About the Author

Marcia M. Gallo is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her PhD in history with specialization in gender and sexuality from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2004. Her book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2007, Gallo received the Passing the Torch Award from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY for her scholarship on feminist and lesbian activism. She is now working on a book about Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, who was murdered in Queens, New York in 1964 and became an international symbol of urban apathy, the "bystander syndrome," and the failure of community.

A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Gallo was Field Director for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco before entering academia. She also served as Director of Development and Donor Relations with the Funding Exchange, a network of progressive community-based foundations headquartered in New York.

Reviews

The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) may be little known today, but Gallo makes clear how crucial this organization was to the nascent lesbian rights movement. Beginning as a tiny San Francisco social club in 1955, the group soon organized local chapters in New York, Los Angeles and beyond, incubating many figures on the lesbian political and literary scene until the organization waned in the 1970s. In this easy, well-ordered read, Gallo draws on many interviews with pivotal DOB figures, focusing less on juicy gossip than the tensions that drove the group's evolution: lesbian commonality versus race, class and ethnic differences; political activism versus social activities; collaboration with other homophile organizations versus independence; women's rights versus gay rights. Gallo gives considerable space to the history of The Ladder, which began as a mimeographed newsletter and soon became a lively, highly literate forum for lesbians nationally and even internationally. She evokes the tense atmosphere of DOB's beginnings, when being out was nearly synonymous with being outcast, while highlighting the several black leaders of the group and how DOB found allies in San Francisco's religious community. This is a respectful, respectable look at an organization overdue for recognition. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.