I didn't think anyone had a new perspective on USA history worth reading
5 stars
Glad to find I was wrong! The central thesis of the book is basically this: if it weren't for the "bad" people of society, the ones who insisted on fighting all day and fucking all night, who refused to work, who rejected society's demand for pro-social conformity, we would all enjoy a lot fewer personal freedoms. From the multi-racial bawdy houses of Philadelphia from which numerous prostitutes would have solicited the attentions of our nation's founders to the rebellious drag queens and butch dykes who rejected the assimilationism of the unsuccessful "homophile" movement of the 1950s and 60s in favor of rioting and throwing bricks at cops, Russell pays tribute to the layabouts, the lazybones, the drug dealers and rum runners, the "bad n*s", and the deviants whose refusal to bend to society's will laid the groundwork for the success of more "respectable" organizers and reformers who followed …
Glad to find I was wrong! The central thesis of the book is basically this: if it weren't for the "bad" people of society, the ones who insisted on fighting all day and fucking all night, who refused to work, who rejected society's demand for pro-social conformity, we would all enjoy a lot fewer personal freedoms. From the multi-racial bawdy houses of Philadelphia from which numerous prostitutes would have solicited the attentions of our nation's founders to the rebellious drag queens and butch dykes who rejected the assimilationism of the unsuccessful "homophile" movement of the 1950s and 60s in favor of rioting and throwing bricks at cops, Russell pays tribute to the layabouts, the lazybones, the drug dealers and rum runners, the "bad n*s", and the deviants whose refusal to bend to society's will laid the groundwork for the success of more "respectable" organizers and reformers who followed in their turbulent wake.
Any anarchist who's interested in American history should read this book. Also, it would be excellent to pair it with Nell Painter's "The Invention of Whiteness," since Painter's book about the origins of the social category of "white" is broad and abstract, and "A Renegade History" has several chapters where Russell discusses, in a detailed manner, the transition from racialized to white of the Irish, Italians, and Jewish people.
