Esther Newton is an extremely gifted thinker and writer. She points up important issues for gender studies in a clear and compelling, and still quite groundbreaking, style. This book works very diligently and successfully at several levels: as a historical narrative of the trajectory of Newton's life and career; as a theoretical discourse which is situated specifically by her historical narrative; as a critique of and a profound contribution to her profession, anthropology; as a powerful argument for the inevitable relationship between theory and history; as a courageous and provocative piece of scholarship.

Many of these essays were written early in the second wave of feminism, so the issues they engage point up the degree to which Newton has been ahead of her time. That she narrativizes the essays as the historical life of an academic (herself) attests to the fact that she is still ahead of her time: everything-- political, academic, social, sexual--is lived. There are no categories which happen outside of the people who make them.

Because of Newton's autobiographical, comfortable style, it should be noted that the book, although clearly academic, is a fairly easy read.

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.

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.

Newton's research in Mother Camp is now dated, however its lasting value is in the rich snapshot that she has captured of gay street and performace life pre-liberation and feminist movements. For those who were there, much of Newton's work will ring true and for those who weren't, her book measures the distance between where gay liberation was and where it is today. The reader may wish for a more poignant feminist or cultural analysis of Newton's subject but when one considers the date of the research and writing (1965-69), Newton's analysis actually displays a surprisingly astute and diasporic handling of the sex/gender system. Newton steers clear of the exceptional epi-centers of gay activity (New York, San Fran) and in doing so manages to sieze upon a drag sensibility that may be more familiar to the majority of middle American gays and lesbians. In my estimation, this book makes a perfect if not necessary historical compliment to studies that include films such as Paris is Burning or other works on drag, camp, performance, or early gay culture.