Metroline Online

"Milk: A Pictoral History"
Click here to order in print from amazon.com

Imagine a job that is so perfect for you that it becomes a passion.

Imagine that this job will change attitudes and lives, and what you do will resonate from coast to coast and decade to decade. Yep, this job is that important.

But imagine that, along with the chance to make a difference, this job also comes with a chance of death. In fact, the probability is such that you map out the fastest route to the emergency room before appearing publicly.

Harvey Milk asked for that job not once, not twice, but four times. In the new book “Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk,” introduction by Dustin Lance Black and foreword by Armistead Maupin, you’ll learn the story of a man who some call a “saint.”

For the first decades of his life, Harvey Milk was rather unextraordinary. He was born in May, 1930 in New York, attended New York State Teachers College in 1951, and joined the Navy after graduation. After his honorable discharge, he taught school, worked on Wall Street and developed an interest in theater. He moved to San Francisco temporarily in the late 1960s and permanently in 1972. With his partner, Scott Smith, Milk opened a camera shop on Castro Street.

There, they hung a sign that said, “We are VERY open.”

Milk was a popular man, known in The Castro as a “go-to” guy who made things happen. He began to get politically involved in his neighborhood when he set up voter registration tables in front of the camera store. A few years later, when the Teamsters Union launched a boycott against a beer-maker’s anti-union policy, Milk threw his support behind the union and gained valuable allies.

On his fourth try for office, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming the first openly-gay man in America to be voted into an influential office. But aside from what he did politically and aside from the message his presence on the Board sent to straight America, Milk’s actions on behalf of the GLBT community and his fierce support of “coming out” and being true to one’s self were perhaps his greatest legacy.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 30 years since Harvey Milk’s death. This means that, despite a recent movie about his life and his contributions, generations of gay men and women may not know about him or his actions.  

This book remedies the situation.

“Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk” is, of course, filled with pictures of Milk, his friends and lovers, his beloved store, and his activism. What makes this book important, though, are the first-hand accounts from the people who knew him best. Those same people had hands in the making of the movie, which is re-counted in the second half of this book.

If you knew or remembered Harvey Milk, this book will be a treasure. If you want to know more about him, pick up this book. Reading “Milk” is no job, it’s a joy.

The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.