Night of the Living Queers by Shelly Page

Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers.

“I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era.

At times, her rapid-fire introduction of characters and stream of narration are confusing, but the book is a well-paced, highly informative page-turner about a history that is rarely told.Ī gay rights activist's funny and thoughtful memoir.Ī former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.ĭiscovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. Shelley’s frank, conversational tone, wry sense of humor, and keen eye for detail make the text feel like an intimate conversation with a radical friend. “I was still living a double life.” It was through this organization and its male counterpart-the Mattachine Society-that Shelley helped found the radical Gay Liberation Front, a group famous for organizing the march that alchemized the ire of the Stonewall riot into a decadeslong movement. “Although I was out as spokesperson for the DOB, I couldn’t be out at work,” she writes. At a young age, the author was confident enough in her sexuality to become a public speaker for the New York chapter of a “lesbian organization” called Daughters of Bilitis, a role she wore proudly despite having to hide it from her employer. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and the City College of New York, Shelley was a tough, precocious New Yorker who began to identify as a lesbian after having an affair with a woman she met in a judo class. On June 28, 1969, Shelley was giving two gay Bostonians a tour of Greenwich Village in New York City when they “came upon a group of men throwing things at cops.” When the women asked what was going on, Shelley answered, “It’s just a riot…we have them all the time.” It was only later that she realized that the women had passed through the famous riot at the Stonewall Inn that marked a major transition in the movement for gay rights. The autobiography of a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front.

Night of the Living Queers by Shelly Page