The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers

Gevisser (Dispatcher) compiles stories of LGBT people on the front lines of fighting for legal, social, and cultural rights and acceptance. Taking on a massive project to understand how and why the world is changing in regards to LGBT people and culture, and how the people and culture themselves are changing, Gevisser acknowledges the ambitious scope of the content prior to diving into the stories of people across the world, noting that no one story is everyone’s story; thus, no book with an aim such as Gevisser’s can possibly be considered exhaustive. Still, The Pink Line makes impressive strides in chronicling distant and recent LGBT history and progress across the world, punctuating overviews of specific countries every other chapter with intimate stories with LGBT people living in those countries The relative comprehensiveness can at times be tedious, but the humanity and tension with which Gevisser portrays his subjects keeps the prose engaging alongside his incredible and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of LGBT world history.