Cherry Grove Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town [Paperback]

Esther Newton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 1995

Recounts the history of Cherry Grove, from the 1930s to the present, including interviews with residents who describe the struggles, the partying, and the perseverance. By the author of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After spending five summers in Cherry Grove, lesbian anthropologist Newton ( Mother Camp ) has written a soundly researched cultural history of this unique homosexual summer retreat in N.Y. where, as a demographic majority, gays "achieved American ideals of independence and citizenship." Based on interviews with 46 former and current residents, the author chronicles the colony's development from an isolated few cabins to a thriving, commercial, publicized community with Mafia-run discos and occasional police raids. The island's theater, drag balls, athletic and campy events entertain residents and visiting celebrities alike. However, the gay liberation movement of the '70s and '80s temporarily caused friction among owners, landlords and businesses; the era was marked by an influx of lesbian couples and hordes of day-trippers, many of them black or Hispanic. Although many aspects of gay culture have changed since the '80s, the Grove remains a place where gays and lesbians still go "to be part of something unique." Newton shows us why. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Cherry Grove, the oldest continuously inhabited resort on Fire Island, became a beacon toward which gays were drawn as well as "a ghetto into which they were pushed by the hatred and intolerance of straight society" beginning in the early 1930s. Relying on interviews with 46 former and current Grovers, lesbian anthropologist Newton, author of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America ( LJ 3/15/73) chronicles the affluent community, a "grand, fun, party" place, punctuated by conflicts between renters and owners, gays and straights, and tourists and Grovers and those drawn along lines of class, gender, and race. This fascinating narrative sets the gay experience in Cherry Grove against the broader context of the history of 20th-century American lesbian and gay life. For gay studies collections.
- James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (May 31, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807079278
• ISBN-13: 978-0807079270
• Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #645,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Three generations of gay life in America, June 18, 2000

By 

Timothy M. Hall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cherry Grove Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Paperback)

As a lesbian anthropologist who spent several years summering in Cherry Grove and getting to know the then-aging members of its first gay pioneers, Esther Newton was uniquely placed to write the history of America's first (and for long, only) predominantly gay and lesbian community. The documentation and the historical depth are impressive; what struck me more, however, was the extent to which gay and lesbian life existed in the United States before Stonewall (1969), even if it was often constrained by a combination of public disapproval and intermittent enforcement of oppressive laws. As someone born after Stonewall, the pre-1960s history of marginalized groups, like homosexuals, is largely unknown. This book goes a long way to redressing that gap in American social history.

Newton organizes her book into three main eras. The "country-club" time of the first gay, lesbian, and sexually ambiguous individuals who came out from the New York theatre and artistic circles, began in the 1930s and continued through WW II and into the anti-gay witch hunts of the McCarthy era. The second period, beginning in the 1960s, saw the expansion of the upper-class WASP definition of gay identity to include new perspectives from "ethnic" whites, mainly Jews and Italians of middle- and working-class backgrounds. Finally, the 1970s and 1980s saw a transformation of the Grove, post-Stonewall, post-advent of AIDS, in which a newly militant gay identity was forged nationwide through the rhetoric of civil rights and in response to the devastation of HIV. Each era has seen conflicts between straights and gays, between owners, renters, and day-trippers, between men and women, and along lines of class and ethnicity. Often these factions have aligned in unexpected ways, and as an older renter, a woman, and a person of Jewish heritage, Newton is unusually placed to see the shifting fault lines.

The weakness of the book lies in a certain lack of analysis, on the one hand, and a certain political positioning on the other. Newton is an anthropologist by profession, but the analysis of social groupings in this book rarely goes beneath a simple description of what happened, in which factors of class, gender, and ethnic identity largely determine the political history of Cherry Grove. One could hope for a bit more analysis -- for instance, camp culture and drag (both of which changed substantially in conception with the changes of generations) are rather central to her description of Cherry Grove's history. Yet there is little attempt to analyze the psychology or motivations for either. The second issue is that Newton very strongly identifies herself as a politically liberal lesbian of a certain generation; this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, she sees and describes what might be invisible to someone who accepted the class identity of the first generation, to someone who accepted the assumed whiteness of the first two generations, or someone who accepted the current gay assumption that "gayness" is an identity primarily of white, middle-class males under the age of 40. On the other hand, the narrative is somewhat shaped by her identification (and criticism of) particular groups within Cherry Grove. She also has a fondness for camp humor which is somewhat alien to many people who have grown up since Stonewall, and which identifies her as a member of a particular generation. It is a pity she does not take more effort to explain it, as she seems to think it central to an understanding of Cherry Grove's first thirty years. (She may do so in her earlier book, Mother Camp, based on her dissertation work.)

All in all, this is a very good history of gay life in a culturally significant American community.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Enjoyable Day In The Grove, May 6, 2003

By 

Kit Rodolfa (Claremont, Ca USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cherry Grove Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Paperback)

As a student of the natural sciences growing up in an era in which most Americans have already learned the lessons of AIDS and Stonewall is becoming a distant recollection of the founding moments of a move that is today alive and strong, I have had little opportunity to learn about the history of the gay and lesbian rights movement in America. Thus, in anthropological texts on this subject, such as Newton's, I seek a book which is easy to read from a lay-person's perspective (having no training in anthropology myself) and capable of providing a well-balanced look at how significant historical events have shaped the movement with which I am familiar today. Cherry Grove, Fire Island performs superbly on both of these points.

The book focuses on the small queer community of Cherry Grove which managed to develop in the mid-1930's on the remote sand bar of Fire Island, just off the coast of New York. Newton notes that perhaps it was in such a remote place that the first development of gay community in America happened because this was the only place it could happen-removed from mainstream life. Newton's book follows this community through the major eras in its development, carefully noting the important roles of major events both on the island and the mainland. Changing economic structures on the island (including the introduction of mafia-owned discos!), the developing gay rights movement on the mainland, the AIDS pandemic, sexism and racism in The Grove, day-tripping visitors, public sex, and competition with other Fire Island communities are only a few of the topics Newton explores in her comprehensive study.

Newton based her book on interviews of forty-six informants that she gathered while spending five years in The Grove during the 80's. She formulates the text as the story of a community with a focus on some key characters and places throughout. At times, it reads much like a novel with charming characters and situations almost too enchanting too believe. Indeed, Newton's book may be an anthropological record, but it reads like anything but the dry, sterile picture that such classification invokes. Nonetheless, Newton has done a careful job of keeping the "big picture" of gay rights and identity in mind while telling her story and it is not difficult to see how most of what she recounts is historically important in this scope as well. Finally, it is notable that one shortcoming of anthropological work in general is that much of it seems generally lacking in a balance between focus on gay men and lesbians. Despite the fact that The Grove was primarily a gay male community throughout most of its early years (something that has slowly been changing), Newton manages to do an admirable job of maintaining a sense of balance, even managing to draw extensively from interviews of some of the lesbians who did manage to visit Cherry Grove in its early years.

If there is one shortcoming of Newton's book, it is perhaps that the subsection of the gay community on which it focuses is a rather affluent one. Of course, this focus is more a result of the nature of the community itself and we can hardly fault Newton for it. On the whole, then, Cherry Grove, Fire Island is a well-written and informative portrayal of early gay and lesbian life in America.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cherry Grove Fire Island, May 10, 2010

By 

S. Calander (Claremont, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cherry Grove Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Paperback)

Thoroughly engrossing, and incredibly in depth, Esther Newton's "Cherry Grove Fire Island" is a meticulously accounted history of America's first gay and lesbian town. A compilation of stories from over forty members of the Grove community, "Fire Island" reads more as a novel than an anthropological ethnography, leaving the reader wanting to turn page after page. Newton has lived part time in Cherry Grove since 1985 and her passion for the Grove is clear. This passion not only gives the reader a sense of the Grove community and how the members feel towards it, but also leaves the reader wishing they were sitting beach side in Cherry Grove.

Filled with tales of lavish parties, elegant costumes, and endearing characters, Newton balances the struggle and the beauty that went into creating Americans first gay and lesbian town off the coast of New York. Contemporary youth may take for granted the strides the generation before made in regards to gay rights, but "Cherry Grove" reminds its audiences of the hardships homosexuals endured in the face of homophobia. Not only were Grovers (as Newton calls them) facing constant harassment from the mainland, but within Cherry Grove they were faced with sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, day-trippers and the AIDS epidemic. Through interviews, and detailed accounts of life in the Grove between the 1930's and 1980's Newton explores these themes and paints a picture of life in Cherry Grove.

Although a predominantly gay male town, Newton does a great job incorporating lesbian history into her ethnography, and balances the hardships of not only homosexuals, but homosexual minorities who faced hatred within the Cherry Grove community. As Newton writes in her book, "For Grovers, the very existence of Cherry Grove was proof that, however badly gays have been mistreated, the American promise of freedom for all had some substance (284)." By the end of this book it is impossible not to feel the hope, love, and pride that distinguish Cherry Grove as a place of freedom for a group of American minorities.