Reaching Ninety, Martin Duberman
Reaching Ninety, Martin Duberman
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Reaching Ninety

Author: Martin Duberman

Narrator: Donald Corren

Unabridged: 12 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/07/2023


Synopsis

Martin Duberman, one of the LGBTQ+ community’s maverick thinkers and historians, looks back on ninety years of life, his history in the movement, and what he’s learned.In the early sixties, Martin Duberman published a path-breaking article defending the Abolitionists against the then-standard view of them as “misguided fanatics.” In 1964, his documentary play, In White America, which reread the history of racist oppression in this country, toured the country—most notably during Freedom Summer—and became an international hit.Duberman then took on the profession of history for failing to admit the inherent subjectivity of all re-creations of the past. He radically democratized his own seminars at Princeton, for which he was excoriated by powerful professors in his own department, leading him to renounce his tenured full professorship and to join the faculty of the CUNY Graduate School.At CUNY, too, he was initially blocked from offering a pioneering set of seminars on the history of gender and sexuality, but after a fifteen-year struggle succeeded in establishing the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies—which became a beacon for emerging scholars in that new field.By the early seventies, Duberman had broadened his struggle against injustice by becoming active in protesting the war in Vietnam and in playing a central role in forming the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force and Queers for Economic Justice.Down to the present-day he continues through his writing to champion those working for a more equitable society.

About Martin Duberman

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, CUNY, Martin Duberman is the author of some two dozen books, including Stonewall, Cures, Paul Robeson, Haymarket, and Jews Queers Germans. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Vernon Rice/Drama Desk Award, three Lambda Literary Awards, a special award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters for his contributions to literature, the 2007 lifetime achievement award from the American Historical Association, and the Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. He has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and has received honorary degrees from Amherst College and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

About Donald Corren

Donald Corren is a stage, television, and voice actor whose work has been featured on and off Broadway, in regional theaters, and behind animated characters. He was trained in the theater division of the Juilliard School.


Reviews

Listened to audiobook. Engaging account of Duberman's life and career as a historian, academic, prose writer, playwright, and supporter of Gay (and other) rights and culture. Shares his sharp intelligence, playful wit, consistent passions and values, and occasional good-humored self-ridicule.......more


Quotes

“Narrator Donald Corren does full justice to this memoir with an avuncular tone and energetic pacing…A delightful visit with a kind man.” AudioFile

“An energetic, fun, and kvetchy take-no-prisoners memoir…A fascinating and rollicking read.” Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show

“Theater, psychotherapy, college classrooms, gay studies, the late 1960s: there is something here for everyone curious about our recent past.” Robert Hampel, author of Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times

“Brings us to the present state of US and queer politics…The wisdom of Reaching Ninety illuminates our world today.” Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States

“A wonderful account of the life of a public intellectual whose devotion to some of the most important issues of his time has been nothing less than admirable.” Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments

“A bold, exemplary life, told with unflinching honesty and psychological insight.” John Howard, author of Truths Up His Sleeve