Robert W. Fieseler

Having not known of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire, this book was an excellent history which detailed the event, the context, and placed the fire within the larger story of gay rights. I also appreciated the characterization of New Orleans and the communities which call that city home (I visited New Orleans several years ago and loved the city). The comparison, at the beginning of the book, of the Up Stairs Fire and the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in 2016 are also striking. I know pieces of this story (elements touch on recent events), but this book provides a deeper historical context for events. A excellent read for those interested in the history of gay rights in the United States.… (meer)

American LGBT history from prior to the AIDS crisis is getting more of its due in recent years, and this was an excellent contribution. Basically, New Orleans in the early 1970s was only tenuously welcoming to gay and trans people by virtue of being a large-ish city with many transplants; it was still heavily religious and without the large out community of San Francisco or New York. The book reviews where these people went for companionship, including not just the obvious bars but also a church congregation and relatively tolerant neighborhoods. The bar in the title was part of that, and its tragic end in 1973 is just part of this story.

There was also more nuance than just the welcoming-niche-networks vs. disapproval-by-everyone-else dichotomy, which Fieseler told thoroughly. For example, the doctors in charge at Charity Hospital decided definitively to open a new ward early to treat the victims, and used that space to help shield some of the burn victims from the negative publicity about being found in a gay bar while they recovered.

Part of the real tragedy is that some of the fire victims don't get much of their story told, because no one really knew who they were. The identity of one was finally confirmed almost 40 years after the fire, a small but important contribution to that LGBT history I mentioned at the start.… (meer)