Martin B Duberman

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. At a little after one a.m. on the morning of June 28, 1969, the police carried out a routine raid on the bar. But it turned out not to be routine at all. Instead of cowering-- the usual reaction to a police raid-- the patrons inside Stonewall and the crowd that gathered outside the bar fought back against the police. The five days of rioting that followed changed forever the face of...

Since 1968, when the first draft of the earliest play in this collection was written, Martin Duberman has been nagged by the question 'What does it mean to be a 'man'?' Each of these plays shows how men in our culture have learned to protect themselves by adopting stereotypic masculine roles, their 'male armor.' The author, in the Introduction, relates this idea to Wilhelm Reich's broader concept of 'character armor' - 'the devices we use (which then...

Martin Duberman successfully recreates his painful and solitary but ultimately triumphant struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. In Cures; A Gay Man's Odyssey, he tells of the anguish of his divided life: a distinguished college professor, a prize-winning historian; and a playwright; by night a lonely and tormented man cruising gay bars for the companionship he truly desired.