Open Secret
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€95.99
20th century
A01=Nicholas L. Syrett
adopted
adult adoption
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
american
architect
architecture
Author_Nicholas L. Syrett
automatic-update
biographical
biography
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=DNB
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLW
Category=JBSF3
Category=JBSJ
Category=JFSJ5
Category=JFSK
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
chicago
COP=United States
cultural studies
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
domestic life
domesticity
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
father and son
gay
hawaii
homosexuality
illinois
john gregg
kinship
Language_English
legality
legally
lgbtq
lgbtqia
love
PA=Available
philanthropist
philanthropy
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
robert allerton
same sex relationship
sexuality
social structures
softlaunch
the farms
travel
united states of america
usa
Product details
- ISBN 9780226638744
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Apr 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In 1922 Robert Allerton—described by the Chicago Tribune as the “richest bachelor in Chicago”—met a twenty-two-year-old University of Illinois architecture student named John Gregg, who was twenty-six years his junior. Virtually inseparable from then on, they began publicly referring to one another as father and son within a couple years of meeting. In 1960, after nearly four decades together, and with Robert Allerton nearing ninety, they embarked on a daringly nonconformist move: Allerton legally adopted the sixty-year-old Gregg as his son, the first such adoption of an adult in Illinois history.
An Open Secret tells the striking story of these two iconoclasts, locating them among their queer contemporaries and exploring why becoming father and son made a surprising kind of sense for a twentieth-century couple who had every monetary advantage but one glaring problem: they wanted to be together publicly in a society that did not tolerate their love. Deftly exploring the nature of their design, domestic, and philanthropic projects, Nicholas L. Syrett illuminates how viewing the Allertons as both a same-sex couple and an adopted family is crucial to understanding their relationship’s profound queerness. By digging deep into the lives of two men who operated largely as ciphers in their own time, he opens up provocative new lanes to consider the diversity of kinship ties in modern US history.
An Open Secret tells the striking story of these two iconoclasts, locating them among their queer contemporaries and exploring why becoming father and son made a surprising kind of sense for a twentieth-century couple who had every monetary advantage but one glaring problem: they wanted to be together publicly in a society that did not tolerate their love. Deftly exploring the nature of their design, domestic, and philanthropic projects, Nicholas L. Syrett illuminates how viewing the Allertons as both a same-sex couple and an adopted family is crucial to understanding their relationship’s profound queerness. By digging deep into the lives of two men who operated largely as ciphers in their own time, he opens up provocative new lanes to consider the diversity of kinship ties in modern US history.
Nicholas L. Syrett is professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities and American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States, coeditor of Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present, and a contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Daily Beast.
