Lesbian and/or Feminist Literature and Writing

[Lumière]

I just finished reading another anthology:




From Publishers Weekly [amazon.ca]
Margins are ignored in this fine collection of fiction by 15 Canadian lesbians. Three of its authors have won Canada's highest literary honor, and readers will recognize authors such as Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees, an Oprah pick) and Shani Mootoo (Cereus Blooms at Night). Themes of discovery and lost boundaries (sexual and otherwise) run through the anthology, and though the stories vary in quality, a sense of energy and newness pervades them. Standouts include Dionne Brand's contribution, an excerpt from In Another Place, Not Here that crackles with Caribbean authenticity; Nicole Brossard's treatise-like "State of Mind in the Garden"; and Karen X. Tulchinsky's "Ruined by Love," a road story set on the west coast.

There were one or two stories that did little for me, but for the most part - I really enjoyed it, especially entries by Karen X. Tulchinsky,  Ann-Marie MacDonald, Anne Fleming, Shani Mootoo... to name a handful. 


I am currently reading a collection of stories by Emma Donoghue (love her writing) called:  Touchy Subjects.




Amazon.ca:
How do you make conversation with a sperm donor? How do you say someone's novel is drivel? Would you give a screaming baby brandy? In what words would you tell your girlfriend to pluck a hair on her chin?

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons, a mother who deserts her children. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. Many of these stories are about the spectrum of constrained, convoluted feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

I have only read the first story at this point; was laughing through half of it.  Fun so far. 

[Brown Eyes]

Heya M!

Thanks for keeping this great thread going with these recommendations!  I'm busily compiling book shopping lists with the help of this thread.

I'm still in the midst of reading Lonesome Dove... I'm at about page 500 at the moment.  So, it's going pretty fast actually.  Hopefully I'll be done with it in a week or so (my copy has 945 pages).  When I'm done, I really do think I'll probably read an anthology of lesbian short stories.  That sounds really appealing to me at the moment.

But, just to keep my contributions to this thread going I thought I'd post about a book and movie that I think are really wonderful, and definitely deserve a place on this thread.  I think we've talked about this before somewhere on BetterMost... but, again, it really needs to be on this thread.

The non-fiction book is Aimee and Jaguar by Erica Fischer (1994) and is the true story of a Jewish woman (Felice Schragenheim) and the wife of a Nazi officer (Lilly Wust) who fall in love in Germany during WWII.   It's an absolutely incredible story.   

<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/1513074-200.jpg" border="0" />
This is a picture of Felice and Lilly from the cover of the book that I have.  There are many fascinating photos included in the book.


And, there was a truly wonderful movie made of this, also called Aimee and Jaguar (1998).  It documents all sorts of tragedy that occured during the Holocaust era, but it also provides a really fascinating glimpse or representation of lesbian culture in mid-20th century Berlin.  And, while tragic, it's also really romantic.  The movie is in German (with subtitles).

<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/1540107-6c7.jpg" border="0" />

<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/midsize/1540109-9be.jpg" border="0" />

<img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/1540108-917.gif" border="0" />

[Lumière]

Hey A,

Aimée & Jaguar is most certainly worth checking out.  I haven't read the book, but I own the DVD.
The movie was really well done; and like you said, it is fascinating to take a peek into the lesbian culture in Berlin at the time.
Thanks for bringing it in here, bud. 
I think I'll take it off the shelf for another viewing one of these evenings. 




Amazon.com
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women. One of them, Lilly Wust (Juliane Köhler), married and the mother of four sons, enjoys the privileges of her stature as an exemplar of Nazi motherhood. For her, this affair will be the most decisive experience of her life. For the other woman, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader), a Jewess and member of the underground, their love fuels her with the hope that she will survive. A half-century later, Lilly Wust told her incredible story to writer Erica Fischer, and thebook, AIMEE & JAGUAR, first published in 1994 immediately became a bestseller and has since been translated into eleven languages. Max Färberböck's debut film, based on Fischer's book, is the true story of this extraordinary relationship. The film was nominated for a 1999 Golden Globe Award and was Germany's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Both actresses received Silver Bears at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival for their portrayals of "Aimée" and "Jaguar".

[Front-Ranger]

Over the weekend I read a good story by Louise Erditch that was in a year-old edition of The New Yorker. I'm a little out of date on my TNY reading, LOL. It was about a Canadian Native lesbian woman.

[Lumière]

Hey Lee,   

I have heard of her but I have not read any of her work yet.
What is the title of the story you read?

[Lumière]

I have a few more additions to our growing list here...
(this one will be coming home to me in my next amazon shopping bag).


Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches



[amazon.com]
"Perhaps ... I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself -- a Black woman warrior poet doing my work -- come to ask you, are you doing yours?" This is how Audre Lorde introduces herself in a paper entitled "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action." Audre Lorde takes personal responsibility for this essential, perpetual transformation. In Sister Outsider she enters into dialogue with listeners and readers, lending us her voice and challenging us to speak and act for ourselves. She insists that we pay attention, that we confront the limitations we set upon ourselves and each other; her words have weight and resonance because she listens as rigorously as she speaks. She asks and risks more of herself than might seem possible; the political is personal on many levels of her life. She writes about facing the threat of cancer, about being part of an interracial lesbian couple raising a son, about sex, poetry, rage, and restraint. She is a fiercely intelligent writer, addressing racism, sexism, and heterosexism from the heart of her individual experience as an African-American, lesbian poet/warrior. Audre Lorde demonstrates how each of us must speak for and from our most intimate knowledge, yet simultaneously extend the boundaries around ourselves to include the "outsider," to include more than we have been, more than we thought we could imagine.

[Lumière]

Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing



From Publishers Weekly [amazon.com]
The title of this collection of 20 essays, stories and poems is the name of a lover portrayed by Audre Lorde both in the excerpt from Zami that introduces the collection and in the poem that ends it. Both are, first and foremost, works of literature. As the editors say in their introduction, "identity politics bind and frankly bore us," and here beauty, meaning and insight outweigh any given political stance. Even where there is politically charged jargon, such as in Jocelyn Maria Taylor's essay recalling her life as a stripper and her burgeoning political consciousness, it is compensated for by her smart take on the image of the black woman's body. By and large, the selections are encompassing: any African American will understand Alexis De Veaux's painful letter to her light-skinned "Dear Aunt Nanadine"; any woman will cringe at the story of a back-alley abortion related by Helen Elaine Lee. And any human will be moved by Cynthia Bond's searing tale of abuse and madness. The essays are intelligent, for example Jewelle Gomez's look at her complicated relationships with black men; Linda Villarosa's studied response to blinkered Bible-thumpers who would throw stones; and Evelyn C. White's touching, nostalgic recollection of family life in Gary, Ind., in the '60s and her first realization that her mother was a woman, not just an accessory to child and man. Not every piece is of equal quality, but the majority deserve to be read.


I have wanted to check out this anthology for a while. 
I will in a week or so when my copy arrives.

[Lumière]

Another book to add to the Black, queer anthologies category..


Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction



Amazon.com Review
One result of the combined American prejudice against both blacks and sexual minorities is that as these voices finally come to light, they seem astonishingly new. The words of Alice Dunbar Nelson or Angelina Welde Grimke, both of whom wrote at the turn of the twentieth century, are as fresh to us as the novels of E. Lynn Harris. This groundbreaking and beautifully crafted anthology--a graduate seminar in a single volume--reveals a hidden tradition, no less powerful for being filtered quietly from writer to writer, sometimes between the lines of published stories or novels. All the writers you would expect are gathered here--Langston Hughes (represented by his incomparable story, "Blessed Assurance," posthumously published in 1963), Countee Cullen, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde--beside scores of lesser-known figures. Many of the contemporary writers included are out of the closet, but not widely read as gay. The unifying factor is the high quality of the work, rare in a collection such as this. With historical introductions, author profiles, and an extensive bibliography, Black Like Us is a sparkling scholarly accomplishment, as well as a fantastic, accessible read.


I haven't gone through the entire anthology but found the short stories fascinating - especially because of the variety - 100 years worth of black, queer culture/fiction... I was particularly touched by Angelina Weld Grimke's short story The Closing Door (from 1919) - a harrowing tale of lynching & what a mother would be driven to do to keep her child from slavery. 

Definitely worth checking out this collection of stories (all 600 pages of it)

[Lumière]

I have 2 more books to add to the heap.
I haven't read these yet, but the reviews look very promising.

First, a story of young lesbian love...


Dare, Truth Or Promise
by Paula Boock




Publishers Weekly [Amazon.ca]
New Zealand author Boock traces the developing lesbian romance between two high school seniors in an ultimately uplifting novel. The two are from different social strata: Louie quotes Shakespeare and poetry and comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class background, while newcomer Willa, still suffering from the repercussions of an ill-fated first relationship with another girl, lives above a pub. Told in a third-person narrative that alternates between the two characters' points of view, the book offers a frank appraisal of the girls' initial attraction, passions and the conflicts of dealing with a variety of outsidersAparents, friends, co-workers, etc. When Louie's mother discovers the two girls in bed together in Louie's room, she forbids Louie to see Willa. After a rather prolonged period of suffering and soul-searching, they are able to reunite. Although Boock's intense narrative crosses into melodrama and occasionally plants an important scene offstage, teens who are curious about or struggling with questions of sexual identity will find reassurance in these pages. The characters' interactions with Louie's father and priest, and Willa's conversations with her own mother, convey an empathy and tolerance strong enough to counterbalance the intolerance the lovers face from everyone else. Ages 12-up.

[Lumière]

Moving into a world of gender norms, sexual orientation and class...


Stone Butch Blues
by Leslie Feinberg




Publishers Weekly [Amazon.ca]
This compelling but uneven first novel follows the sexual travails of lesbian Jess Goldberg. At its start she is a girl who feels confused by strict ideas about gender and who wonders if she might be a "he-she" since people often ask whether she is a boy or a girl. Constantly searching, she quickly moves from trying on her father's suits to visiting bars and transforming herself into a full-blown "butch," complete with her own dildo. As police crackdowns on gay bars result in more than one night in jail, Goldberg decides to begin taking male hormones and have a breast reduction in order to pass as a man. Although she delights in visiting the barber and being able to use the men's room--and even manages to make love to a woman without being discovered--the emotional complications of changing her sex (and hence her identity) build up until she ceases to take her hormone shots. Certain transmutations, like her lowered voice, cannot be reversed, however, so she is now even less defined as a member of a specific gender. Goldberg and her like-minded friends who have embraced the butch/femme dichotomy find they have no place in either the nascent women's or gay pride movements. Feinberg attempts to present Goldberg's life as the personal side of political history, but the narrative seems unattached to time despite the insertion of landmark events like the Stonewall riot and the mention of Reagan and the Moral Majority.