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Skin: Talking about Sex, Class & Literature
First of all I love that Allison published this 1994 collection of essays with Firebrand Books, a feminist and lesbian press, rather than a large publisher, which surely she could have, based on the success of Bastard out of Carolina, published by Dutton in 1992. Instead of using her success, even to have a better platform for her message to advance her career, she used it to advance her community, to give back to the press that gave her a platform in the first place, with her first book, Trash. (A chapbook of poetry preceded Trash.)
Quotations:
I use the word queer to mean more than lesbian. Since I first used it in 1980 I have always meant it to imply that I am not only a lesbian but a transgressive lesbian--femme, masochist, as sexually aggressive as the women I seek out, and as pornographic in my imagination and sexual activities as the heterosexual hegemony has ever believed. "A Question of Class." p. 23
I'd recognized in her face the same look I'd been seeing in other women's faces for all the months since the Barnard Conference on Sexuality (which my friends and I referred to as the Barnard Sex Scandal)--a look of fascination, contempt, and extreme discomfort. "Public Silence, Private Terror." p. 101-02
What will they think twenty years from now of the oral histories of the passing women on file at the Lesbian Herstory Archives? There's no doubt in my mind that the oral histories of working-class dykes and passing women will get far less serious consideration than those of famous artists and rich eccentrics. "A Personal History of Lesbian Porn." p.191 (a blog post of mine that touches on this)
reviewdate:
Mar 1 2009
isn:
1-56341-045-1
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Roller Derby: the History and All-Girl Revival of the Greatest Sport on Wheels
Catherine "Jayne Manslaughter" Mabe's loving history of the roller derby's current female driven "by the skaters, for the skaters" incarnation is visually appealing--full of photographs, images of memorabilia, and other tidbits. The first two chapters offer a brief history of the roller derby, while the next four focus on today's version of the sport. She describes contemporary skaters:
Quotations:
I'd played in a few bands, written a few fanzines, and raised myself in the punk-rock scene, where it's a short leap from wishing you can do something to deciding you're just going to do it. Foreword by Ivanna S. Pankin p.10
reviewdate:
Feb 23 2009
isn:
978-1-933108-11-7
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Persian Girls
In novelist Rachlin's autobiography, she tells of her life through high school in Iran (1950s and 60s) and then of her building a new life in the United States. In the beginning I was afraid I wouldn't get through it because the early parts are so tinged with anger and resentment, even at family members she later forgives. At the age of nine she is stolen by her father from the childless aunt who was raising her in Tehran and brought to live with her birth family in far away Ahvaz. There she finds indifference from her mother, jealousy from one sister, and love from another. Her father, perhaps just because that's how it was in Iran, exercises near total control of her life. All she wants is to escape an arranged marriage, like those that oppress her sisters, and the chance to learn and write, in America. By the time she lands at a small women's college near St. Louis, the writing becomes less heavy-handed. She survives four troubled years there and graduates before escaping to New York City where she finds shelter at a Judson Church housing community and does graduate studies in psychology at the New School.
reviewdate:
Feb 22 2009
isn:
1-58542-520-6
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LSW zine advice column
The latest in a series of ideas I get excited about and then discard for my contribution to Steve Lawson's Library Society of the World zine is an advice column.
Heat Stroke: Weather Warden, Book Two
I really enjoyed the first Weather Warden book, Ill Wind, and so perhaps had too high expectations from its successor. Unfortunately the protagonist, Joanne Baldwin, in contrast to the heroine in the last paranormal fiction series book I read doesn't seem more layered now that I know her a little better. I'll still read the next book in the series, but I'm not in a big hurry. It may be that reading these two books back to back put me off.
reviewdate:
Feb 19 2009
isn:
0-451-45984-9
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Stolen, Women of the Otherworld: Book II
I liked this second installment to Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series more than the first, which is kind of unusual for me, but I don't think for this type of series. I think a lot of them get stronger as the basics are laid out and the characters have time to develop. Like the first, this novel is narrated by werewolf Elena Michaels, the only female of her kind in existence.
reviewdate:
Feb 15 2009
isn:
0-452-28593-3
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Cruddy: an Illustrated Novel
This is a placeholder for the review I will write after I talk about this with my book club (i.e. Celia), augmented with some quotations.
reviewdate:
Feb 12 2009
isn:
0-684-83846-x
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Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains
My father gave me this book, a translated (from Yiddish) autobiography and supporting essays about a turn-of-the-century Jewish farm wife, saying that it was one of the best books he ever read. It didn't quite touch me in the same way it did my father, who has more sentiment for his immigrant parents than I do for the immigrant grandparents I never knew, though of course our family was urban, located in Newark, NJ.
reviewdate:
Feb 7 2009
isn:
0-253-20986-2