Queers are Workers, Workers are Queer, Workers' Rights are Hot! The Emerging Field of Queer Labor History

Abstract

Gay male stewards performing drag shows on large passenger ships in the 1930s. Male hustlers selling sex to men for money and then going home to their girlfriends in the 1950s. Lesbian bus drivers organizing in the 1970s to include “sexual orientation” in their union contract's antidiscrimination clause. Gay male flight attendants fired from their jobs for being HIV-positive in the 1980s. These are some of the stories told in the four books under review, each about the queer labor history of the United States.