Fernleihe

I re-read this book for a book group. Originally, I read it in the 1980s, and it shaped my perspective on the gay rights movement and the development of urban safe spaces for LGBT people. Often, books do not hold up when I reread them, but this one did. It reminded me of Randy Shilts' remarkable decade of incredible productivity, which included And the Band Played On (his chronicle of the AIDS epidemic) and Conduct Unbecoming (his exploration of the gay people serving in the U.S. military, which came well before the ultimate changes during President Obama's first term). And thus, it reminded me of the loss of Shilts and an entire generation of other creative people.

It's a satisfying read and the story of a city in a particular time. That San Francisco is long gone now, not only because so many of the people who lived in the Castro perished from AIDS, but also because that city experienced gentrification to such an extreme degree. Harvey Milk was the kind of person who moved to San Francisco in the 1970s but who could never afford to live there now. People with normal jobs and middle class income levels can't afford San Franscisco any more.

The developments of the 1970s changed the city for the better, and it remains a special place. Along with David Talbot's Season of the Witch, The Mayor of Castro Street is an essential book for understanding how that happened. ( )

I read this for Pride month. A moving, powerful story that details the contradictions of one man's life, his flaws, but especially his heroism. The book is also a portrait of the times he lived in, and I was astounded to learn about the dark corners of the world I grew up in (I was in high school when Harvey Milk was assassinated). I can't recommend this book more highly. Read it! ( )

Where do I start in talking about this book? There is so much to discuss, but I will limit myself. First, this is nominally a biography of Harvey Milk, and it does a fine job of it, but it is also, equally, a history of the gay rights movement and a history of San Francisco politics. For those tasks, the author does just as well, sometimes not even mentioning Harvey Milk for entire chapters. For the first fifteen chapters, the book sets the stage for reaching what the majority of people know about Harvey Milk, namely his death and the trial of his killer. While that early part of the book is very good and well worth reading in its own right, the remaining chapters are some of the best and most interesting reporting I have ever written, being all the more vivid because of the foundation that the author laid down earlier. I highly suspect that there is detail included of which even San Franciscans of the time are not aware. The author says as much at the end of his book. There was much to surprise me about Milk and about San Francisco politics. I have been concurrently reading yet another book about the segregationist American Deep South, a period of time in which whites were seldom arrested and very rarely convicted of crimes against blacks. This book provides ample evidence that gays have suffered a similar fate. In fact, I am certain that there are those who will believe this entire book is mere fiction, inspired by, if not actually written by the devil. Rational people will know otherwise. ( )

What I was hoping for was a glimpse into the life and times of Harvey Milk, but what I ended up getting from this biography was so much more. Shilts not only shines a light on Milk, he digs deeper in the history of San Fransisco, Castro Street, the Gay Movement and the people with whom Harvey surrounded himself. There was so much information packed into this biography, it ended up feeling more like a history book, which I loved!
Shilt's background as an investigative journalist really helped shape the book to be more of a journalistic approach to Harvey's life, rather than a biased or emotional one. While Shilts did know Harvey personally, he still ensured he approached this work with an eye for facts and information far more then opinions and feelings. This approach both added to and took away from the overall narrative for me. In one aspect the unbiased narrative allowed for a more honest look into Milk's life, attitude, and personality. He did not try and shine Harvey in a perfect light, painting him as a saint or un-flawed, but rather tried to allow for the reader to see Harvey as a human being who fought for a cause, but was in his own was flawed. Too often we can raise marters up onto pedastools and create a perfect image of them, that is far from the real people they were. This was not the case, and I felt like Shilt's did Milk's story justice in this way.
Where it distracted for me was in the emotional aspect. The weight and emotional toll of some of the events told in the history felt less due to the delivery of the facts. My personal connection to them somehow seemed less because there seemed little emotion in the writing of the events. I would have loved to feel more.
Even without that emotional weight, Harvey Milk's life sunk into me, and I fell in love with him even more. I fell in love with his ideals, his passion, his spirit, his drive, his politics, and his unwavering stance on gay rights. I needed to read this biography, and so does any gay man or woman, or LGBT ally, so we can know more about the man who helped push the Gay rights movement forward perhaps more than any other man or woman ever. ( )