Allan Bérubé (1946–2007)

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding anti-homosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation, as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on G.I’s’ wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars fought–one for America and another with the military as it clashed with their own identity.… (mere)

I've been researching a historical fiction novel about queer men and women in WWII for some time now, and from the preface, I knew this is the book I was looking for.

Incredibly broad but detailed in its scope, Berube delivers such a meaningful social history. At times, while reading, I felt his voice peeking through the writing, above the academic rigour, above the research to make a point all his own. Some would criticise this, but I liked it because it demonstrated to me how much this book meant to him.

What made this book stand out from the others was its consistent use of first person accounts and interviews. Berube constantly brought LGBTIQA people to the forefront of his book, quoted them and their life stories. I think this really added depth and power to the queer experience and gave his book credibility in a way that facts could not.

You read the text and are constantly reminded that someone, many people lived this experience. Queer people fought in a war only to find that their own military, their own country, did not consider them people, but sexual psychopaths, deviants and perverts.

And yet we persevered, says Berube, with an all-knowing wink the audience. And yet we survived.

The author gives us an alternate history, reveals how queer people had an affect on popular culture, how we transformed the military, how the military's oppressive policies only united us, literally and figuratively, to fight back, to write ourselves into history.

This book is so nuanced without being complicated.

It is compassionate. It is full of spirit.

It is a triumph.… (mere)

Hoo boy. I want to start this off by first acknowledging the important work Berube did in this book; this book was definitely groundbreaking when it was published, and importantly, legitimized the service of gay and lesbian veterans of World War II. Berube's work here also served a materially political purpose, which is something that many academics cannot say.

That being said, if you, like me, are suspicious at best of the citizen-soldier construct, this book can be difficult to get through. I found myself drowning in homo-nationalism so frequently that I had to put the book aside for weeks at a time. (You'll notice it took me ~six months to finish it, and that wasn't just because grad school got in the way.) The introduction to Berube's My Desire for History gives some context for his need to honor these veterans this way, but it still was difficult to grapple with as a reader who might have appreciated a little more nuanced look into the service of these individuals.

The best parts of the book for me were those centering around lesbian women in the military--they were mostly free from the horrifying culture of masculinity that Berube described with gay men serving, and so I enjoyed them much more. I will, as always in books like this, point out that though Berube pays lip service to bisexual and transgender people in the text, their actual appearances are minimal at best (which is to say that some of the folks interviewed or talked about might have identified as bisexual, though Berube is not explicit in identifying any,) and, in the case of transgender people in particular, are wholly absent (which is really interesting, given the rich history of particularly transgender people serving in the military.) Though I understand that wasn't Berube's intention per se, I am going to note it for potential readers.… (mere)