STORYTELLER’S SUNDAY: MARTIN DUBERMAN

As June of this year broke I realized I had a gap in my knowledge. The Stonewall riots were an event I knew the importance of and I knew the broad details of but I knew very little of how they came to pass and what happened during them. I’m a believer in knowing about context in history and I decided to fix this. There was no shortage of books to fill the gap but I settled on Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America. It was well reviewed but the author’s life spoke to me. A life long New York resident, a gay man, a fiery activist for disenfranchised causes and a prolific author. This would be a story dear to him and one he had to get right.

I have no regrets.

There is plenty of broader historical context but this is no text book. The device is not uncommon but Duberman uses six people’s lives as the means to tell the personal story of the events, how lives were impacted. Normally six separate narratives can make a book, fiction or history, difficult to navigate but the humanity of each narrative and engagement Duberman has makes these a lot more than names on the pages. You follow them with the ease of people you actually know.

There is a slight bias. Doberman’s main focus is social justice not pure history but the history is there as is the story as is the injustice. It is accessible, thought provoking and oddly entertaining while telling a story could be terrible and depressing. I had to think about this a lot as I finished the book but then I realized why – these people weren’t just fighting to survive they were fighting to live and they embraced the light while society opposed their mere existence and there is something glorious in that which the book brings to you.