Written for young readers, here is the incredible story of Harvey Milk, one of the North America’s greatest fighters for gay rights.
Translated by Ruth Diver
Harvey Milk: No to Homophobia tells the story of the man who has been called “the most famous and most significant openly LGBT official ever elected in the United States.” The first openly gay elected official in the history of California, and one of the first-ever openly gay elected officials in the United States, Harvey Milk spent his career fighting against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In the 1970s, when Harvey was elected into office as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, so-called homosexual relations were against the law in the United States, and homophobia was considered the norm, particularly from outspoken conservatives and the religious right. In this hostile environment, Milk fearlessly advocated for the LGBT community and other marginalized groups, knowing full well the dangers of doing so.
Just ten months after being elected, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by a homophobic former colleague. The killer found sympathy from his jurors and received a light sentence, but Milk’s legacy lives on as one of America’s bravest fighters for gay rights.
There have always been people who said NO to what they considered unjust and unfair. They Said No is an historical fiction series for younger readers of protestors, activists, poets, revolutionaries and other brave changemakers from around the world that emphasizes the importance of standing up for what you know is right.
RUTH DIVER was head of Comparative Literature at the University of Auckland until 2014. She is the author of Écrivains Russes, Enfants Français (Honoré Champion, 2013) and has published research on translingual literature. A bilingual translator French/English, she also translates from German and Russian. She won two 2018 French Voices Awards for her translations of Marx and the Doll by Maryam Madjidi, and Titus Did Not Love Berenice by Nathalie Azoulai. She also won Asymptote’s 2016 Close Approximations fiction prize for her translation of extracts of Maraudes, by Sophie Pujas. Ruth collaborated with Ros Schwarz in the translation of The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent (Waterstones Book of the Month, May 2016) for which she translated the Alexandrine verse. She recently translated Adélaïde Bon’s The Little Girl on the Ice Floe and Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam's Arcadia.
