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The never-before-told story of Brooklyn's vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day. "A romantic, exquisite history of gay culture." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred"A monumental achievement." -- Ira Sachs, filmmakerHugh Ryan's When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history -- a great forgetting.