Lesbian Books

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series)

Audre Lorde

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Incredible essays 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

No poems this time around, folks: prose that gets under your skin and into your head. The late, great Audre Lorde, known primarily for her poetry over the years, wrote what is one of the most compelling books on sociology, sexuality, racism and the nature of human character and existence in the last 20 years. Her charges are damning, but dashed with more than a spoonful of hope when appropriate, and it is impossible to walk away from this book unchanged.

No New Age-isms, no agendas...just common-sense reactions to everyday experiences told in a way that not only everyone can understand, but in a way everyone SHOULD understand.

Still Saving Lives 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

"I have come to work on you like a drug or a chisel" wrote the late Audre Lorde. Her passing created a hollow space in my soul that is now full again, thanks to Audre Lorde. Despite the fact that 'Sister Outsider' is assigned in virtually every women's studies and gender studies 101, do not think it is dry, ultimately a mere 'academic' book. Audre Lorde lived in and for a radical poetics and a radical pedagogy. If you have not discovered her work yet, please get a hold of a copy. It might save your life the way it saved mine, and I am white, male and straight, with a fierce hatred of white supremacy, patriarchy, and homophobia. But never mind my repeating a mantra you have heard, simply read this book as soon as possible.

Editorial Review:

essays & speeches

The Monkey's Mask (A Mask Noir Title)

Dorothy Porter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Questions stereotypes of genre and themes 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Dorothy Porter breaks the mold with 'The Monkey's Mask' - a lesbian detective poetry text which questions attitudes towards poetry, detective novels, gender, class and the myths of Australian society.
Interlaced with an investigation into the disappearance and later murder of Mickey, Jill the protagonist enters into unfamiliar terrority with her exploration into the world of poetry. She encounters people and situations which cause her to question her ideas about the identity of art as well as to begin to see beyond the surface in other aspects of life. Mixing Jill with characters of varying classes, Porter also asks the reader to examine their attitudes to the myths of Australian society, in particular the dominance of the idea that Australia is a classless egalitarian society. The much used themes of the Australian character as an unsophisticated, no-nonsense person in a society with limited acceptable roles available to it's people, (particularly in regards to gender)is questioned and the suggestion is that this view (or myth) may be outdated and overrepresented.
This text is a fast-paced, metatextual piece which captures the attention of the reader and takes the reader (well, this reader anyway) willingly along to emerge at the end with new ideas of current society, text genres and characters.
I highly recommend this text to anyone who is interested in delving into something innovative and thought-provoking.

Editorial Review:

P.I. Jill Fitzpatrick didn't know that the poetry scene could be as sticky as sex, or that words could open up your legs and then your grave. Mickey didn't know that either -- sweet girl, just nineteen, strangled. Charged with wit, sauciness and rhythm, and resonating with strength and emotion, The Monkey's Mask makes whodunits seem mild. Winner of the "Banjo" Award (the Australian Pulitzer) "... bold Aussie vernacular ... puts all the spicy excitement back into verse". -- FAB

The Mirror of Love

Alan Moore, Jose Villarrubia, Robert Rodi, David Drake

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A poetic history of same-sex love. 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 14 people found this review helpful.

In 1988, Alan Moore, fresh from the success of Watchmen, self-published AARGH! (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia), an anthology designed to fight the infamous Clause 28, one of the more homophobic moves of the Thatcher British Government. Moore's own contribution to the anthology was The Mirror of Love, an eight-page strip recounting the history of homosexuality, drawn by Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch, his collaborators on Swamp Thing.
José Villarubia, a photograph well-known in comics for his coloring and his sequential work on various comics including Moore's Promethea, has now created over 40 photographs to illustrate the original script in this new version of The Mirror Of Love.
Moore's text is among his most beautiful and most accomplished. With few words, he manages to engage his readers' brain with a lot of information about gay & lesbian history, all the while grabbing their heart with the lyrical qualities of his prose and his depiction of same-sex love throughout history.
Villarubia's illustrations are up to par with the writing: sometimes illustrative, sometimes tending toward the metaphorical or the poetic, they are always starkly moving without being melodramatic.
Top Shelf's production values are always good on their graphic novels, but this time, they're simply impressive. The annexes, which give further reading resources and sources for the quoted poems, add to the feeling that The Mirror of Love deserves to be in every queer thinking person's library.

Editorial Review:

First printing, February 2004

The Beautiful: Collected Poems

Michelle Tea

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

It really is Beatiful... 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Passionate stories told in poetry form, these tiny gems sparkle on the page. If you're familiar with Tea's other works, you'll see their origins here. Whether she's writing about advice for the lovelorn or life in Tucson and San Francisco, her strong voice comes through. Of course, if you're a reader with a prejudice against poetry maybe you shouldn't venture beyond Tea's prose. But if you have an open mind and love Tea's writing, don't miss this book!

frustrating read 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 13 people found this review helpful.

I was unable to find the Beautiful in any of these poems. The complete lack of editing and organization made this book nearly impossible to read. The poems read like an 8th-grader's scattered journal entries, minus any punctuation. I felt like I kept reading the same angsty poem over and over and over again with no new insights. This chronic repetition revealed a complete lack of depth for any subject matter. Tea should stick to the creative non-fiction formula she employs for 'Valencia' and 'Chelsea Whistle' and leave poetry to the poets.

Editorial Review:

Michelle Tea ran away to San Francisco in the early 90s. There she found a home in open mic venues, and self-published a steady stream of very limited edition photocopied poetry chapbooks, which are available in a single volume for the first time in The Beautiful. Reflective themes of unrequited love and languor, hopes and heartbreak, prostitution and destitution fill every page with immediately accessible narrative lines.

Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker

Joanna Kadi

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Editorial Review:

Joanna Kadi's clear prose strikes out powerfully against the dominance of the upper class in all spheres of life. She offers a personal and analytical look at how oppression by class intersects with oppression by race, gender, and sexuality. Examining the elite's supposed hegemony over intellectual work, Thinking Class rejects the idea that the working class is the non-thinking class, and affirms the culture that springs up, beautiful and honest, from this society's true base.

In language both lyrical and sardonic, this working-class scholar examines subjects ranging from country music to cultural appropriation, from working-class ideals to Disney icons, in a forthright and poetic rendering that is sure to appeal to all those interested in American culture, feminism, and ethnic studies.

Movement in Black

Pat Parker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the new, expanded edition of a groundbreaking volume of poetry first published in 1978, 11 years before Parker's early death of breast cancer. Based in the Bay Area and steeped in the radical politics of the late 1960s, Parker was the contemporary of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. In her introduction, Cheryl Clarke identifies Parker as a "lead voice and caller" in the lesbian-feminist cultural scene, but chides her for careless editing, as if Parker feared that her vernacular poems would lose their power if she subjected them to cold critique. Her most potent works do rely on an inspired punch line rather than carefully plumed images or language, as in "For Willyce," when she describes making love to a woman:

and your sounds drift down
oh god!
oh jesus!
and i think
here it is, some dude's
getting credit for what
a woman
has done
again.

A distinguished collection, including previously unpublished work and tributes from many of Parker's friends and allies. --Regina Marler

The Beautifully Worthless

Ali Liebegott

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Same Difficult World, Different Atlas 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

One of the recurring images in this endearing book is that of the penny--worthless (practically), yet impossible to just ignore or throw away. So it is with the footloose narrator, who refuses to live a throw-away life, in spite of herself.

Comparisons to Adrienne Rich's poem, "An Atlas of the Difficult World," are inevitable, since both works cover some of the same ground; Liebegott acknowledges such by quoting from the Rich poem. But while Liebegott shares Rich's astonishing gift for imagery, she also gives us something Rich rarely (if ever) does: humor. It has been pointed out, and bears repeating, that Liebegott can be heartbreaking one moment, funny the next. Here is a poet who is not only the real thing, but also the complete package.

My only question about this book is, can it really be called a novel? I ask this, not in the spirit of carping, but because the book is rich enough to provoke some lively discussion on this topic. I hope Ali Liebegott joins in; I'm dying to hear more of her voice.

Editorial Review:

The Beautifully Worthless is a brilliant novel in verse about a runaway waitress and her Dalmatian, Rorschach, who leave Brooklyn to find hope in a town named Camus, Idaho. Through a series of hilarious and heartbreaking letters to the ex back in Brooklyn, combined with some of the most exquisite poetry ever written about love and heartache and madness and crushes gone far askew, our heroine invites the reader to tag along with her and her faithful companion on their postmodern odyssey through an American landscape filled with ex-girlfriends, cute boys, a mysterious cave, mental institutions, sports radio, warm six-packs, roulette wheels, murder sites, Dairy Queens, and pineapple-upside-down cakes with family in Vegas.

A Few Words in the Mother Tongue: Poems Selected and New (1971-1990)

Irena Klepfisz

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Sappho: A New Translation

Mary Barnard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A pure earthy pleasure 5 out of 5 stars.
39 of 42 people found this review helpful.

Bernard's translation of Sappho is a translation of a poet who is down-to-earth, who pays attention to the detail.

Some of the fragments are so brief that you are reminded of haiku: "The nightengale's / The soft-spoken / announcer of / Spring's presence"

Other poems speak specifically of feminine concerns - the lost of the maiden-head, the color of ribbon that fits best in her daughter's yellow hair.

I read a great deal of poetry in translation. In other translations I have not found Sappho to my liking. This translation appears to me to be truer to the author's earthliness and less concerned with making Sappho fit into preconceptions. In short, I highly recommend this translation.

Editorial Review:

These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard's translations are lean, incisive, direct--the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet's verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English.

Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota De Macedo Soares

Carmen L. Oliveira

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

At last, in English! 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

This book is a treasure, a delightful read. It speaks to a broad range of interests. Fans of Elizabeth Bishop will enjoy learning about her relationship with Lota and her experiences during the 17 years she lived in Brazil. If you are interested in Brazilian history and politics, you will find a rare account of the early sixties in Rio de Janeiro, as the country headed toward military dictatorship. It is also a marvelous and tragic love story.

As an American living in Brazil for the past 20 years, I found it a fascinating account of how Lota and her country provided a haven for Bishop, an orphan prone to writer's block and alcoholism. Rare and Commonplace Flowers, read in addition to Bishop's letters, opens a whole new window on her writing. Ever since I read the original in Portuguese, in 1995, I have been convinced that it merits the attention of non-Portuguese speakers. Thanks to the excellent translation of Neil Besner, you've got it!

Editorial Review:

Elizabeth Bishop, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, sought inspiratin in Brazil, where she met and fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares, a self-trained Brazilian architect. The fact that these two women had an intimate relationship caused an uproar when it first came to public notice. This dual biography follows their relationship from 1951 to 1967, the time when the two lived together in Brazil. A tale of two artists and two cultures, "Rare and Commonplace Flowers" offers unusual perspectives on both women and their work. Carmen L. Oliveira provides great depth of detail from both her familiarity with Brazil and her access to the country's artistic elite, many of whom had a direct connection with Bishop and Soares. Rare pictures of the two artists and their home help to bring this story to life.