A01=Martin Padgett
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anita bryant
atlanta
Author_Martin Padgett
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HB
Category=NH
cheshire bridge road
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
disco
drag queen
drag race
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eq_nobargain
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georgia
homosexuality
jimmy carter
Language_English
PA=Available
peachtree street
Price_€10 to €20
pride
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ronald reagan
rupaul
softlaunch
stonewall
sweet gum head
Product details
- ISBN 9781324007128
- Weight: 384g
- Dimensions: 140 x 211mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2021
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Coursing with a pumped-up beat, gay Atlanta was the South’s mecca—a beacon for gays and lesbians growing up in its homophobic towns and cities. There, the Sweet Gum Head was the club for achieving drag stardom. Martin Padgett evokes the fantabulous disco decade by going deep into the lives of two men who shaped and were shaped by this city: John Greenwell, an Alabama runaway who found himself and his avocation performing as the exquisite Rachel Wells; and Bill Smith, who took to the streets and city hall to change antigay laws. Against this optimism for visibility and rights, gay people lived with daily police harassment and drug dealing and murder in their discos and drag clubs. Conducting interviews with many of the major figures and reading through deteriorating gay archives, Padgett expertly re-creates Atlanta from a time when a vibrant, new queer culture of drag and pride came into being.
Martin Padgett is the author of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head. Recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship, his writing has appeared in the Oxford American, The Paris Review, and Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Pensacola Beach, Florida.
