When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History by Hugh Rvan

Some stories hide in plain sight. This one waited over a century to be told.

When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking history of a community that was very nearly forgotten. Hugh Ryan traces the vibrant queer life of Brooklyn from the days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s, through the women who worked the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and onward toward the present. It’s a sweeping, deeply human story that no book, film, or exhibition had ever told before.

Named an ALA GLBT Round Table Over the Rainbow 2019 Top Ten Selection and one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2019 by Harper’s Bazaar, this is a book that earns its accolades. Kirkus Reviews called it “a romantic, exquisite history of gay culture” in a starred review, while The New York Times Book Review praised its “boisterous, motley…entertaining and insightful” storytelling.

Ryan writes with intimate, moving prose, asking the big questions along the way. What is history? Who gets to tell it? And how do we come to know ourselves through the stories we recover? For too long, Brooklyn lingered in the shadow of queer Manhattan. This book brings it into the light.

Curl up with it on a gray afternoon, the sea air just outside the door. It’s the kind of read you’ll want to linger over, then press into a friend’s hands.

A modern classic, and a discovery worth making. Come find it on our shelves, or let us send it your way.

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