The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

by Hugh Ryan Bold Type Books 5/9/2023, paperback SKU: 9781645036654   This fascinating history of a now-demolished prison, and the women, transgender men, and gender nonconforming people who were held there -- including Ethel Rosenberg, Angela Davis, and Andrea Dworkin -- is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the 20th century. The Women's House of Detention, Greenwich Village's most forbidding and forgotten queer landmark, stood from 1929 to 1974, imprisoning tens of thousands from all over New York City. The little-known stories of the queer women and trans-masculine people incarcerated in this building present a uniquely queer argument for prison abolition. The "House of D" acted as a nexus, drawing queer women down to Greenwich Village from every corner of the city. Some of these women -- Angela Davis, Grace Paley, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur -- were famous, but the majority were working-class people, incarcerated for the "crimes" of being poor and imp