Essay on the difficulties of sourcing queer history

I really love this essay from a recent LGBT historian, Hugh Ryan, about his struggle to piece together the life story of a famous 1940s drag king. It reminds me a bit of our discussion today re: the unique problems of sourcing and reconstruction posed by queer history. Ryan details the great lengths he goes to try to find this piece of past, but ultimately he can only cobble together little bits of it (because so much of the story was lost in the Cold War).

The Three Lives of Malvina Schwartz