The Stonewall Reader

June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement and a catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States.

Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers. These documents capture both the years leading up to and following the riots.

Most importantly, the anthology spotlights iconic activists pivotal to the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s.

The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years preceding, and the five years following. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, this anthology chronicles the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.

The Stonewall Reader was a finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, presented by The Publishing Triangle. It was also featured among Tor.com's Best Books of 2019 (So Far), Harper's Bazaar's The 20 Best LGBTQ Books of 2019, and The Advocate's The Best Queer(ish) Non-Fiction Tomes We Read in 2019.