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Book Review
| Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort. By Karen Christel Krahulik. (New York: New York University Press, 2005. xii, 276 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8147-4761-2.)
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| As lesbian and gay community histories continue to roll off the presses, a certain thematic predictability—one focused on the analysis of sexual subcultures and identities—threatens to engulf the field. Not so with Karen Christel Krahulik's queer history of Land's End. |
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Consider how Krahulik reconfigures the customary boundaries of the queer community study. No matter how broadly or inclusively queer is defined within the existing literature, sexual dissidence still usually demarcates the outer limits of the community under investigation. Krahulik certainly gives the "Gayflower Set" (as one 1950s tabloid dubbed the gay and lesbian residents of Provincetown) its due here. However, she also makes room for (often straight) Anglo Yankees and Portuguese immigrants, not merely as contextual background but as an integral part of the narrative. This approach allows for a nuanced treatment of the cultural tensions and accommodations among Provincetown's contending citizens. It also permits Krahulik to delve into such nonqueer areas as the laboring lives of Portuguese residents, lives marked by a resourceful occupational pluralism necessitated by the seaport's stormy economic history. |
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