LGBTQ Legend Gilbert Baker’s Memoir will be published in 2019

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Gilbert Baker’s “Rainbow Warrior” memoir is set to be released in June 2019. This was announced by the Chicago Review Press, the publishers of the inspiring read from the world-famous designer and Rainbow flag-maker.

Millions are quite familiar with the Rainbow flag, which is the iconic pride and international symbol of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community. In an excerpt from the memoir posted on his website, Baker emphasized that the Rainbow flag replaced the pink symbol because of the need for a positive message of hope as opposed to the pink triangle’s (used by the Nazis) message of oppression that represented a dark moment in the history of the rights of same-sex.

Baker was a geeky kid from Kansas who arrived in San Francisco as an army draft and remained there to pursue his career in design after an honorable discharge from the army. His introduction to Harvey Milk, a rising queer activist who owned a camera shop in San Francisco marked a turning point and inspired him to work on his best-known masterpiece – the Rainbow Flag. In 1977, Milk became the first openly gay man to hold public office, winning the election as a San Francisco city supervisor. Just a few months after the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade where Milk publicly rode under the colors of Baker’s Rainbow Flag, he was assassinated.

The release of Baker’s memoir is quite symbolic and is set to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, which started the movement for equality for the LGBTQ+ community. To keep his fans anticipating for more, Baker released a few juicy excerpts from his book and published it on his website.

A particular excerpt titled “Stitching a rainbow” reads thus:

“…I thought of the vertical red, white and blue tricolor from the French Revolution and how they owed their beginnings to a riot, a rebellion or a revolution. I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power.

As a community, both local and international, gay people were in the midst of an upheaval, a battle of equal rights, a shift in status where we are now demanding power, taking it. This was our new revolution: a tribal, individualistic and collective vision. It deserved a new vision”.

The long-awaited memoir is set to explore the life and times of an LGBTQ+ legend who died at age 65 on the 31^st of March, 2017. Baker had the opportunity of working on his memoir before his unexpected demise.

Through its release, one can have a golden opportunity to get a scoop of the man who created it, far beyond his title as the “famous flag-maker”. It offers deep insight into the journey of a young boy born in 1951 from a small town in Kansas, his childhood, his artistic development and how he became an advocate who doggedly pursued the gay rights movement and made a place in the history of LGBTQ; one that can only be attained by a legend.