Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 04/01/2015 Gr 9 Up—This powerful, well-researched work examines the Stonewall riots, which took place in 1969 in New York City when members of the gay community fought back in response to a police raid on a gay bar. Bausum describes the restrictive lives that many gays and lesbians led in the 1960s and the relief—and risks—of meeting at gay bars. On June 28, 1969, when police arrived at the Stonewall Inn to make arrests, people—transvestites, drag queens, lesbians, and gay men—fought back, instead of filing quietly into police wagons. Quoting from a variety of firsthand sources (journalists, bar patrons, cops, and others), Bausum paints a vivid picture of the three nights of rioting that became the focal point for activists, some of whom had been fighting for gay and lesbian rights in a quieter way and others who found themselves suddenly drawn to the struggle. A month later, a large group of protestors rallied to speak out in Washington Square Park and marched down Christopher Street to the Stonewall Inn in what became the nation's first gay pride march. In the following chapters, Bausum describes the growth of gay and lesbian activism, setbacks, the impact of HIV/AIDS, and issues such as gays in the military and same-sex marriage, bringing readers to the present day and expertly putting these struggles into historical context. VERDICT An essential purchase.—Nancy Silverrod, San Francisco Public Library - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 04/01/2015 It started with a thump on the door of The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. It was in the early hours of June 28, 1969, and the thump announced a police raid, which—as Bausum dramatically demonstrates—turned from raid to riot as the customers of the bar resisted the officers, fomenting an incident that helped launch the gay rights movement. Though it focuses on Stonewall, Bausum’s book also offers a contextual look at the conditions of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender in pre-Stonewall America; the Inn’s Mafia ties that triggered the raid; and the sometimes uneasy progress of gay rights since that day, including the setback engendered by the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s. Though comprising little more than a hundred pages of text, the book is comprehensive in its coverage, filled with important information, and compassionate in its tone. It sheds welcome light on a subject that deserves greater coverage in YA literature. - Copyright 2015 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 07/01/2015 Noted author Bausum undertakes a tricky task here: to inform readers who know little or nothing of the 1969 Stonewall Riots about this landmark episode in civil rights history, while demythologizing the event for readers who regard Stonewall as the beginning of the gay rights movement. Teens unfamiliar with Stonewall get a rousing re-creation of the raid that, most improbably for the 1960s, saw bottle-throwing young rebels get the better of an undermanned police operation, hobbled by poor communication and ignorance of the turf they were sent to reclaim. For better-informed teens, Bausum sets the confrontation between police and gay bar patrons into the context of an already established movement, albeit one struggling for a broader audience and committed activists, and the general atmosphere of youth anger toward political and military authority that marked the Vietnam Era. She also reminds those readers inclined to enshrine Stonewall as a place of pilgrimage that it was, in fact, a Mafia-run dump that existed on police payoffs and unloaded watered-down, illegal liquor on gay patrons who had few alternative venues in which to meet, much less dance and socialize with some degree of freedom. After the exciting play-by-play details of the sweltering night of rioting, more subdued chapters skim topics such as the AIDS epidemic and the emergence of the marriage equality issue, though readers will want to look elsewhere for more in-depth treatment of those subjects. Nonetheless, this illustrated history lifts Stonewall from its customary footnote or chapter status into the YA book-length treatment it deserves. Source notes and a bibliography are included; the bound book will contain an index. EB - Copyright 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.