Queer Twin Cities by Twin Cities GLBT Oral History Project (review)

Based on an oral history project, Queer Twin Cities is a collection of essays with an introduction. The book relies heavily on secondary source material and theory. Several essays make use of primary and secondary source material, and while many of the essays do not include any oral histories, others use in-depth interpretations of a few oral histories. Co-editor Jennifer Pierce's introductory essay purports two accomplishments: to show "that Minnesota had its own active and visible movement of LGBT people who fought for rights and created a political movement that was both connected to and unique from those on the coast" and "how sexuality, particularly in its transgressive expressions, has shaped people's lives in Minnesota" (xii). The successful essays use oral histories to work toward these goals, while others stray.

The first two essays reflect on the origins and development of the oral history project. Jason Ruiz's essay traces the frustrations of a dearth of LGBT source material, methods taken to locate potential narrators, locations for interviews, and researchers' interests. Michael David Franklin's essay on the obstacles confronted with the Review Board for Human Subjects offers an account of transphobia impeding research. These first two essays offer oral historians much to consider. The third and seventh essays are the most historical of all the essays in the collection. In the third essay, relying on newspapers primarily, the authors examine three long periods in Minnesota's history. The authors would have strengthened the sections that deal with the latter parts of the twentieth century had they used oral histories to explore the stated goals of the collection. The fourth and fifth essays, with copious use of oral histories, stand out while the sixth essay suffers from a dearth of oral sources.

“The Myth of the Great White North" undermines widely held perceptions of race to interject complexity into discussion of queerness in the Twin Cities and serves as a cautionary example. Mark Soderstrom's "A Single Queer Voice" delves into the diverse intersections of communities in the examination of the identity of Elsie Matthesen in which oral histories are well used to try to delineate "a complex web of multiple communities” (123). Soderstrom shows "how influences from multiple communities may interact to create that person's subjectivity, and how identification with different communities may intersect in (and through) the life of the individual" (119). Elsie identifies with communities as diverse as the Lutheran Church, science fiction and fantasy groups, bisexual activism, rural communities, the Renaissance festival, the polyamourous community, and online communities because, as Elsie says, "It all connects" (130). While limning the intersections of one person's identity, the essay also offers historical insight in the origins of bisexual activism in the Twin Cities and offers an interesting linkage between Elsie's activism and the region's connection to the Grange and the Populist movements. This essay is one of the few points in the book where the activism of the Midwest is explored as unique from that on either coast. The sixth essay, on the Native American Twin-Spirit community, is largely an amalgamation of secondary sources, which the author would have strengthened by using more oral histories to support or refute ideas advanced by other authors.

In the seventh essay, Amy Tyson discusses post–World War II Twin Cities gay bars and their relationship to the authorities. Tyson used oral histories to characterize bars but also as a tool to compare Minneapolis and St. Paul enforcement of local statutes; she upends many widely held beliefs about the time. Tyson shows that the gay bars in the Twin Cities had much less to fear from local authorities than their counterparts in other cities. She suggests the police's hands-off approach to gay night life during postwar years was a function of the authorities' desire to maintain a vice-free image, which raids on bars would have undermined, and a burgeoning liberal...