest to learn, and we had gotten a little bit obsessive about it,” Brown says.
“A little bit obsessive” probably doesn’t do justice to the account or the research the two men have conducted.
Brown and Riemer first posted on Jan. 17, 2016. Just over three years later, they have nearly 5,000 posts and about 380,000 followers.
Each post is an image of an event in LGBT history or simply a historical photograph of LGBT people. These photos are accompanied by anywhere from a few lines to multiple paragraphs of descriptive text.
Recent posts include a picture of the “How Gay is Gay” cover from TIME in 1979. Under it is a description of the article, which discussed the rise of gays and lesbians choosing to live openly.
Another features an image of trans activist Marsha P. Johnson in Hoboken, N.J., on Easter Sunday.
Both men say the account has seen gradual growth to where it is today.
“It’s been just steady progress,” Brown says, while also noting that Laverne Cox regrammed a couple of their photos in the early stages.
Riemer wants to emphasize that the account is more than just another social media page. It’s become a well-research archive for LGBT history.
“We hope we are taken seriously and we believe we deserve to be taken seriously,” Riemer says. “We don’t write anything that can’t be backed up with primary, or at least secondary, sources.”
They cite those sources, too.
“We’ve been very serious about crediting and, when it’s possible, tagging photographers, archivists and activists or whoever is in the picture,” Riemer says.
Brown and Riemer love the platform Instagram provides them. But they also realize it comes with restrictions.
“The account is limiting not only in that it’s 2,200 characters but also in that queer history is really all connected,” Riemer says. “We weren’t able to show that on the account. There’s no hyperlinking. We don’t know if people are reading the captions. And we don’t know when people started following.”
That’s how the idea of a book emerged. “We Are Everywhere” comes out in a few days, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
But its content stretches back long before Stonewall and details LGBT history up until the early 2000s in a near-chronological manner. Chapters include large glossy images, curated by Brown, and accompanying narrative, written by Riemer.
And it doesn’t focus on the events one might expect to see.
“You don’t read that much about gays in the military or gay marriage,” Riemer says of the book. “We want to talk about queer history, our history, not our story of how we related to the straight people.”
Reimer remembers that when he first came out as gay, he “tried to be the straight-gay.” “A lot of us did that and still do, especially gay, cis white men,” he says.
His research into LGBT history changed his mind on how he had to act and who he had to be.
“We don’t fit into the broader society,” Brown says. “And that’s great,” Riemer chimes in.
“The book isn’t just about a few moments where we have had some clear advancement with respect to the larger society,” Brown says. “It’s about all the good and bad that got us to that advancement and the setbacks in between.”
And it took hours of archival research to put the book together. Riemer left his job as an attorney to work on the book full time when he and Brown signed the deal with Ten Speed Press.
He started writing the text over a year ago and visited more than 10 archives across the country as well as a bunch more online to weave the book together.
“We just wanted to get it right, and it’s been absolutely exhausting,” Riemer says.
The book has already received praise from giants within the LGBT community.
Anderson Cooper, who also follows the @LGBT_History Instagram account, wrote: “Our history hasn’t been taught in schools; it’s been passed from person to person, whispered through the ages, often in the dark of night between lovers. But whisper no more. Here we are, in these pages — our pride and power, our blood and tears, our love and laughter. This is our fight, our history, and we must learn it.”
Now that the book is finished and its release is around the corner, Riemer and Brown are focusing on promoting it. They have events at college campuses across the country and in June, they’re slated to speak at the LGBT Center in New York.
“We Are Everywhere,” the two men hope, brings to life the stories of the radicals of the LGBT liberation movement.
“What we’ve found is it’s always been the craziest, the most outlandish, the loudest — the ones who the mainstreamers say, ‘We’re not all like that’ — those were the ones who create the space for the rest of us,” Riemer says.
Books
A rabid fan’s look at the best and worst of queer TV
‘Rainbow Age of Television’ a must-read for viewers
‘The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer TV’
By Shayna Maci Warner
c.2024, Abrams Press
$28/304 pages
Wanna hand over the clicker?
You don’t want to miss the season premiere of that show you binge-watched over the summer. You’re invested, a fan who can’t wait to see what happens next. You heard that this may be the last season and you’ll be sad, if that’s so. Is it time to start looking for another, newer obsession or will you want to read “The Rainbow Age of Television” by Shayna Maci Warner, and find something old?
Like most kids of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, Shayna Maci Warner spent lots of time glued to a television screen, devouring programming before school, after school, and all summer long. For Warner, that programming eventually led to a revelation. They saw people that looked like them, for which they formed “a personal attachment.”
It was “life-changing.”
It didn’t happen all at once, and some of TV’s “milestones” are forever lost, since broadcasts were live until the 1950s. Shortly after shows were taped and preserved, homosexuality became a “source of worry and blunt fascination” but certain performers carefully presented gently risqué characters and dialogue that nudged and winked at viewers.
Some queer representation appeared in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the 1970s when dramas began to feature more gay and lesbian characters, however subtly. It took a while for “the ‘rest’ of the alphabet” to be represented in a meaningful way and – despite that “Star Trek” and its many versions included gender-diverse characters – it wasn’t until 1996 that an intersex infant was featured on a regular television drama.
Since Ellen DeGeneres came out practically on her namesake TV show and “Will & Grace” became a wild hit, queer representation on TV has ceased to be an unusual thing. And yet, programmers and writers know that caution is still warranted: sometimes, “there can still be hesitation around pushing the envelope and fear that a queer character who burns too brightly just won’t last.”
Quick: name three after-school TV shows that aired when you were in fourth grade. If you can’t do it, one thing’s for certain: you need “The Rainbow Age of Television.”
But get ready for some argument. Author Shayna Maci Warner offers a rabid fan’s look at the best and the worst queer representation had to offer, and you may beg to differ with what they say about various programs. That makes this book a critique, of sorts, but Warner offers plenty of wiggle-room for argument.
Tussling over the finer points of queer programming, though, is only half the fun of reading this book. Microwave a box of pizza snacks or mac-and-cheese, demand “your” sofa seat, and dive into the nostalgia of old TV shows, most of them from the later last century. Yep, your faves are here. It’s like having an oldies channel on paper, and in your hand.
This is a must-have for former kids and current TV addicts who are happy to see themselves represented on TV. If that’s you, who brought the chips? “The Rainbow Age of Television” will just click.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Author rails against racism and desire, politics, loss
‘Rage’ explores being ‘Queer, Black, Brilliant’
“Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It”
By Lester Fabian Brathwaite
c.2024, Tiny Reparations Books
$28/288 pages
Somewhere up in the clouds.
That’s where your blood pressure is, right there as high as it’s ever been. Hoo, boy, are you angry. Your teeth are clenched, your eyes are slits, and you can’t trust yourself to speak in more than a growl. You’re plenty steamed and, as in the new book “Rage” by Lester Fabian Brathwaite, it shouldn’t have to be this way.
When he came with his family to America from Guyana at just four years old, Brathwaite couldn’t believe what his new home country offered. Malls, new kinds of food, cable television? Shirtless white men on TV and in magazines? Yes, please!
He’s always had crushes on white men, but he loves being a gay Black man – even though racism, overt and subtle, can be an aggravation. When Brathwaite is on a dating app, white men sometimes dismiss him with a racial comment. He’s heard and seen the “n-word” more than once and he doesn’t tolerate it. Wouldn’t a greeting and a no thanks be less rude?
He is bothered by unnecessary meanness.
He is bothered in a different way by bodybuilding. Hot, muscular bodies, to be exact and he’s sure that whoever created the sport was a genius. Brathwaite participates in bodybuilding himself sometimes – it’s expensive and he does it for himself, not for other men – though he believes that gay men are bodybuilding’s biggest subset. For sure, he’s payed homage to his share of bodybuilders, superheroes in movies, and hot shirtless boys on TV.
There were many times, years ago, that Brathwaite ended up drunk and in a stranger’s bed or looking for an old hook-up, and he was arrested once. Nearing 30, though, he realized that that life wasn’t what he wanted anymore. His knees couldn’t take it. Besides, he liked who he was and he liked his blackness. He realized that he didn’t need anyone else to be a hero of his tale. He could do it better himself.
One thing’s for certain: “Rage” lives up to its title.
At times, author Lester Fabian Brathwaite rails against so many things: racism and desire, club society, being a writer and editor, the generational differences between gay men, politics, and loss. At other times, he’s outRAGEous and hilarious, writing to readers as though he’s holding court in a cafe somewhere and you’d better listen up.
You should know that that means honesty – poking in the corners, calling things out for what they are, chastising people who need schooling on how to behave in a way that doesn’t leave room for nonsense. This arrives unabashed and raw, accompanied by plenty of profanity.
You’ve been warned.
And yet, Brathwaite’s candor and his blunt talk is fresh and different. This gay man doesn’t pussy-foot around, and getting his opinions without fluff feels good and right. Readers will appreciate that, and they might come away educated.
Generally speaking, this ain’t your Grandma’s book, unless Grandma likes real talk laced with profanity. If that’s so, then get “Rage.” You’ll both be mad for it.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Fall books offer something for every taste
Hollinghurst’s latest plus a look at Queer Harlem Renaissance
Welcome to the fall book season, where you’ll find gifts for your friends, family and (most importantly?) the best reads for yourself. This is when you’ll find the blockbuster novels you’ve been waiting for, the surprise memoirs and nonfiction that you’ve wanted, and gorgeous gift books your coffee table. This fall, keep your eyes open for all kinds of literary goodness.
NOVELS
Lovers of a good novel will want to curl up with a huge TBR pile.
Romance novels will fill the shelves this fall, and if love is what you want for the holidays, you’re in luck. Look for “The Rules of Royalty” by Cale Dietrich (Wednesday Books, December), a modern tale of a prince and a “commoner”; or “Feast While You Can” by Mikealla Clements and Onjuli Datta (Grand Central Publishing), a scary-romance-erotica novel of small-town life and monsters.
Reach for “Our Evenings: A Novel” by Alan Hollinghurst (Random House, October), a novel of a young man who happily accepts a scholarship to a boarding school filled with classmates who are much, much wealthier than he is. “The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts” by Louis Bayard (Algonquin Books, September) is a historical novel about Oscar Wilde’s family.
For lovers of Gothic tales, look for “The Resurrectionist” by A. Rae Dunlap (Kensington, December), a tale of bodysnatching. Classics lovers will want to read “Private Rites: A Novel” by Julia Armfield (Flatiron Books, December), a queer reimagining of King Lear. Or find “Women’s Hotel” by Daniel M. Lavery (HarperVia, October), a book about a second-rate women-only hotel in New York City.
If your taste runs more to rom-coms, there are dozens of those available this fall, too, as well as Christmas novels with gay, lesbian, and trans characters inside.
NONFICTION
Even nonfiction readers will have reason to read this fall and winter.
Look for “Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known” by George M. Johnson and Charly Palmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September), a book about 1920s Harlem and the influential queer folks who left their marks on entertainment.
“Something, Not Nothing” by Sarah Leavitt (Arsenal Pulp Press, September) chronicles, in comic form, the death of Leavitt’s partner and the paths grief takes to healing. Learn more about LGBTQ history with “The Book of Awesome Queer Heroes: How the LGBTQ+ Community Changed the World for the Better” by Eric Rosswood and Kathleen Archambeau (Mango, December); check out Mary L. Trump’s heartbreaking memoir, “Who Could Ever Love You?” (St. Martin’s Press, September); or check out a collection of essays in “Songs On Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes” by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco, December). Look for “Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous,” an anthology of secret confessions from women around the country, by Gillian Anderson (Abrams Press, September), or find “Queer Disability through History: The Queer and Disabled Movements Through Their Personalities” by Daisy Holder (Pen and Sword History, November). Also: Cher has a new biography out this fall, “The Memoir, Part One” (Dey Street Books, November).
Not quite what you’re looking for? Check with your favorite bookseller or librarian for more ideas because, this fall, they’ll have lots of them. Or give a gift certificate and hold on for spring. Season’s readings!
‘I don’t want a genocide to be done on queer people’s behalf’
‘Acting their asses off’ in ‘Exception to the Rule’
Avoiding the basement blahs
Biden-Harris must ensure access to HIV prevention drugs
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Asia, Europe, and Canada
Harris campaign ramps up LGBTQ engagement as Election Day nears
New Virginia license plate celebrates LGBTQ diversity
Is the Washington Post editorial board asleep?
GOP candidate in Del. House race expresses LGBTQ support
