Ebooks Minnesota highlight: Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota

Available in Ebooks Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Loves: A History of Queer Minnesota, blends oral history, archival narrative, newspaper accounts, and captivating illustrations to reveal the engaging story of Minnesota's queer history.  Published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2012, this book has been available in Ebooks Minnesota since its inception.  Author Stewart Van Cleve currently runs the Augsburg University Archives and previously worked at the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota.  Stewart began collecting stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in Minnesota.  This turned into a labor of love that eventually became Land of 10,000 Loves.  

The text contains over 120 historical essays from the earliest evidence of queer life in the state before WWII, including "Oscar Wilde’s visit to Minnesota and “rumors” at the Alexander Ramsey house—to riverfront vice districts, protest and parade sites, bars, 1970s collectives, institutions, public spaces, and private homes."  This book honors Minnesota's rich and diverse populations and shares stories that have been missing from the state's known past.  

If this material is of interest to you be sure to take a look at Queer Twin Cities, by the Twin Cities GLBT Oral History Project—a collective organization of students, scholars, and activists devoted to documenting and interpreting the lives of GLBT people in Minneapolis and St. Paul.