Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights

Bausum (Stubby the War Dog) offers a powerful and moving account of the pivotal Stonewall riots of 1969 and the struggle for gay rights in the U.S. The riots occurred after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a grungy, mafia-run gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. “The tension of that night and countless previous nights and hundreds of lifetimes of abuse burst the dams of person after person. The crowd became a mob, and the mob began to riot.” Bausum’s conversational storytelling whisks readers back to an era when homosexuality was criminalized; after a brief introduction to the night of the raid (“For starters, there was a full moon. And it was beastly hot”), the narrative backtracks a decade to set the context for the violent demonstrations that ensued. A fast-paced accounting reveals how the first riot unfolded, both inside and outside the bar. Final chapters bring the battle for gay civil rights up to the present, with particular attention paid to the AIDS epidemic, pride parades, and the fight for marriage equality. Archival photos, source notes, and a bibliography are included. Ages 12–up. (May)■