Rainbow Warrior: My Life in Color by Gilbert Baker, Creator of the Rainbow Pride Flag
Genre: nonfiction, memoir/biography
Length: 231 pgs. (Hardback)
Publication Year: 2019
Content Warnings: drug, use, AIDS, transphobia, homophobia
If you’ve been around a while you may know that I am working on tarot deck. The second card idea I had was for the eight of pentacles, and it would depict Gilbert Baker sewing the very first pride flag; a resplendent rainbow made up of eight stripes, including hot pink and teal, with the six that is common now.
This, along with the fact that I have been sewing and selling my own pride flags for a few years now, drew me to pick this book up from the display at my local library and check it out that day.
I don’t remember if I started reading Rainbow Warrior* right away, but once I did start it I was hooked. It begins with an introduction by Dustin Lance Black, a friend of Baker’s. He paints a picture of his relationship with the artist, over the phone, long distance as he was in Harlem , and Baker was in London, and similarly we are connected to Baker through the telephone game of time, as we dive into his memoir.
The story of Baker’s life begins with his hoisting of his rainbow flag for the first time on June 25, 1978. The artist, 27 at the time, with the help of his friends had created two thirty by sixty foot flags to be flown on the two flag poles at San Francisco's United Nations plaza. He describes the moment, saying:
we raised them and they ascended like sails. As they unfurled, a Pacific zephyr suddenly whipped up, powered by invisible ancestors, and pulled the flags from our arms into God’s…. The wind-painted colors in explosive motions, a wild flame-like flickering, a magical, rippling, psychedelic, cotton-aerial dance…. That moment felt like a bolt of lightning that I surely knew would change the course of my life. What I didn’t know at the time was how the Rainbow Flag would change the world (p.2, Baker).
This sort of language, extravagant and flamboyant, yet genuine, and comforting made for a wonderful read. I got a sense of Gilbert’s passion, and personality; both his exuberance, and his kindness.
The narrative then backtracks to his childhood and adolescence where he describes his inability to fit into the rigid gender roles expected of a male in 1950s Kansas. It continues through his time in the military as a nurse, and the relationship with a fellow soldier that cracked his personal closet wide open.
We eventually circle back to his bid to create a pride flag for the 1978 Pride celebration in San Francisco. From there the focus is primarily on the Rainbow Flag. Gilbert was a true lover of flags; he describes how the experience of the bicentennial and all of the regalia that went with it showed him the unifying power of a flag. He also shares his entry into the stereotypical feminine world of sewing, and his artistic love of creating clothes that were as much an expression of himself and his soul, as they were functional items (and sometimes more the former).
The memoir itself focuses on the creation of the first pride flag, as well as the record-breaking mile-long flag he created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Stonewall (named Stonewall 25) in 1994, but it does cover his life before, after, and between those moments. He shares his experience of finding out that Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city councilman in California and a friend of his, was assassinated on November 27, 1978, as well as the experience of surviving the AIDS crisis as his friends passed away around him.
Gilbert was an artist, and an activist, and he believed in the power of a symbol to unite the queer community, over infighting and other differences. He also believed in the power of art as protest, as well as the strength in being one’s self. I have found, I believe, a sort of kindred spirit in his book, as well as someone to look up to, as I continue to create my own art as a form of resistance.
The last chapter of the book, titled Epilogue: Gilbert Baker’s Later Years is written, not by Gilbert himself, but posthumously by Charley Beal, the manager of Creative Projects, at the Gilbert Baker Estate. Gilbert’s narration stops in 2000, aside from a small reflection on a 2008 visit to the Betsy Ross house in Philadelphia, and so Beal records the last nearly two decades of Gilbert’s life.
He explains that Gilbert wrote most of his memoirs in the 1990s, and intended to publish them, though he never completed the manuscript. After his death, his friends and loved ones discovered the partial manuscripts, and were able to put together the best of each draft, in an order that made sense to the story Gilbert was trying to tell. Then, with the permission of his family, they published it as Rainbow Warrior. The tone of this last section is more distant, less detailed, and certainly more professional, though it isn’t cold or analytical. It makes sense for Beal to take a step back as he shares the last years of Baker’s life. To mimic Gilbert’s writing style, or to pretend to be him would be jarring at best, dishonoring at worst. This last chapter is why I call this book an Auto/biography. It is mostly Gilbert's story in his own words, but his friends honored him by completing it and sharing it with the world, as he intended.
This book is a wonderful look into the creation of the most ubiquitous symbol in the Queer community, as well as at the man who created it, with the hope that we could all find a home under the rainbow.
Baker, Gilbert, et al. Rainbow Warrior : My Life in Color. Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Review Press, 2019.
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