Lesbrary Sneak Peek

Here are some more of the les/etc books I’ve acquired and why I’m looking forward to reading them.

The copy of Lesbian/Woman by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon I have seems to be trying to market itself as a lesbian pulp book. The back blurb starts with the shocking declaration “The authors of this book are lesbians.” They also put the term come out in quotation marks, like it’s a new-fangled slang term. The teaser first page says

Are the women who think, act,
live and love as men?
Are they physiological freaks of nature?
Are they women so sexually driven
that they choose their
love partners indiscriminately?

WHAT ARE LESBIANS?

Well, all right then. It seems like it will be a good mix of lesbian pulp cheesyness and real lesbian history.

I don’t know what The Revolution of Little Girls by Blanche McCrary Boyd will be like. The back blurb promises “As a young woman in the 1960s and ’70s, she hypnotizes her way to Harvard, finds herself as a lesbian, then very nearly loses herself to booze and shamans.” Well, it should be interesting at the very least.

Sister Outsider should be interesting for different reasons. Audre Lorde is known for her poetry and for being a black lesbian feminist activist. This is a book of her essays and speeches. I love to read some of the pioneers in lesbian history, especially those who helped to break apart the confining middle class/white/cisgender/abled/etc narrative of lesbianism (and feminism), though obviously it’s still a fight very much in progress.

Tide Lines edited by Lee Fleming is a book I hadn’t heard of before I saw it in a queer thrift store. (I couldn’t believe my luck when I found it. It’s called Out of the Closet. I never though my love of thrift stores and lesbians would ever meet. My girlfriend found a Xena shirt for $5.) “[I]n this anthology, change occurs because we are lesbians. Rites of passage, turning points, beginnings and endings”. It looks like it will be good.

And then, in this same thrift store, I found a whole basket of lesbian magazines for $2 each! I hadn’t heard of them before, but they’re called Lesbian Connection and say they’re free to lesbians worldwide, though obviously they have a suggested donation. From what I can see flipping through, it’s like a lesbian family newsletter… awesome. Here’s the link to their website.