Safe Space

"Safe Space is a pathbreaking book for the interdisciplinary fields of queer studies and American studies. Offering a trenchant account of the stakes of gay (and sometimes lesbian) claims to urban geographies, this carefully researched history unsettles many of the heroic assumptions driving the current politics of sexual identity in the United States. It will make a crucial intervention in a number of scholarly and activist debates."—Siobhan B. Somerville, author of Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture
"A wonderful book that bursts through the usual boundaries of gay history. Christina B. Hanhardt weaves class, race, and sexuality tightly together in her urban history of the past fifty years and, in doing so, succeeds in upsetting much of the conventional wisdom about the gay movement and gay politics. Her analysis implicitly calls for the revival of a multi-issue, intersectional queer politics that challenges injustices of every sort and sees them all as linked."—John D'Emilio, author of The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture
"Christina B. Hanhardt's brilliant book should be required reading for all those interested in how the LGBT movement's politics have come to reinforce racialized governance logics and control of economically and socially marginal populations."—Urvashi Vaid, author of Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics
“This is a deep and intriguing study of what neighborhood and safety have meant—and seemed to mean—to different facets of the gay community at different times in its development in the period following WWII. . . . While obviously written for an academic audience, Safe Space will be accessible to most readers, and offers some insights into ways that gay spaces may not have been quite what we thought they were.”
-- Kel Munger * Lit/Rant *
“A commendable revision of the LGBT story in America. . . . A dramatic picture of a febrile movement that had a difficult relationship with its competitors. The book further excels by demonstrating this history through the experiences of LGBT people of color, transgender individuals, and immigrants. This rich analysis serves as a useful primer on why gay neighborhoods are at the epicenter of discussions about gentrification.” * Publishers Weekly *
“The book’s extensive coverage of LGBT activism in the latter half of the 20th century illustrates how contemporary socio-legal gains were made possible by resistance-fuelled, political organising. What began as a gay backlash to victimisation soon became a platform for resistance to state violence. . . . Overall, this is a fascinating insight into lesser-known aspects of America’s gay liberation movement.” -- Marian Duggan * Times Higher Education *
"Hanhardt challenges commonly accepted narratives about safe streets, LGBT identity, and intersections of visibility and vulnerability. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." -- A. B. Audant * Choice *
"Recommended both for its astute and never simplified analyses of social movements as well as its cautionarily optimistic political vision, Christina B. Hanhardt’s Safe Space is a necessary and welcome contribution to the field of LGBT and Queer Studies." -- Rachel F. Corbman * Sociological Review *
“Scholars and academics studying urban spaces, as well as grassroots activists within and outside the LGBT community, should take note of Hanhardt’s work. Her discussion of the emergence of LGBT activist claims to the protection of property and of self and the ways these protections became viewed as natural rights expected in American urban spaces helps illuminate not only specific transformations within urbanized LGBT populations in New York and San Francisco, but broader divisions which formed in liberal activist groups after the 1960s.” -- Geoffrey West * Planning Perspectives *
“Against the fractured landscape of cities characterized by uneven development, Safe Space is a clarion call for radicals to recognize the common deterrents facing all those working for more just cities. . . . Safe Space recognizes that claiming the city as an equitable space for all will require a broader understanding of identity, its use as a tool for development, and its latent potential as a site of resistance.” -- Eric Peterson * Jacobin *
“Hanhardt’s voice is that of an activist saddened, sometimes enraged, by how the potential for both equality and diversity was squandered by a middle-class white gay movement. Her book, then, is itself a moral intervention, one that combines social research and utopian politics.” -- Idoo Tavory * Public Books *
“Safe Space is a richly researched examination of activist organizations and less-organized activist efforts on behalf of LGBT rights in San Francisco and New York over the last fifty years. Hanhardt draws on archival materials as well as interviews and participant observation to provide a view that is close to the ground, attentive to the trees, even sometimes the weeds, without losing view of the forest.” -- Miranda Joseph * GLQ *
“Safe Space is impressive in its research and scope. . . . Safe Space is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the intersections of LGBT history, critical race and sexuality studies, and urban studies.” -- Daniel W. Rivers * Journal of American History *
"Hanhardt’s Safe Space offers an activist historiography of urban redevelopment and displacement, where biopolitical shifts have carved the social and physical landscape of San Francisco and New York City from the 1960s to the present.... She skillfully manages a dance of scale—telling both a macro history of changing postwar American liberalism and the micro histories of the ways it all came to remake daily life." -- Eric A. Stanley * QED *