Detailed and immensely readable, this is a generous history of lesbian love.
An archive of queer love and community by a talented storyteller.
“Mostly grown and living in New York City, I still rarely spotted other lesbians,” writes book publicist Possanza in her debut. “I joined a queer swim team, but it was full of gay men who didn’t recognize me.” As such, she “resolved to become a collector of lesbians.” Part personal memoir, part archival research, the book expertly weaves together stories of lesbians across time with a historian’s precision and a novelist’s pacing. Bringing together seven epic love stories across eras, ranging from the classical Greek poet Sappho and her lover Anactoria to lesbian caretakers in the AIDS crisis extending beyond romantic boundaries, Possanza cultivates a worthy collection of lesbian love stories. “I chose them because their stories are singular,” writes the author, “each a match struck against the grain of their eras until their lives burned bright, and yet they also represent the broader history of lesbians at each moment in time.” The author’s meticulous research reveals an exciting historical tapestry, encompassing Coney Island drag kings of the mid-20th century, Black lesbians in Harlem during the Great Depression, and one of the earliest female Olympians. Showing us a pantheon of role models, community organizers, and champions of progressive causes, Possanza effectively shows how lesbians are united by more than just a shared sexual identity; “they are also bound together by their ability to create safe havens in even the most hostile circumstances, buried projects that were a direct response to the systems that tried to trap and trade women.” These women filled gaps and imagined radical ways of living outside of a heteronormative system, and the author highlights their stories in full, sensual detail. In addition to chronicling the past and present, Possanza seeks a future that goes beyond “simple stereotypes” into “private intimacy and public recognition.” Throughout, the prose is warm, personal, and accessible.
Detailed and immensely readable, this is a generous history of lesbian love.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781646221059
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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