Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue- collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic--families ashamed to claim loved ones, the Catholic Church refusing proper burial rights, the city impervious to the survivors' needs--revealing a world of toxic prejudice that thrived well past Stonewall. Yet the impassioned activism that followed proved essential to the emergence of a fledgling gay movement. Tinderbox restores honor to a forgotten generation of civil-rights martyrs.

Author: Robert W. Fieseler
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 06/04/2019
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781631495953

About the Author
Fieseler, Robert W.: - Robert W. Fieseler is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing. A writer for Buzzfeed, Narratively, and elsewhere, he currently resides in New Orleans.