Julie Thompson reviews Undercover Girl: The Lesbian Informant Who Helped the FBI Bring Down the Communist Party by Lisa E. Davis

undercover-girl

Undercover Girl chronicles the exploits of Angela Calomiris, an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the 1940s. An otherwise easy-to-miss figure in history, author Lisa E. Davis goes behind-the-scenes to reveal a more complex story of Calomiris’s life. The depiction of her impoverished childhood in New York through her fifteen minutes of fame as a witness for the prosecution during the Smith Act trials of 1949, and how it clashed with the version that Calomiris presented to the press, is fascinating. Author Lisa E. Davis also explores the divisive nature of Red Scare tactics, the ways in which it pitted groups against each other, and promoted fear, xenophobia, racism, and homophobia. This provides essential context for Calomiris’s behavior and how her fabrications were positively received by mainstream American citizens, the press, and government agencies. Davis’s appraisal of her subject is critical and well-researched.

The Photo League (TPL, 1936-1951), a club focused on capturing the lives of ordinary folks, was Angela’s primary target during her time as an FBI informant. TPL drew the attention and ire of the FBI due to its advertisement of club classes in The Daily Worker, a newspaper of the Communist Party USA, and its photographs chronicling New York City life, which included images of African-Americans. Her bread and butter income came from divulging names and activities, as well as her own amateur photographs, of the TPL to the FBI. A closeted lesbian, Calomiris played up her public image as an “All-American girl” (read: America first, heterosexual). As Davis delves into Calomiris’s appearances in the media and on the witness stand, contradictory information proves challenging to untangle. Readers are treated to an epilogue of the informant’s life after the trial. Did she attain wealth and lasting fame, as some of her fellow informants did licensing their stories in film and television? Did her duplicitous and fabulist tendencies continue to isolate her from friends and community?

Davis draws from de-classified FBI reports available through the Freedom of Information Act; oral interviews with people who knew Calomiris during the 1940s-1950s; archival collections; film, radio, scripts, and sound recordings; newspaper and journal articles; theses; and books. All of these materials enrich the narrative and provide the work with a credibility lacking in its subject’s own life. Calomiris’s keen desire for fame and fortune is perhaps one reason she meticulously preserved her extensive collection of newspaper and magazine articles, correspondence, and other ephemera. The large collection was ultimately bestowed, through the executrix of her estate, to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City.

An engrossing tale for researchers, history buffs, and casual readers alike. Undercover Girl: The Lesbian Informant Who Helped the FBI Bring Down the Communist Party is slated for release in May 2017.

You can read more of Julie’s reviews on her blog, Omnivore Bibliosaur (jthompsonian.wordpress.com)

Julie Thompson reviews Go Deep (All Out Vancouver #2) by Leigh Matthews

Go Deep

(This review contains some spoilers)

Buckle up for a rocky road  of doppelgängers, hospitals, concussin’, and a ménage à wedding.  It’s heating up (literally, I am melting into the asphalt) around the Pacific Northwest and what better way to enjoy your burgeoning beach bum status than with a fun, flirty, roller coaster of a  novel? Pack your staycation bags and prepare to head up North of the border, up Canada way!

The second book in Leigh Matthew’s All Out Vancouver series threads through the adventures and lives of the first novel’s crew: Kate, Cass, Em, Hanna, and Steve. If you don’t mind slight spoilers of the first book, read on. We meet new folks: Afra, genderqueer character with a big heart for social justice, who shares a run-down apartment with Scout; Scout, a charming young queer fresh from the prairie; and Alice, a nurse from Vancouver General Hospital.

Other characters share the spotlight, such as Drew, a lawyer trying to get pregnant via artificial insemination, who also coaches the group’s queer softball team. As Matthews introduces more characters into the East Vancouver scene, she deftly alternates between storylines, skillfully merging the disparate lives that are connected like a game of six-degrees of Kevin Bacon or Alice’s chart on The L Word. New challenges arise and old problems fester.

The action starts up in Amsterdam, a few months after Kate and Cass settle in. The edges of their nascent relationship are fraying with the stresses of moving to a new country, new jobs, and most of all, the unsettled bumps in their relationship. They fall back into the same patterns, desperate for change, but unsure of how to make that happen. A change of scenery isn’t enough to help the insular couple from trapping themselves in a cycle of fight-sex-fun. It takes an emergency trip back to Vancouver to break the cycle. Both women are forced to take a long hard look at who they are together and if it’s worth all the drama and heartache. I’m unsure about how deep they’re willing to go to transform their relationship into one that is healthy and mutually satisfying. Cass is a difficult character for me to enjoy, but she manages to grow up a little bit.

Kate sums up the relationship, such as it is when the story opens: “It’s like living with a toddler, an academic, and a sex addict, and I never know which one I’ll come home to.”

Go Deep also explores also explores possibilities for couplings and families. Drew and Scout hook up, leaving the politics of tops and bottoms to the flip of a coin. Outside of the bedroom, they enjoy a relationship that does not involve the possibility of a romantic partner/co-parent, but does open the doors for other options.

Scout is one of my favorite characters. New to town after life on the prairie, Scout joins the softball team and plunges into the East Vancouver queer scene.  Scout is tough, yet sensitive; flirty and fun, yet guarded. It’s the uncertainties, contradictions, and charm that shine through and make this character fun to follow. A case of mistaken identity results in further excitement and complications.

Stability radiates outward to the group from the triad of Em, Hanna, and Steve. Even with a life-threatening illness thrown in, they not only stay afloat, but manage to juggle the drama of their less-than-balanced friends. Theirs is the novel’s romance that gives me warm fuzzies.

Em is the kind of friend we all need on our side. Someone who won’t hesitate to call us out on our crap, but is not unkind about it. I cheered when she tells Kate that something needs to change because the only stories she hears Kate tell about life with Cass taste sour.  Em makes friends wherever she finds herself. In her hospital bed, not only does she plays therapist to Kate, but connects with other patients in an important way. She is the cat herding master!

As far as the supporting characters go, they pop up to provide nudges in the action, but we don’t see them as much, yet. A little teaser of storylines to come, maybe. Matthews drops breadcrumbs about where the next installment may head as the gang pools their talents and passions together for a labor of love.

Julie Thompson reviews Confucius Jane by Kate Lynch

confucius jane katie lynch cover
Warning: This novel may induce drooling! Produces a Pavlovian response to descriptions of Chinese cuisine. A platter of deliciousness is advised to have on hand while reading.

Confucius Jane is a wonderful treat. After the emotionally heavy drama-rama of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, it was nice to slip into a world that’s comfy and welcoming, but also dotted with imperfections.

We meet our protagonists, Jane and Sutton, at a crossroads in their lives. New York City’s Chinatown and Upper East Side provide colorful and staid backdrops to the tale. There is also plenty of awkward Will-I-Won’t-I romance dancing between the two women. It’s a great mix of drama, humor, and food for thought.

Jane is the kind of woman who never needs a coat, plucks poetry from the air, and seems to have hidden wells of confidence in reserve. Under the surface, however, lies a thick layer of uncertainty. It’s one thing to offer pat advice and ambiguous futures to strangers she’ll never meet, via the slips of paper inside each fortune cookie. It’s quite another for Jane to divine what step to take next following her early departure from college. She spends her afternoons in an office above her aunt’s and uncle’s fortune cookie company, penning pithy prognostications and furtively watching “The Goddess in Glasses” eat at the Noodle Treasure — a woman she will come to know as Sutton St. James.

Sutton is a swirling mix of scientific passions and career drive, with no time for love. She struggles to balance her parents’ expectations for surface perfection and strict adherence to their moral code. Her father, a former US Surgeon General, known as “America’s Doctor”, pressures his daughter to follow in his footsteps. Neither of her parents wants her to find love with a woman. Despite her sacrifices of time and emotional energy, she ends up giving more to her parents and their world, than she receives in return from them.

Kate Lynch peoples this world with charming and frustrating characters. The supporting cast provides just the right amount of seasoning to give Confucius Jane full flavor. Min, Jane’s precocious eleven-year-old cousin, pokes and prods the love lives of her family and friends. She even Googles pick-up lines for Jane to use on Sutton before she works up the nerve to approach her. It’s adorable and hilarious when she reads them aloud to Jane. Sue, an older woman who runs a Chinese apothecary and astrology shop in the neighborhood, offers encouragement and support for Jane, and later for Sutton, as well.

“Sue made [Jane] feel part of the fabric of the community instead of a frayed thread barely dangling from the edge. That sense of never quite belonging came with the territory of being hapa.”

Hapa relates to Jane’s biracial heritage and also to her globetrotting formative years. The author explores the idea of existing in halves across cultures. It’s an interesting idea to chew on, this need to categorize people and things as either one thing or the other. In the supplemental “Author Interview”, Kate Lynch discusses Hapa further, relating it to lesbians:

“LGBTQ-identified people are socially hapa by virtue of our sexuality; we stand at the intersection of multiple communities, endeavoring to make a space for ourselves in all of them.”

The bonus Author Interview and Discussion Questions are great supplements to the story.

April is National Poetry Month. Like Jane, you can find poetry wherever you go. If you’re interested in exploring her way of weaving words together, it’s pretty easy to do. Find a space to sit with a pen and paper and listen to the flow of words as the fragments float past. After your outing, read through the lines of conversation you caught and select the ones that speak to you. Arrange them into a poem. You can learn more about other ways in which “Found Poetry” transforms text (menus, advertisements, lists, etc.) at Poets.org and at foundpoetryreview.com

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-found-poem

http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/about-found-poetry/