Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPART I Inventing Provincetown, 1859-1928 1 Colonial Outpost 2 "The Perfect Compromise": Provincetown's Portuguese Pilgrims 3 "Paradise of Artists" PART II Surviving Provincetown, 1929-19694 Weathering the Depression 5 "Provincetown Tells the Gay?ower Set: Scram" PART III Gentrifying Provincetown, 1970-2000 6 "Sexism in Paradise" 7 "Gay World" Conclusion: Cape Queer?NotesIndex About the Author

Promotional Information

An epic history of a landmark village.

About the Author

Karen Christel Krahulik is Senior Associate Dean for International Programs and Experiential Learning at Princeton University.

Reviews

"Krahulik offers a fascinating and lively account of how Provincetown, Massachusetts, became America's most famous gay resort. The book is both a celebration of the community's embrace of freedom and a reminder that Provincetown -- despite its vaunted tolerance for sexual nonconformity -- faced problems of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation... Krahulik shows how the different and sometimes overlapping constituencies of Provincetown shaped compromises that allowed the community to persist and prosper. But this important book also reveals that being a gay resort did not protect Provincetown from class, racial, ethnic, or gender conflicts." --American Historical Review "Krahulik combines traditional research methods and oral histories to record and interpret this journey in a respectful, scholarly manner." --Choice, Highly Recommended" "At the end of curling Cape Cod, Provincetown has gone through several transformations since the Pilgrims landed there--from Yankee whaling town to Portuguese fishing village to bohemian artist enclave to, today, one of the world's most popular gay resorts. Surprisingly, each of those segments of society contributed to the 'P-town' of today." --Chicago Sun-Times "Karen Krahulik's Provincetown is the definitive book on the history of that mysterious and magical place. It's a singular accomplishment. I'm grateful to her for writing it, as I suspect many others will be for years and years to come." --Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours "This book performs a service by judiciously compiling the facts of Provincetown's history."-- Gay & Lesbian Review "From Pilgrim's Landing to gay Disneyland, Provincetown has remade itself again and again. Karen Krahulik's remarkable book deftly charts these transformations. She manages to weave New England Yankees, Portuguese fisherman, bohemian artists, and lesbian entrepreneurs into a single history that is both absorbing and revelatory. In her hands, class, race, gender, and sexuality stop being categories or slogans and instead are the stuff of a community's story. This is social history at its most original and very best." --John D'Emilio, author of Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities "Krahulik tells a rich and compelling story of a unique community shaped by immigration, global economic forces, ethnic tensions, commercialism, and the struggles of individuals and groups who deeply loved 'Land's End.'" --Leila J. Rupp, University of California, Santa Barbara