The Mournful Uses of Oral History: Queer LGBT Latino Memory and the Global Public

In an ever-enlarging global circuit of competing stories searching for attention—on the internet, over television and radio waves, and even still in print—oral histories open up exciting possibilities for shaping public memories.  Among gay and lesbian or “queer” public and national and international memories, competing narratives consistently return to the famed June 1969 Stonewall Inn Riots in New York City. While U.S. queer historiography has anchored Stonewall as an emblematic point for public memory, it has simultaneously erased or minimized other historical moments, community struggles, and representative events. My presentation focuses on some of the challenges and success in re-historicizing U.S. gay and lesbian/queer history beyond Stonewall, based upon oral histories of Latinas and Latinos in San Francisco. The history of this growing, openly queer population in turn extends beyond the boundaries of the state and the nation to include the transnational migrations from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. I address the methodological and theoretical challenges of conceptualizing gay and lesbian history from non-white positions; ways the digital revolution and a growing internationalization of oral history are shifting earlier paradigms for processing and distributing oral history for public consumption; and how public history and oral memory have the potential for building a more pluralistic understanding of diverse genders and sexualities, notions of human rights, and social movements across time and geography.