Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

History

de la Croix, St. Sukie

Americas

University of Wisconsin Press

Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city's beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s. Journalist St. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago's LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked. Included here are Jane Addams, the pioneer of American social work; blues legend Ma Rainey, who recorded 'Sissy Blues' in Chicago in 1926; commercial artist J. C. Leyendecker, who used his lover as the model for 'The Arrow Collar Man' advertisements; and celebrated playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. Here, too, are accounts of vice dens during the Civil War and classy gentlemen's clubs; the wild and gaudy First Ward Ball that was held annually from 1896 to 1908; gender-crossing performers in cabarets and at carnival sideshows; rights activists like Henry Gerber in the 1920s; authors of lesbian pulp novels and publishers of 'physique magazines' and evidence of thousands of nameless queer Chicagoans who worked as artists and musicians, in the factories, offices, and shops, at theaters and in hotels. Chicago Whispers offers a diverse collection of alternately hip and heart-wrenching accounts that crackle with vitality.

Out of the Underground explores homosexuality in the radical press. It covers the rise and fall of the Gay Liberation Front in several cities, including Milwaukee, Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, San Jose, as well as gay metropolises like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Prior to a regular and reliable gay press, the only positive images of homosexuals appeared in the underground rags. In the turbulent 1960s, young gay men couldn't relate to the stuffy newsletters of Mattachine-era groups. Young lesbians too were drawn to the direct action of the Radical Lesbians and Women's Liberation Front, rather than the gab and java get-togethers of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Those young radicals were more likely to read the Great Speckled Bird, the Ann Arbor Argus, the San Francisco Oracle, the feminist It Ain't Me Babe, and the anarchic Berkeley Tribe, than the Ladder, the DOB newsletter.Out of the Underground is also about the culture, music, politics, and art, that radicalized young queers. Clearly, not all LGBTs were left-wing revolutionaries. Some were conservative and worked within established gay groups. The majority were deeply closeted.This book isn't about them.

Out of the Underground: Homosexuality, The Radical Press, and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Rattling Good Yarns Press

For centuries the voices of LGBTQ people have been silenced. Unable to share their lives openly. The result has been widespread isolation, misunderstanding, and shame. Often, with dire consequences still felt today. Tell Me About It explores these lives. It brings into the light the stories they have never fully shared.In Tell Me About It, author/historians Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen asked a variety of individuals ten specific questions. Their frank, audacious, hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking responses will resonate with readers from all walks of life. They offer a glimpse into the individual life experiences that have quietly brought LGBTQ people together into a community. Through the voices of others, Tell Me About It reveals who we are, what we share, and why we must never allow ourselves to be silenced again.

Tell Me About It: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

Keehnen, Owen

Biographies & Memoirs

St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is a book for adults who never lost that childlike sense of wonderment. The book sits firmly in the tradition of Lewis Carroll, Alan Garner, Lord Dunsany, and other British authors who lived with the fairies, lemonade birds, and tequila bunnies. The book takes the reader on a journey through the imagination of St Sukie de la Croix, where nothing makes sense, and nothing ever will. If you wonder what happens when you throw a broken vacuum cleaner into a bottomless pit, or why American bald eagles wear such terrible wigs, then St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures is the book for you. It begins when a very young St Sukie gets hired by three polar bears to become the Janitor of Lunacy in the garden of his own imagination. Every morning, St Sukie enters the secret garden to solve the problems of the woodland creatures who live there. Problems so peculiar in nature, they defy logic or anything resembling common sense. If you watch Fox News, wear Hush Puppies and cardigans, then you most likely won't like this book. However, if you truly believe that hens can be beauticians, that meerkats fly spitfire planes, and penguins practice tai chi on beds of azaleas, then read on. You have nothing to lose but your mind.

St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

The year is 1924 and has something gone amiss at the Chicago home of the Clam Sisters? When one purchases a rare blue spong from a songbird dealer, the aristocratic sisters and their staff find themselves exposed to a flying koan, provoking them to cast off their commonplace mores, their staid lives, for something altogether bold and ribald. Chinese tongs, vaudeville shows, fraudulent spiritualists...De la Croix's newest book is a humorous historical fantasy that showcases the follies of heteronormative, misogynistic, repressive life.

The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Lethe Press

We all have stories -- sometimes poignant, sometimes entertaining, and usually quite interesting. As historians of LGBTQ life, St Sukie de la Croix and Owen Keehnen, have been recording and collecting the memories, personal experiences, and anecdotes of queer folks for decades. The Tell Me About It series is an extension of their ongoing work.The Tell Me About It series sheds light on the lives, the circumstances, and the reality of LGBTQ people through the sharing of personal anecdotes in response to a series of questions. The results are a prime example of the power and the connection that comes from sharing our stories.Like its predecessor, Tell Me About It 2 is full of moving, horrendous, hilarious, and thought-provoking answers by LGBTQ people from across the country and around the globe, capturing a variety of experience, yet often revealing more profound similarities. Tell Me About It 2 offers glimpses of what makes us different, who we are, what we share, and where we fit in.

Tell Me About It 2: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. William GladstoneThe year is 1924; the place is Chicago's Towertown, home to the city's Bohemian set. The Clam Sisters, their staff and guests at Palourde Parlor at 35 E. Chestnut Street, are about to have life as they know it turned on its head. When one of the Clam Sisters purchases a rare blue spong from an exotic songbird dealer, the aristocratic sisters find themselves exposed to a flying oddity that leads them to shed their commonplace and staid way of life, for something altogether bold and daring. Chinese tongs, vaudeville shows, fraudulent spiritualists ... St Sukie de la Croix's novel is a humorous historical fantasy that showcases the follies of leading a mediocre existence.

The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity (The Spong Series)

From the Author of the groundbreaking Chicago LGBTQ history book, Chicago Whispers!Chicago After Stonewall: Gay Lib to Gay Life is by award-winning historian, journalist, and Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame inductee, St Sukie de la Croix – author of the groundbreaking Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall.Chicago After Stonewall is a detailed account of how LGBTQ Chicagoans responded to the Stonewall Riots. The book pulls together jigsaw pieces of information from many sources, including a wealth of documents held in the McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, to reveal a picture of a raggle-taggle band of dysfunctional rebels with one cause.In post-Stonewall Chicago, several attempts were made to publish a gay newspaper, but none lasted. The longest was the Chicago Gay Crusader with twenty-six issues, between 1973-1975. However, the paper was irregular and a hangover from the 1960s hippie underground press in style. It wasn't until June 20, 1975, when Grant L. Ford published Volume 1/Number 1 of Chicago Gay Life, that Chicago boasted a professional gay newspaper.However, from the Stonewall Riots until the publication of Chicago Gay Life, there was no reliable source for local gay news, only irregular gay publications like The Paper, Mattachine Midwest Newsletter, or hippie underground/alternative rags, Seed, Kaleidoscope, Reader, and Second City, and college newspapers like Maroon and Roosevelt Torch.This book begins with Stonewall and Henry Weimhoff, a University of Chicago student, and ends with the first issue of Gay Life on June 20, 1975, and an impassioned editorial by Valerie Bouchard for the community to "come together, unite, and focus on similarities and not differences."

Chicago After Stonewall: A History of LGBTQ Chicago From Gay Lib to Gay Life

A Hilarious Romp Through Retirement! Why do gay men retire to Palm Springs? Because it's a great place to live and a fabulous place to die. When Brian and Stéphane retired and move to Palm Springs, California, they never expected their lives to be turned upside down. They expected a quiet, peaceful retirement. But God had other plans. Instead of sunny days lounging by the pool, the aging couple discovered glory holes, nonagenarian cross-dressing neighbors, a lost pussy, an S&M-themed Thai restaurant, owl-collecting lesbians, nuns, a sad-looking anal chrysanthemum, Carol Channing, murder, and annoying mallards ... mostly annoying mallards. "Twilight Manors in Palm Springs, God's Waiting Room," is a hysterical, laugh-out-loud romp. It follows the adventures of Brian, Stéphane, their friends, and neighbors through a series of bizarre events that could only happen in Palm Springs, God's Waiting Room.

Twilight Manor in Palm Springs, God's Waiting Room (Twilight Manors in Palm Springs)

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Books by de la Croix, St. Sukie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by de la Croix, St. Sukie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall

Out of the Underground: Homosexuality, The Radical Press, and the Rise and Fall of the Gay Liberation Front

Tell Me About It: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

St Sukie's Strange Garden of Woodland Creatures

The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity

Tell Me About It 2: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions and Life Stories

The Blue Spong and the Flight from Mediocrity (The Spong Series)

Chicago After Stonewall: A History of LGBTQ Chicago From Gay Lib to Gay Life

Twilight Manor in Palm Springs, God's Waiting Room (Twilight Manors in Palm Springs)