June is Pride Month, celebrating LGBTQIA+ people and history, so we at the PMI Victorian History Library thought we’d share a few of our books about the history of queer people and their experiences in Victoria and Australia and round out the month. All the books mentioned are available to borrow from our library, so don’t forget to drop by if any pique your interest.
Kamp Melbourne in the 1920s and ’30s: Trade, Queans and Inverts by Wayne Murdoch
Kamp Melbourne focuses on the experiences of gay men living in Melbourne one hundred years ago. Author Wayne Murdoch not only provides context by explaining the emergence of linking the concept of homosexual acts to a category of person by the 1880s, but explores all aspects of gay life at the time, including social attitudes, medicalisation, locations, language, mannerisms and the impact of modern inventions such as the car and telephone. Interspersed throughout are meticulously researched accounts of gay encounters in Melbourne. These represent only a fraction of those that would have occurred, as they were rarely documented due to criminalisation and social stigma. Kamp Melbourne is variously a fascinating, humorous and sobering read. (And it reveals why I chose a State Library Victoria photo of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens in the 1930s to accompany this article—public gardens were popular clandestine meeting places for gay men, especially after dark.)
Before Mardi Gras: Lesbian and Gay Activism in Australia by Graham Willett
Before Mardi Gras collects the first eight chapters of Willett’s earlier book Living Out Loud, focusing on the history of lesbian and gay activism from 1969 until the first Australian Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978. Willett deftly organises his research into chronological chapters highlighting individuals, organisations, movements—including the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) of the early 1970s—and the legal reforms that made way for Mardi Gras and Australia’s effective response to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which has been praised as one of the best in the world.
Gay & Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian Stories from a Social Revolution by Robert Reynolds and Shirleene Robinson
Gay & Lesbian, Then and Now is drawn from a collection of in-depth interviews and tells the life stories of thirteen gay and lesbian Australians whose ages range from twenties to eighties, spanning veterans, baby boomers, Generation X and millennials. Published in 2016, a year before Australia’s successful marriage law postal survey, which resulted in the legalisation of same-sex marriage in December 2017, it presents an absorbing look at individual tales of love, insight and self-discovery. This book is especially recommended for anyone interested in challenging and expanding any preconceived notions about gay and lesbian experiences in the twentieth century.
Yes Yes Yes: Australia’s Journey to Marriage Equality by Alex Greenwich & Shirleene Robinson
Speaking of the 2017 postal survey, Greenwich and Robinson’s Yes Yes Yes chronicles how a grassroots movement originating from 2004’s same-sex exclusionary amendment to the Marriage Act of 1961 garnered public support until the results of the survey were upheld by parliamentary vote, enshrining same-sex marriage into Australian law. As someone who grew up during this period, I found this book encouraging and illuminating, and I hope that other readers will too.
Transgender Australia: A History Since 1910 by Noah Riseman
Transgender Australia is “the first book to chart the changing social, medical, legal and lived experiences of trans and gender diverse people in Australia since 1910”. As already noted, because so much of LGBTQIA+ history was not documented at the time, Riseman’s research and findings are based on oral history interviews, previously unexamined documents and media reports, and includes a chapter dedicated to queer and trans Blak, Indigenous and people of colour. This book is recommended for those with an interest in trans history from an Australian perspective.
Happy Pride!
Written by library volunteer Susannah Cosham.