The Women's House of Detention:
A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
by Hugh Ryan
Lavender Lit Book Club: December 2022
Lavender Lit Book Club is a monthly book discussion series curated by Women’s Program Curator Suyane Oliveira. Each month, we’ll be reading a new book by a queer woman or non-male-identified author to celebrate queer women and non-men in literature. Click here to learn more.
Book Discussion
December 21 | 6:30p (EST)
All Lavender Lit discussions are held in-person at the Center and virtually via Zoom. Register here to join us (it’s free!).
About the Book
The Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates—Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur—were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher.
Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition—and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women’s House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.
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About the Author
Hugh Ryan (he/him)
Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator. His new book, The Womens House of Detention, is a queer history of the prison that was once in Greenwich Village. His first book, When Brooklyn was Queer, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association, and residencies or fellowships from Yaddo, The Watermill Center, the NYPL, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019-2021, he worked on the Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in U.S. History curricular materials for the NYC Department of Education.