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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1991)
1 « ▼ 0 * c « m b « r I M I ▼ ju s t on « Mostly lesbian reading list An avid reader and writer of queer words recommends some books to take home this winter by Lee Lynch liked these books. I admired the way the authors wanted to tell stories and/or to teach something. All but two are by women, most by lesbians. There are so many dykes being published now, and the disparity between our camings/promotion/recognition and that of men is so glaring, that I decided to concen trate this year on lesbian writers, especially on the women’s presses. This is not a bestseller list. It does not reflect the buying habits of urbanites with expendable income, nor does it capture the tastes of a cross over audience (straights reading gays, men read ing dykes, etc.). These notes reflect what’s moved, tickled or challenged one lesbian who’s been reading and writing queer books since 1960. Please * add some to your gift lists. Good Enough to Eat by Lcslea Newman, Rusty, Firebrand. Discovering Lcslea Newman, pub How Her and lished in 1986, was a great treat this year. The Me Went to coming out of the bulimic protagonist in this Colorado and Everything, Except Not Really by novel was so sweetly, innocently told that I cried. Garbo, Big Breakfast Publishing. Rusty is the I love this author. most exciting novel I’ve read in years. It’s about Common Lives!Lesbian Lives, A Lesbian working-class dykes in contemporary middle Quarterly. POB 1553,lowaCity.IA,52244. $15/ America living day to day. The author has a year. $2512 years. $35/3 years. $10 hardship. poignantly accurate car for language, and eye for This is CL/LL’s tenth year. A magazine that description. Not yet in bookstores so order direct. sometimes delights me, sometimes enrages me PO Box 02094, Columbus, Ohio, 43202. $10.95 (it’s a dyke mag!) which has given an enormous plus shipping (First copy $150, others $50). number of lesbians voice and many of us a start. Finding The Lesbians by Julia Penelope, Stories, poetry, art, sometimes music, drama, Crossing. This is another treasure. Women all essays. Think of a gift subscription! Her by Cherry Muhanji, Aunt Lute. Some of over the world tell true life talcs of seeking and finding dykes. It’s the Official Dyke Hobby in the strongest, loveliest, richest language I’ve read. About African-American women, including les print for the first time! Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terror bian love, in Detroit 30 plus years ago. The cover ist by Mommy St. Wee-Wee, aka Diane DiMassa should be marketed as a poster. Hawkwings by Karen Lee Osborne, Third and Stacy Sheehan, Giant Ass Publishing. POB 214, New Haven, CT 06502. $3lissue, $10lyear. Side. A story of a very believable dyke and her These spirited, angry, fun-loving women have put community. Set in Chicago, the main character together a delightful comic book. It captures copes with HIV disease, love, life as we know it. everything from man-revenge fantasies to living Hodag Winter by Deborah Wiese, Mother with a very silly cat. Some violence and male Courage. Life in recovery is not always easy, but nudity. Like real life, lot of craziness. these two midwestem lovers tough it out even Women's Glib, A Collection of Women's through major job discrimination. Humor edited by Rosalind Warren, Crossing. Singin' The Sun Up by Ocala Wings, Mother Not exclusively lesbian, but I was laughing too Courage. This is a moving first novel about a hard to count. Really. young Southern woman coming out. Animal Free Ride by Marilyn Gay lc, Firebrand Books. communication and childhood abuse are major This quirky novel about middle-class, highly edu themes. cated women in the alternative Santa Fe-Albu- Incidents Involving Mirth by Anna Livia, querque communities is intriguing. A study, Eighth Mountain Press. Short stories of imagina among other things, of an outlaw dyke with a yen tion and prose that dance. Also, Livia’s sequel to for “straight’’ women. Some drugs and mixed the funny Relatively Norma, called Minimax, gender sex. should be available by press time. I a Working Toward a Just Society Mark Kramer Andrew Toth-Fejel KRAMER & TOTH-FEJEL ATTORNEYS Adoption and Family Law Domestic Partnership Issues Bankruptcy AIDS Issues Felony and Misdemeanor Defense Disability/Social Security Evening appointments Free parking 243-2733 506 SW 6th, Suite 510 Portland, OR 97204 CHUCK FLOYD Hairstylist for men and women New Location 1640 NE 16th 287-5737 Sunday and evening appointments Side By Side by Isabel Miller, Naiad. The author of Patience and Sarah tells an uncannily similar, and appealing, love story in a modem setting. The Woman With Red Hairby Si grid Brunei, New Victoria. This is a combination mystery/ adoptee search set in France with a touch of lesbian European history. Lots of local color. Heartbreak on the High Sierra by Fiona Cooper, Virago. A ferociously active western with a villain out of silent films and lesbian characters with names like Typewriter, Fingerbflne and Rainbow-Wings. Some violence, a lot of old- timey dialect. Fun. Poetry The Hang-Glider’s Daughter by Marilyn Hacker, Onlywomen Press. Always brilliant, Hackers gives us more songs of every day life, each very seductive, full of romantic places and romance. Two Women Revisited, The Poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor, Banned Books. The venerable Foster’s (Sex Variant WomenlnLiterature) songs to women from 1914 on, one actually reprinted from a 1935 “Ladder!” Story teller Taylor’s (TheGirls InThree-B, Prism) wrenching social visions and memories turned to verse. A herstory collector’s item. The Chant of the Women of Magdalena and the Magdalena Poems by SDiane Bogus, Women in the Moon. SDiane, of Dykehands fame, pens an ambitious and daring rhyming narrative poem about 32 women, escaped from prison, turned seafarers and settlers-in 1649. She adds separate poems about each of the joumeyers. Non-Fiction Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America by Lillian Faderman, Columbia University Press. Classic and highly readable discourse on US! How Can I Help Her? Handbook for Hus- bands/Partners of Women Who Were Sexually Abused as Children by Joan Spear, Hazelden. Excellent, helpful, comforting in its supportive guidance. Double Duty, Raised in an Alcoholic, Dys functional Family and Gay-Lesbian by Claudia ». i * . , o ' Black, MAC Publishing. Long overdue, gay adult children share their own experience, strength • and hope. Incisive comments and appendix by Black. Trying Hard to Hear You and Happy End ings Are All A like by Sandra Scoppettone, Alyson. Reissues of two fme young adult novels for all of us. The latter is lesbian, the former about a young woman with a gay male best friend. Some vio lence. Benediction by Diane Salvatore, Naiad. A well-told coming out story about a Catholic girl in a parochial school. Take Me to the Underground by Renee Hansen, Crossing. Tres modeme, tres romantic story of obsessive love and substance abuse be tween two very young women who make each other crazy. All too familiar, but very well done. Dancing on Tisha B'av by Lev Raphael, St. Martins. A haunting book of stories by a Jewish gay man with a universality that makes it very special. Mysteries Murder by Tradition by Katherine V. Forrest, o • ► ord s totiie ise , by .0 dreaFleckClardy Naiad. Top-of-the-line police procedural/court- . 0 room drama. Quite bloody. Warm visits with the old crowd from previous books., Vital Lies by Ellen Hart, Seal. I’m a Hart fan with a special place in my own for sidekick Cordelia. No real villains here, but a coven, a Words to the Wise, A Writer's Guide to spooky old midwestem house and that inspiringly grounded yet adventurous heroine, Jane Lawless. Feminist and Lesbian Periodicals and Publish In The Game by Nikki Baker, Naiad. Ahard- ers by Andrea Fleck Clardy, Firebrand. A thor boilcd-amateur-de tec live story and social com ough updated tool any dyke writer needs. Twice Blessed, On Being Lesbian or Gay and mentary on black middle class women in the Jewish, edited by Christie Balka and Andy Rose, white boy s world of finance. Unique. Beacon. Stories of the dual coming out process Final Session by Mary Morell, Spinsters. Ever had your head messed with by a villainous lesbian for gay Jews and the efforts of their religious therapist? Excellent crime detailing with an His institutions to accept/accommodate them. Lady Lisa Lyon by Robert Mapplethorpe, St. panic police detective on her first case. Everything You Have is Mine by Sandra Martin’s Press. The late photographer’s study of Scoppettone, Little, Brown. A comical self-con Lyon, the first World Women’s Bodybuilding sciously mysterious yam that evokes the humor Champion, in all her guises. and honror of New York and New Yorkers. Could Lee Lynch's newest novel is That Old I resist a book that references feline private eve Studebaker. (Naiad, 1991). Sue Slate?