On January 1, 1979, a Black queer fourteen-year-old committed to writing in his new diary every single day of the coming year and just about did. The teen lived in Simi Valley, a suburb north and west of Los Angeles, where Reagan would build his presidential library, where the police who beat Rodney King in 1991—on video—would be acquitted of all charges the following year. Simi Valley wasn’t just majority white; it was a Klan stronghold and home to so many (white) LAPD officers the locals called it “Copland.” 1979 was the year of the Iran hostage crisis, rising gas prices, peak disco, and the Sony Walkman. Read More
