A Wild and Precious Life by Edie Windsor

While that one day in June would catapult her into being an international icon within the LGBTQIA+ community, it was merely one defining moment in a life full of them. Edie found love again, marrying Judith Kasen-Windsor in 2016.Ī Wild and Precious Life is remarkable portrait of an iconic woman, gay life in New York in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rise of LGBT activism.Įdie Windsor never could have expected to be at the forefront of a Supreme Court decision that would ultimately provide marriage equality at the federal level in the United States, and yet that’s exactly where she found herself in 2015. Their partnership lasted forty-four years, until Thea died in 2009. In the early 1960s Edie met Thea, an expat from a Dutch Jewish family that fled the Nazis, and a widely respected clinical psychologist.

Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software. In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades.

The Supreme Court ruled in Edie's favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US.

'Windsor's story fighting for what she believed in is one that will leave readers inspired.' - NBC OUTĮdie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades.

'A captivating and inspiring story of a queer woman who believed in her right to take up space and be seen.'- BuzzFeed A lively, intimate memoir from a marriage equality icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in the 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism.

A Wild and Precious Life by Edie Windsor