The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Lesbian and/or Feminist Literature and Writing
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: Lumière on May 12, 2009, 04:11:27 pm ---
This book is finally available to order.
In fact, I received my copy from Amazon today.
I've been looking forward to this since I saw it listed on amazon a while ago. :)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for reviving this thread Milli! 8)
I can't believe the last post before yours was from February!
Anyway, I'm excited to read more of this author's writing too. So thanks for the heads up! :) It'll be on my list after reading the new Waters book.
sel:
Hi Lumière and Amanda,
I am new to gay literature. So far I have read BbM and The Front Runner. Have never read a lesbian themed story. What would you recommend my first one be?
I own the DVD of Aimée and Jaguar, it was reccomended to me on the BbM IMDb board as the feminine equivalent to BbM in terms of a powerful and very well made movie. I liked the film, although I ought to watch it again, I have a few questions about it, but I wouldn't be interested in reading the book.
Thank you.
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: sel on May 12, 2009, 04:44:46 pm ---Hi Lumière and Amanda,
I am new to gay literature. So far I have read BbM and The Front Runner. Have never read a lesbian themed story. What would you recommend my first one be?
I own the DVD of Aimée and Jaguar, it was reccomended to me on the BbM IMDb board as the feminine equivalent to BbM in terms of a powerful and very well made movie. I liked the film, although I ought to watch it again, I have a few questions about it, but I wouldn't be interested in reading the book.
Thank you.
--- End quote ---
Hi sel!! It's nice to see you on this thread Bud! :)
I really liked the film of Aimée and Jaguar and I own a copy. I haven't watched it for a while, but I think it's very well done. I have the book too, and it's very, very poignant. Of course, it's such a tragic true story. In a way, the book reads and feels more like non-fiction (which it is).
What are your questions about the film? It might be fun to have a discussion about it.
You may have noticed our other thread in Culture Tent about the books (and films) of Sarah Waters http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,16313.0.html . She's a really talented, contemporary writer who writes very compelling novels with historical settings that usually involve a lesbian protagonists. Part of her goal, at least in several of her earliest books, seems to be to re-insert lesbian figures into the types of stories and literature that usually, historically has erased or excluded gay characters and perspectives.
I'd recommend starting with Sarah Water's book called Tipping the Velvet. It's the book that caused Waters to become well-known and it's a very fun book... as well as very well-written. Of her books, it's the one that focuses the most on the issue of being a lesbian (lesbian identity,etc.), relationships, lesbian society and culture (in 19th century England/ London).
Some of her other books have lesbian characters, while at the same time the issue of "being a lesbian" isn't necessarily the main theme or subject.
There are lots of classic lesbian books out there, but I really would suggest starting with Tipping the Velvet I think.
Lumière:
Howdy Sel,
My first recommendation would have to be one of my fave books by Sarah Waters.
A very (very) good place to start.. :)
Tipping the Velvet
From Amazon.com
The heroine of Sarah Waters's audacious first novel knows her destiny, and seems content with it. Her place is in her father's seaside restaurant, shucking shellfish and stirring soup, singing all the while. "Although I didn't long believe the story told to me by Mother--that they had found me as a baby in an oyster-shell, and a greedy customer had almost eaten me for lunch--for eighteen years I never doubted my own oysterish sympathies, never looked far beyond my father's kitchen for occupation, or for love." At night Nancy Astley often ventures to the nearby music hall, not that she has illusions of being more than an audience member. But the moment she spies a new male impersonator--still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888--her years of innocence come to an end and a life of transformations begins.
Tipping the Velvet, all 472 pages of it, is as saucy, as tantalizing, and as touching as the narrator's first encounter with the seductive but shame-ridden Miss Kitty Butler. And at first even Nancy's family is thrilled with her gender-bending pal, all but her sister, best friend, and bedmate, Alice, "her eyes shining cold and dull, with starlight and suspicion." Not to worry. Soon Nancy and Kitty are off to London, their relationship close though (alas for our heroine) sisterly. We know that bliss will come, and it does, in an exceptionally charged moment. A lesser author would have been content to stop her story there, but Waters has much more in mind for her buttonholing heroine, and for us. In brief, her Everywoman with a sexual difference goes from success onstage to heartbreak to a stint as a male prostitute (necessity truly is the mother of invention) to keeping house for a brother and sister in the Labour movement. And did I mention her long stint as a plaything in the pleasure palace of a rich Sapphist extraordinaire? Diana Lethaby is as cruel as she is carnal, and even the well-concealed Cavendish Ladies' Club isn't outré enough for her. Kitting Nancy out in full, elegant drag, she dares the front desk to turn them away. "We are here," she mocks, "for the sake of the irregular."
Only after some seven years of hard twists and sensual turns does Nancy conclude that a life of sensation is not enough. Still, Tipping the Velvet is so entertaining that readers will wish her sentimental--and hedonistic--education had taken twice as long. --Kerry Fried
Lumière:
Amanda, your post came in same time as mine.
Motion carried unanimously - Tipping the Velvet is the best start. ;)
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