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paperd's review
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia
Minor: Suicide, Violence, and Outing
missamandamae's review against another edition
4.0
This was an incident I hadn’t heard of until the Pulse shooting and death counts were compared. This was definitely another level of horrific- 32 people burned in a bar on a casual Sunday night. The police never apprehended the perpetrator. People made crass jokes about the victims. Some bodies were burned so badly they were never identified. Families of some of the victims were reluctant to come forward because they didn’t want anyone to know they had a gay son. And to make it just a little extra worse, many of them were members of a church community hanging out after services.
At times it was a little difficult to keep track of all the people involved, but overall I was drawn in and wanted to know about the victims and survivors and what happened in New Orleans in 1973.
At times it was a little difficult to keep track of all the people involved, but overall I was drawn in and wanted to know about the victims and survivors and what happened in New Orleans in 1973.
tom_caldarera's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
cook_memorial_public_library's review against another edition
5.0
A 2019 staff pick recommended by Susie. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1652098__Stinderbox%20Fieseler__Orightresult__U__X2?lang=eng&suite=gold
ehmannky's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
4.0
A really thorough account of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and its aftermath on the people who lived through it and the city of New Orleans. It's really good, and it's really difficult to just comprehend the lack of care that queer people faced in the wake of such a horrific attack (not a homophobic one, but still one that devastated the community). I appreciate that Fieseler situated the Up Stairs Lounge Fire in the sociopolitical context of the 1970s and how the burgeoning gay rights movement reacted to the fire and why the broader culture was just so apathetic. I don't think I completely buy the argument that this fire was critical in the creation of Gay Liberation movements, because it seems like it was ignored for so long, but the context is still good t0 have in order to understand why the fallout from this fire was so quiet and why the fire was never really thoroughly investigated even though there really only seems like there was ever one possible suspect.