The Evening Crowd At Kirmser's Analysis

During the 1940s, in general, it was socially unacceptable for people to have gay sexuality in America. In Ricardo J. Brown’s book The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s, by revealing different stories and experiences of various people with gay sexuality in a memoir format, he vividly portrayed the tough life of the gay community. The above setting in Ricardo’s book took place in an underground queer bar located in St. Paul, Minnesota, which was a hidden sanctuary for homosexual men and women in the 1940s.[1] Specifically, Kirmser’s was a workingman’s bar owned by Mr. and Mrs. Kirmser, and it was straight daytime and queer at night.[2] Because of the fact the straight individuals judged negatively toward the gay individuals and did not want to associate with them, the exposure of the gay sexuality can lead to losing friends, jobs, and even their lives. To avoid this, the gay

In fact, as Ricardo states, the gay individuals and straight individuals in the community shared the same poor jobs, the same limited educations, the same religions, the same family values, even the same neighborhoods. However, the straight individuals called the gay individuals “sexual monsters” and “perverts who practiced unspeakable ‘crimes against nature.’”[3] The public opinions represented the societal value during the 1940s, and consequently, people treated the gay individuals harshly and did not want to be associated with them.[4] For example, Ricardo mentioned his sexuality during school years, and the result was many of his friends felt awkward, some never talked to him again, and at the end, only a few of his friendships survived.[5] This was extremely common during the 1940s, for some people, the best options for them after discovered their friends’ gay sexuality was to avoid them. However, for others, they sometimes took matters into their own