Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin

by Joseph Plaster

In Kids on the Street Joseph Plaster explores the informal support networks that enabled abandoned and runaway queer youth to survive in tenderloin districts across the United States. Tracing the history of the downtown lodging house districts where marginally housed youth regularly lived beginning in the late 1800s, Plaster focuses on San Francisco’s Tenderloin from the 1950s to the present. He draws on archival, ethnographic, oral history, and public humanities research to outline the queer kinship networks, religious practices, performative storytelling, and migratory patterns that allowed these kids to foster social support and mutual aid. He shows how they collectively and creatively managed the social trauma they experienced, in part by building relationships with johns, bartenders, hotel managers, bouncers, and other vice district denizens. By highlighting a politics where the marginal position of street kids is the basis for a moral economy of reciprocity, Plaster excavates a history of queer life that has been overshadowed by major narratives of gay progress and pride.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer

368 pages, Hardcover

Published February 24, 2023

Reviews

[Georgia English · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was incredible and amplified the important queer history in the TL. I would have given it a 4.5 if it were not for reasons elaborated in last paragraph (CW: child s*xual abuse)

First of all, the author’s methods of collecting oral histories felt authentic and respectful and featured community strengths like strong systems for mutual aid, a currency of morality, and mutual protection (especially offered to the youngest “kids on the street”)
There was so much history in the TL I was unaware of even as a local growing up and the author shined a light on the rich, compassionate, and accepting cultures that built it.

Overall, truly amazing read.

Now for the 👎
“Kids” is a word used in this book to describe young queer runaways, and in general covers the ages of 12-24. Sometimes kids living in the street are as young as 11. The author makes it clear in several sections that the “kids” he is referring to are adults - in anecdotes around sex work etc. Some horrifying anecdotes involved actual minor “kids” and the author acknowledges the horror. However on most occasions throughout the book, “kids” is ambiguous and it is unclear if the individuals engaged in the SW are minors or adults. It was a huge distraction as I was never sure if I was to embrace liberated queer sex positivity (rock on) or gag at actual child abuse on kids who mostly fled their own homes of origin because of abuse. Was I reading about empowered sex work with legal adults (cool), or gagging at child trafficking and exploitation?? It was too frequently unclear. Given that some of the situations depicted children, this book would have benefited from naming/acknowledging the inability of a minor to consent — especially after anecdotes where the interviewee was speaking positively about their experiences as a SW as a child. The epidemic of child abuse in the community felt really dismissed.

Several interviews felt ethically complicated as the interviewee was struggling with schizophrenia and meth addiction and likely unable to provide real consent. Adding in pictures of this individual in their SRO was also kind of ick imo.