Men Like That: A Southern Queer History Book

The book is separated into two parts. The first uses oral histories to narrate a loose history, an impression of the time period as a whole for queer men. He frankly discusses the limits of this type of history, the types of narratives received when a historian asks for queer interviewees ' you miss out on the huge pool of men who "liked that," but weren't "like that." Still, even though it's limited, it's useful. The second part of the book, larger in size, deals with more traditional historical methods. It's more chronological, and covers such history-ish things as laws, activist organizing, public backlash, the civil rights movement, and fictional representations (not in that order).

I was pleased by Howard's treatment of race and religion throughout the book. He rightly notes that the book would be devastatingly incomplete without discussing race and the intersection of race with sexuality, and he follows through on discussing that in pretty much every section, although he was limited in some areas by lack of available sources. Fun and significant fact ' according to Howard (although not in his words), things were relatively chill for queer men in Mississippi in the 50s, but racism was huge. After the civil rights movement got started there was backlash, and queer folks got caught up in it, in large part because the anti-civil rights people tried to accuse civil rights leaders of crazy pervy stuff in general to discredit them. Also just because the dominant classes were doubling down on their definitions of propriety in general, but ALSO because queers and queer activism were legitimately linked to the Civil Rights Movement proper. The 60s and 70s were the hardest time for queer folks, not the 50s.

Men Like That isn't a perfect book. The main issue is too much editorializing, without clearly linking his interpretation to his evidence. Interpretation, in a historian's parlance simply meaning "chitchat and conclusions based on evidence," is the whole point of history writing. I just prefer to have very explicit linkages between the discussion and the evidence being discussed, because it minimizes confusion. However, this is a very common thing in history books, and it didn't hamper my enjoyment. The work is copiously endnoted, and being a nerd working on a project, I spent a lot of quality time with those endnotes. So, I can confidently say if you want more information about any of his topics, you can easily figure out his sources and continue on your own. Another minor criticism is that he quotes Novid Parsi in glowing terms on several occasions, without mentioning that they were partners at the time. He mentions it in the acknowledgements, but not when actually using Parsi's work.

Full review: