THR Interview Series: Eric Cervini

The following is an interview virtually conducted by THR’s very own, Kyro Huddleston. He had the pleasure of speaking with author, activist, and historian, Eric Cervini, about his New York Times bestselling book— The Deviant’s War. We hope you all enjoy!

Ky Huddleston: Hello! I’m Ky Huddleston with The Headlight Review, here with Dr. Eric Cervini, author of The Deviant's War which came out last June— feels like both yesterday and forever ago! Congratulations on the successful launch and on making the NYT bestseller list. 

Eric Cervini: Thank you so much, and thanks for having me.

Huddleston: Of course, and there's a lot that's happened since June! We've had elections, supreme court rulings, appointments, all manner of other twists and turns. I know your epilogue covers a lot of ground on modern information really quickly, but I’m wondering: If you were publishing now, would you alter the epilogue, or any other part, of The Deviant’s War given the recent legal-political developments affecting the LGBTQ+ community? 

Cervini: That’s a great question! Well, yes. A couple weeks after the book came out the epilogue became outdated because of the supreme court decision—  which was a long time coming, and it should have been earlier. It’s still a bit unclear as to whether it will actually be effective, especially with some of these religious liberty arguments that are being made by the far right, which I think is still a threat. With this new court we still need to be vigilant, we don’t know what kinds of loopholes will be created or carved out of the Bostock ruling. 

For the paperback we will update the epilogue, but other than that if I was to do it again— you know it was a seven year long project, it was my first ever experience in the archives, diving into the Frank Kameny papers, as he was the main character in the book, so a lot of what I wrote was centered around him. I always envisioned the final product being more like an ensemble, so giving equal time to people like Barbara Gittings and Ernestine Eppenger and Bayard Rustin. I think if I could start over I would have really plowed forward with that. You know, in this industry we’re told that single-character stories are more marketable, and I don’t believe that, I just don’t think that’s true anymore. So for any future adaptations, which may or may not be coming— 

Huddleston: Ooh? 

Cervini: [Laughs] I think we definitely will lean forward into that approach. Even in its current form, I fought against having Frank on the cover and on the spine. Eventually the publishers won out on having his picture on the spine, but it is so much more than one person. I have never thought of The Deviant’s War as a biography, I have always thought of it more as a portrait of a decade, and a movement intersecting other movements. 

Huddleston: Definitely! I think that’s true, from what I gleaned while reading The Devian’ts War. Bringing that reflection into modern politics: In The Deviant’s War, there is this very clear push and pull about respectability politics. 

Cervini: [hums in agreement]

Huddleston: Especially now, in times of political uncertainty, there is this urge to fall back on respectability; We have a new President Elect, Joe Biden, he is a fairly moderate politician and he has that definite quality of respectability. I’ve seen recent discussion in activist circles, where people are saying that it is too dangerous a time to push for more progressive policies from him when it could further divide the nation. How do you respond to that position, do you think it’s dangerous right now?

Cervini: I think it is dangerous not to be pushing for that sort of radical change. There’s been a lot of talk, within the Democratic party in particular, about moderate candidates being threatened by “socialist policies.” The problem is, even if we weren’t pushing for those Democratic Socialist policies —which work very, very well in other parts of the world— even if we weren’t pushing for that, we would still be called socialists, period. It would be all the same histrionics and conspiracy theories, they would still be put out there by the far right. 

Just like back when, with homosexuals or sexual deviants or people who are queer, if you try to mask any part of your identity or you try to obscure another part of your community, like the trans community which is talked about quite a bit in the book, even if you try to sacrifice part of your community in order to get rights for everyone, you’re still going to be looked down upon. No matter if we show up at the white house wearing suit and tie, in the eyes of the right wing and a lot of the general public, we’re still faggots, no matter what we do. I think it has been shown to be true time and time again, respectability politics is a trap. 

The real problem with it, which I think you see especially in the book, is it sends a subliminal message to the rest of your community— who may not own a suit and tie, who don’t have a job to begin with or access to the same jobs we might be fighting for, or for whom marriage is the last thing they’re thinking about because they’re trying to survive. You’re telling those people that the movement that exists is one that is prioritizing people who look like me, meaning cis white and gay, and that we don’t really care about them. So are they going to turn up and fight for us? No! Of course not! And I think you see that time and time again. 

I really do think there is plenty of empirical evidence in history that you have to be making those bold, radical proposals— and guess what, the best proof of it is the New Deal! The New Deal was the perfect example of really radical socialist programming that gave four terms to the president in the longest democractic majority in history. So, I think it’s a trap we have to be really careful about, in politics and in identity politics as well. 

Huddleston: Absolutely, I think we’ve all had a certain amount of experience with the push and pull of respectability and identity politics, and I appreciate the great comment on accessibility of the movement. 

Now, shifting away from modern politics: you take great care to make Kameny and other historical figures really relatable and really fallible, and you bring their words and also your own voice in describing them to help us understand their good and bad qualities. Did you find it difficult to strike that balance between bringing in your own impressions and writing style while also staying true to the objective facts about these people that really lived? 

Cervini: Yeah, it’s really hard! Because what you’re relying on is an archive, which is primarily the letters between people, you’re getting a biased lens of history. Almost everything is written from their point of view. Very rarely in Frank Kameny’s diary is he going to say “Yeah, I’m kinda transphobic” or “I’m pretty misogynistic”, he’s not going to say that, so you have to rely on other people and other perspectives in order to really understand that and read between the lines. 

It’s a trap in writing history when you take people for their word, and then you don’t do the hard work of saying, “Alright, what was really going on here, whose voices are not being included in this archive,” and then going and tracking those down. You know, I tried, it’s my first book— could I have done better? I think so! I think every author could do better in being critical, especially of those with privilege. I learned a lot in the process, and I think narrative history in particular, like you said, balancing people’s voices and emotions and their humanity is really difficult— but I think when people pull it off, and a lot of authors do, it is remarkable. I’m going to keep trying for that, keep trying to perfect my craft, and we’ll see how it goes.

Huddleston: [Laughs] I think you did pull it off, I think you pulled it off really well. I admired that a lot in this book.

My last question is more of a semantics question I suspect, but in a previous interview with Jezebel, you talked about the mythology of Stonewall, Marsha P. Johnson, and gay history as our community knows it to be. I recognize that The Deviant’s War is a history book, it’s history and not myth, but do you think it will contribute to the mythology, and if you do, how do you hope that contribution will be factored in? 

Cervini: It’s a great question, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I use the word mythology because so many of us were raised in families and communities where we have an origin story, right, we’re told Adam and Eve, that was the beginning of who we are as humanity. Then we look around us, you’re in Georgia, I’m from Texas, and you say “I don’t necessarily identify with that creation story and whatever this is.” So we deserve our own founding mythology, and I think is the role that Stonewall plays. The problem is that if you look at it in a literal sense, just like if you looked at the events of scripture which may or may not have happened, you’re not getting the full meaning of it. 

I would argue for looking at the context around Stonewall, looking at what happened immediately before and after. What was the plight of the Trans folks who were there or the gender non-conforming folks who were arrested, where did those laws come from, how had they been struggling for decades before Stonewall, including several other riots on the west coast. I’m in Los Angeles, one was here, and one of them was all of the way back in 1959. When you isolate just one event and say “this is where it started”, I think you’re actually doing a disservice to those who were fighting because they were representing something much larger. We have to tell those stories, so hopefully the book, [laughs] if people read it the way I hope they did, they realize the mythology of that moment is supported by the history. 

We shouldn’t get caught up in tracing the exact facts of who was where in exactly what moment and what objects were thrown at the window, because then you’re obscuring the real point, which is that these people were fighting back. They were persecuted for decades and decades, and had been resisting through different methods, whether that was everyday resistance or violent resistance, and this was the tipping point. One, because it was the largest, and second, because there were two Village Voice reporters in the crowd who saw it all happen. 

So it’s complex, and I think when people get caught up in debunking the myth of Stonewall that’s what we need to be careful about, because it’s preventing us from having the conversation about it’s true significance. 

Huddleston: I definitely relate with that, and as I was reading the book I felt like it was supporting and interacting with, rather than debunking, a lot of the mythologies we’re told when we start interacting with the community. I found that to be a good, appreciable aspect of the read. 

Thank you again for joining me, and for entertaining all of my slightly nitpicky questions, Dr. Cervini. 

Cervini: [Laughs] I love it! I get a lot of generic questions, so thank you for having me and for asking interesting ones. 

Huddleston: [Laughs] Alright, I’m glad, have a great rest of your day and thank you again.