This important and timely book shows how LGBT people ended up and suffered in psychiatric institutions under Italian fascism. Gabriella Romano describes very vividly how same-sex desiring people and their families, how nurses and doctors navigated between cooperation with and resistance to the repressive system. The books innovative approach makes clear that queer historians need to look not only at penal, but also at medical logics of persecution. It rescues long marginalized voices from oblivion and from being once more silenced by present-day homo- and transphobia. * Benno Gammerl, Professor for History of Gender and Sexuality, European University Institute, Italy * This study is not focused on the regime [ of Fascist Italy's] actions but on its victims, confined, as the title indicates, in asylums and internment. Romano (Univ. of London, UK), a documentarian, has studied the history of homosexuality and of Italian Fascism and concentrates here on psychiatry as practiced with respect to homosexuality at three asylums in Rome, Florence, and Calabria ... This is a rewarding study in the history of psychiatry ... Recommended [ for] graduate students, faculty, and professionals. * CHOICE * Italian Fascisms Forgotten LGBT Victims opens an important new line of research and urges us to continue along its path. Romano invites us not to stop at the covers of medical records, not to trust prima facie diagnoses, to read between the lines with extreme care and attention, and to continue digging through (disorganized) archives in search of lost stories * Journal of the History of Sexuality *
