Many queer relationships were conducted in complete Will may have quietly disappeared from history, presumed to be cis.įor queer historical figures, the search was sometimes a Those who were not outed posthumously against their Many trans historical figures who we only know about today because such To “bury me in my bedsheets without further inspection.” Ironically, there are Jamesīarry, a pioneering trans surgeon who died in 1865, famously left instructions Headlines, to the effect of “Local man discovered to have been a woman allĪlong.” Many trans people tried to avoid this posthumous outing. News with highly-sensationalized (and unfortunately, frequently misgendering) Often features them only because they were outed after their deaths, usually byĬoroners or medical professionals. The types of stories being told, which made my search a little easier.įor trans historical figures, the historical record most Over time, though, I did start to notice patterns in The research wasĬomplicated by terminology-for instance, you can’t go into an archive of 19thĬentury newspapers and search for terms like “transgender,” because the wordĭidn’t exist at the time. History museums in every new city I visited for work. I cast a wide net, doing my research in a variety of venues-inīooks, in online archives, in old newspapers preserved at my library, and in Records of them, even if they’re hard to find. It stands to reason that if LGBTQ people existed in

We queer people are not recent inventions-much as manyĬonservative pundits would like to believe we are! We are a normal andĮssential part of humanity. I started my research process with a baseline assumption: So, if you’re setting out to write a book about queer and trans people in the more-distant past, where do you go for information? Most queer history (if it’s taught at all) stretches back only as far as the Stonewall Riots in 1969. That sometimes surprises people, because in the US, one of our popular myths about queer and trans people is that they basically didn’t exist prior to the mid-20th century. Though Stage Dreams is a work of queer fiction, quite a lot of historical research ended up informing it. Library Binding (September 3rd, 2019): $29.Melanie Gillman gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the importance of the research process, even in fiction.

But when the two get to talking about Flor's plan to crash a Confederate gala and steal some crucial documents, Grace convinces Flor to let her join the heist. When Flor-also known as the notorious Ghost Hawk-robs the stagecoach that Grace has used to escape her Georgia home, the first thing on her mind is ransom. In this rollicking queer western adventure, acclaimed cartoonist Melanie Gillman (Stonewall Award Honor Book As the Crow Flies) puts readers in the saddle alongside Flor and Grace, a Latinx outlaw and a trans runaway, as they team up to thwart a Confederate plot in the New Mexico Territory.

Stage dreams melanie gillman