Month: February 2014

Casey reviews Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women edited by Candace Walsh and Laura Andre

Posted on by

DearJohn

I had heard a lot of praise for Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (edited by Candace Walsh and Laura Andre) by the time I finally picked it up.  So, I was expecting good things.  This book, however, managed to actually exceed my expectations.  It was so refreshing to read an entire book filled with a different kind of coming out story.  I’ve never identified with the “I’ve always known”, or the “I was a gender non-conforming kid so it figures”, or the “I fell in love with a girl when I was five” stories.  It’s not that those stories aren’t valid in their own right.  But they never felt representative of my experience.  It turns out a lot of other women felt the same way.  Dear John I Love Jane has a few pieces where I was like, oh my god, this could totally be about me.  It was so amazing to read and feel like, yes, this is my kind of queerness.

There’s a huge range of different stories even within this anthology.  There are women who were never really happy with men.  There are women who’ve only really been attracted to one woman.  There are women in this book who married men in good faith, and were completely blindsided by their later (sometimes exclusive) attraction to women.  There are some women who open up their relationships with men to date women at the same time.  There’s even one woman in here who stays married to her husband after coming out as a lesbian.  There are women who identify as bi, lesbian, queer, and some who are uncomfortable labelling or naming their sexualities at all.   Lots of the women in the book have children.  There is one woman who falls in love with a woman for the first time at age sixty-nine.  Sixty-nine!!  This diversity of experience aside, though, the vast majority of the women whose stories were in the book are white, and I would really have liked to have seen more women of colour, as well as women from different class backgrounds.

It was awesome to see women questioning and attacking conventional understandings of sexual orientation—that model that’s built for gay men that just doesn’t seem to do a lot of LBQ women justice.  One woman writes about her lack of “brazen knowledge about” her sexuality; taught that she would be sure if she was queer, she felt paralyzed because she didn’t know for certain.  Another compares her newfound feelings for women as an acquired taste for fancy espresso when she used to slurp down drip coffee from a styrofoam cup without thought.  Another blames Angelina Jolie’s lips.  One woman admits thinking that she just wasn’t that kind of girl, until she realized she was that kind of girl, but for “andro-butchy” girls.  Another recounts her mother’s reaction to her coming out as “JESUS CHRIST!  I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer.  I don’t give a shit if you are a lesbian.”  Ha ha.

I highly, highly recommend this collection.  Not only did I love the content, I thought the majority of the pieces were really well written.  I think Dear John I Love Jane is especially an important read for queer women whose stories are of the “I’ve always known” variety and for folks who need to confront their biphobia (there are an unfortunate number of lesbians who need to work on this).  I’ll just leave you with this last awesome quotation, from Amelia Sauter: “You won’t find me rewriting history to say that I was gay all along.  I was straight.  Now I am gay… I always thought I couldn’t change.  I was wrong and that freaks out a lot of people who are scared to imagine that one day everything they think is true and permanent could change.  I found my knight in shining armour, and she’s a girl.”

Anna M. reviews The Blush Factor by Gun Brooke

Posted on by

blushfactor

Gun Brooke’s The Blush Factor, released this month by Bold Strokes Books, features a May-December romance between a savvy businesswoman and an entrepreneurial YouTube sensation. Eleanor Ashcroft has kept her distance from most people in her years as a corporate shark, but something about Addison Garry’s self-made celebrity catches her attention. Addison, also known as Blush, runs an amazingly popular YouTube channel featuring makeup and styling tips, and Eleanor is in the market for an expert to help her revitalize her aunt’s former makeup company. It doesn’t hurt that Addie is very easy on the eyes–Eleanor finds herself watching the videos over and over again.

Addie takes the job primarily to help her kid sister–their parents died many years ago, and she’s responsible for the teen’s well-being. Stacey has a medical condition that will require surgery, and they need all the money they can get. Addie proves competent as well as beautiful, and the women find themselves intrigued by one another. Despite their age difference, Addie and Eleanor’s business relationship progresses toward intimacy; however, Stacey’s condition leads to an episode that puts their future as a couple in jeopardy.

I’ve read and enjoyed many of Gun Brooke’s books, and I will likely keep reading after The Blush Factor, but there was something about the book that felt unfinished. There was definitely chemistry in the romance between Eleanor and Addie. Perhaps it was that beyond those two characters, and the younger sister whose illness is the catalyst for much of the dramatic action, there wasn’t much definition. Addie is hired as a consultant on the beauty industry, and The Blush Factor seems to be set up as a workplace romance, but very few scenes actually took place at work. We didn’t get to see Addie’s expertise actually come into play on Eleanor’s behalf, we were just told after the fact that the business was revitalized. Conflict between the characters over the payment of medical bills was fraught but, even after Addie explained her extreme reaction, still a bit confusing. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favorite of her books.

Readalikes:

For a good lesbian “boss romance,” try Too Close to Touch by Georgia Beers or even Rulebreaker by Cathy Pegau.

Link Round Up: January 30 – February 5

Posted on by

NobleFalling   genderfailure   onlovingwomen   

AfterEllen posted The AfterEllen.com Book Club Selection for February Is…

Babbling About Books posted The Importance of Lesbians in Young Adult Fiction From Harmony Ink Press and 2014 Lesbian Fiction Appreciation Event Overview.

Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian posted 2014 Queer Canadian Books to Be Excited About.

Curve Magazine posted The Rise and Rise of Lesbian Fiction.

Ammonite   TheEssentialDykestoWatchOutForDTWOF   hild

Elisa posted THE RAINBOW AWARDS 2014 SUBMISSION AND JUDGING GUIDELINES.

Lambda Literary posted Rainbow Valentine: A Celebration of LGBT Romance Fiction.

Women and Words posted Stuff going on! The Haps! The 411!

Alison Bechdel posted My life has become un Train a Grand Vitesse and Leaving France.

Nicola Griffith was interviewed at Seattle Wrote.

TheBeginningOfUs   qu33r   SheRises

The Beginning of Us by Sarah Brooks was reviewed at Lipstick Lesbian Reviews.

Qu33r edited by Robert Kirby was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Imperial Hotel by Diane Marina was reviewed at C-Spot Reviews.

The Princess and the Outlaw by Jean Roberta was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Guilty Hearts by Jade Winters was reviewed (plus an interview) at LGBTQA Culture.

She Rises by Kate Worsley was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter page! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and tumblr.

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee.

Danika reviews Living as a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke

Posted on by

livingasalesbian

 

Living as a Lesbian is a poetry collection that was first published in 1986, and has been recently republished with notes, reviews, a preface and introduction. I feel like there are several ways to read this book. It comes with notes at the end that reference certain poems, so you can flip back and forth to get a little context for each poem, but even with the notes, I think you’ll get a lot more out of them if you’re familiar with 1980s politics in the U.S. I am not, so a lot of the references went over my head. With the notes, however, you could go on an expedition, researching references until it lead you to lists of other books to read, and albums of R&B and jazz to listen to.

Even without understanding the exact context of each poem–even without understanding every poem–this is still definitely a collection that is worth picking up. Lesbianism is a thread that goes through the book, but it is not the focus of every poem. The topics vary, but they come back to those intersecting identities of black/woman/lesbian/working class. The formats change as well. Some are direct, sparse, straight-forward, whereas others are more abstract and merely hint at meaning. Some poems follow a narrative, others are fragmented and without punctuation.

My favourites, unsurprisingly, were the poems that focused on lesbian relationships. Though this partially because I can understand them better than 80s politics, it’s also because I found those to be the most compellingly written, with the personalities of these women emerging from the page, like in this excerpt from “nothing”:

Nothing I wouldn’t do the woman I sleep with
when nobody satisfy me the way she do.

kiss her in public places
win the lottery
take her in the ass
in a train lavatory
sleep three in a single bed
have a baby
to keep her wanting me.

Although I didn’t understand all of these poems, I am glad I picked this collection up. Learning about our queer history, especially queer people of colour history, is important to me, and I also had to pause several times to note quotes that I really liked. I would recommend this one, especially if you’re familiar with 80s politics and activism in the U.S.

Lena reviews A Dying Place by Emma Johnson-Rivard

Posted on by

adyingplace

There’s an almost theatrical quality to A Dying Place, Emma Johnson-Rivard’s rather bleak fantasy story.  In terms of setting and structure, the novel functions as a play and it speaks to Johnson-Rivard’s strengths as a writer that she’s able to let the characters sing through that format.

The book opens with Ama’u, a veteran of failed military attempt to colonize Kathas, the country across the sea from her native Raisun.  Ama’u is an orphan who has stayed in Kathas even after the rest of her country’s army has return home.  She’s an outcast in every sense of the word, traveling aimlessly around the treacherous countryside, unable to find a reason to stay or go.  During a storm she takes shelter in a cave on a riverbank.  Inside she finds a Kathasian warrior woman sick with a bacterial infection that is destroying her eyes.  The two first try valiantly to kill each other, but then become tentative friends and allies as they navigate the dying place haunted by myths and legends to aid them in the process.

Johnson-Rivard’s world building is incredibly impressive.  The world of Kathas feels like something she’s lived in for years, there’s a complete set of religious myths and legends as well as well-developed  culturally based rituals and customs.  Exploring these differences in background give Ama’u and Esben a constant dialogue that allows them to come through as characters despite an incredibly static background.  Any weaker dialogue would have destroyed the piece, but Johson-Rivard seems to have a knack for knowing when to just let her characters talk.  The overall arc of the book may have benefited from a bit more objective and purpose for the characters, but it carries itself along very nicely.  The build-up at the end does feel a bit sudden, but the pay off works well and it’s a very satisfying conclusion.