"Emily Hobson's illuminating book, Lavender and Red, transforms our understanding of queer history. Focusing on gay and lesbian internationalism and left solidarity politics in late Cold War San Francisco, she provides a deeply researched, surprising and compelling account of the ways a politics of affiliation can expand forms of organization, practices, vision and impact. The stories she tells offer us new historical narratives as resources for imagining new possible futures." Lisa Duggan, author ofThe Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy
"Lavender and Reddeftly tells the story of the other 'L' word: Liberation. LGBTQ activists erupted in the 1960s committed to ending U.S. imperialism, militarism, racism, and all forms of oppression and exploitation. They fought not to win acceptance by the mainstream heteropatriarchal society, but to overturn it. By recovering the forgotten story of Gay Liberation, Emily Hobson revises the history of the U.S. Left and reveals a political and intellectual history of how queer radicals understood and re-fashioned anti-imperialist, nationalist, feminist, and Third World thought to imagine new meanings for sexuality, community, and emancipatory politics. After reading this astonishing book, the standard Stonewall to marriage equality narrative suddenly rings hollow." Robin D. G. Kelley, author ofThelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
"Lavender and Redshines illuminating light on two of the most important queer colors, reminding us that somewhere over the rainbow lie visionary dreams of radical sexual politics and transformational social justice. An inspiring account of the 1970s and 1980s, when a strong gay and lesbian left fought against racism, sexism, colonialism, and war." Marc Stein, author ofRethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement
"In this superb book, Hobson writes the political and intellectual history of the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements that linked sexual liberation to radical solidarity the mobilizations against imperialism, capitalism, and racism, demanding universal health care and 'money for AIDS, not for war.' For too long, gay and lesbian activism in the 70s and 80s has been remembered as single-issue and racially white-washed.Lavender and Redis the antidote we ve been waiting for." Laura Briggs, author ofReproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico
Over the past decade, we have witnessed the emergence of revisionist work on the Black Power, antiwar, women of color feminist and gay liberation movements. Emily Hobson sLavender and Redis a brilliant addition to this vital body of scholarship. She rewrites the history of political struggles of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and, most impressively, intertwines them. Sherie M. Randolph, author ofFlorynce Flo Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical
"Lavender and Redis a page turner, not the case for most well-researched academic works; this story of liberation and solidarity in the gay and lesbian left, focused on the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s and 1980s, is inspiring as well as cautionary, a primer for social justice activists today as well as a solid history in the field of social movement history and theory." Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author ofAn Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States"

Emily K. Hobson is Assistant Professor of History and of Gender, Race, and Identity at the University of Nevada, Reno.