I'm looking for a book that is about Queer history in America, but I'm open to pretty much anything. For example, I LOVE the documentary called The Celluloid Closet and I wrote a college essay on "out and coded queerness on stage" where I referenced a lot of Oscar Wilde, Tenneesee Williams, etc. I also love a lot of Kerouac's novels and Ginsburg's poems as well as the films Kill Your Darlings, On the Road, Howl, Life and James Dean and biographies of Brando and Dean.
Particularly interested in queer history in theatre/film, New York City or queerness within the Beat or art community.
Funny - as soon as I saw this subject , I had a book in mind to share with you, but as I opened the topic, I thought "I hope he's OK with something that's a bit NYC-focused"....then I got to your second paragraph :)
There's a great (almost definitive) book called" The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America Since World War II". It's pretty much exactly what you're looking for. The word "metropolis" in the title is significant; the author focuses mostly on gay history in NYC, with SF and LA also covered to a smaller extent.
It's a favorite of mine and I'm sure you'll love it. I learned a ton of stuff which really blew my mind - for instance, exactly why San Francisco became the gay mecca that it famously is (It's because many WW2 soldiers and sailors had used their time away from home, while out in the Pacific front, to explore their same-sex desires. Upon returning stateside and landing at San Francisco, many decided to just stay and settle in SF, due to feelings of "I can't go back home like this")