Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic--families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors' needs--revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 06/05/2018
ISBN: 9781631491641
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.60d
Award: Edgar Allan Poe Awards - Winner

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/01/2018 pg. 69
Publishers Weekly 04/16/2018
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2018 pg. 56
Library Journal 05/01/2018 pg. 78
Booklist 05/01/2018 pg. 52
Shelf Awareness 12/04/2018