Welcome to Fairyland

“For any history buff, Capó’s book is truly a gem that sheds a lot of light on an era in [Florida] that gets little notoriety outside of the gay media circuit.”—South Florida Gay News

“Grapples with important questions such as under what historical circumstances norms get shaped, bifurcated, and become hegemonic. Capó Jr.’s work is an extraordinary contribution that offers innovative ways for understanding the role of gender and sexuality in shaping the social, cultural, and urban landscape of Miami.”—Black Perspectives

“Welcome to Fairyland eschews the earlier scholarly impulse in lesbian and gay studies to produce histories of same-sex desire and community-building without grappling with how gender, race, and class inequities structured differential access to spaces of leisure and transgression where those formations might have emerged.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“One of the most innovative and important recent works in LGBT history. Capó has uncovered astonishing finds that recover the remarkable past of a city that too many people believe has no history to speak of.”—Gay and Lesbian Review

“Demonstrates the centrality of queer and transnational analysis to understanding the 'instant city' of Miami and provides an important model for future scholarship in queer, urban, and southern histories.”—Journal of Southern History

“This engaging and densely researched book stretches the very idea of what queer history can be. . . . A wide-reaching and provocative volume that makes clear how the histories of sexuality and gender are interwoven with and informed by the histories of race, class, and empire.”—Canadian Journal of History

“Capó . . . uncovers a rich history of queerness in Miami at a time when being gay was inherently underground and difficult to document.”—Trippin

“Eloquently written, exquisitely analyzed, and impeccably researched, this is one of the best works of scholarship I have read in a long time. Julio Capó Jr. gives voice to whole communities of people whose lived experiences have largely been rendered invisible. The result is a work of national significance.” —Melanie Shell-Weiss, Grand Valley State University

“Welcome to Fairyland will take its place as one of the best-known and most valuable studies of queer urban history in the United States.”—Marc Stein, San Francisco State University