Books & Movies 

If you would like to check out a book, DVD or VHS tape from the LGBTQA Center's Lending Library please stop by the Center at 41 Park Row, 9th floor, Rm 901.  If you would like to inquire about the process feel free to call our office at (212) 346-1952 or e-mail at lgbtqacenter@pace.edu.

To search our holdings click the links below when the page pops up use Ctrl+F to search listings. The books and movies are organized alphabetically and have key search terms and descriptions to help navigate our holdings.   

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Abbott, Sidney and Love, Barbara. Sappho was a Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism.  –Stein and Day, c1985.

Keywords: Sociology, Lesbianism, Non-fiction, Feminism

The first book-length statement on the relationship of Lesbianism to Feminism, as well as the first serious nonfiction account of the Lesbian experience, described carefully and logically from an authentic, inside perspective rather than the prejudging eyes of an orthodox psychiatric disapproval and its softer, more insidious corollary, an alienating “clinical detachment.” It is also, incidentally a unique, close-range history of the new women’s movement as it faced one of its major issues and crises.

 

Ed. by Adams, Maurianne, Bell, Lee Anne and Griffin, Pat. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice.– Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, c2007.

Keywords: Education, Theory, Social Justice

This book provides teachers and facilitators with an accessible pedagogical approach to issues of oppression in classrooms. Building on the ground swell of interest in social justice education, this book offers coverage of current issues and controversies. It presents a well-constructed foundation for engaging the complex and often daunting problems of discrimination and inequality in American Society.

 

Ed. by Adams, Maurianne, Blumenfeld, Warren J., Castañeda, Rosie, Hackman, Heather W., Peters, Madeline L., Zúñiga, Ximena. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice- An Anthology on Racism, Antisemitism, Sexism, Heterosexism, Ableism, and Classism.  – Routledge, c2000.

Keywords: Oppression, Theory, Social Justice

This book covers the scope of social oppression form a social justice standpoint. By emphasizing the interactions among racism, sexism, classism, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, and ableism, the anthology shows the interconnections among oppressions in everyday life. Each section is divided into Contexts, Personal Voices, and Next Steps and Action. By including both theoretical essays and personal reflections, the anthology stresses critical thinking while providing vivid portraits of the meaning of diversity and the realities of oppression. The Next Steps and Action sections are designed to challenge the reader tot ake action to end oppressive behavior and to affirm diversity and social justice.

Ed. by Ascher, Carol, DeSalvo, Louise, Ruddick, Sara. Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about Their Work on Women.– Beacon Press, c1984

Keywords: Compellation, Short Stories, Women, Non-fiction

Between Women brings together the intimate and movies stories of 25 women writers, scholars and artists like Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alice Walker, composer Elizabeth Wood, and writer Michele Cliff and the women who have moved them, shaped their work, inspired their creativity, and shared with them a literary sisterhood. This absorbing and unusual collection reveals the complex emotional ties between women and their work. 

 

Aldridge, Sarah. Cytherea’s Breath.  – The Naiad Press, c1976.

Keywords: Ficiton, Feminism, Lesbianism, Romance, Drama

A many-faceted novel of young passions, of the carefully banked fires of more mature hears, of women’s struggles to gain control of their own bodies and to choose the way in which they will live their lives. The first decade of the 20^th century saw the valiant efforts of many women to be free in a patriarchal society, through the suffrage, social reform, birth control, in the practice of the law, in medicine. Cytherea’s Breath tells of a handful of such women- Emma Wycliffe, a young physician dedicated to the real emancipation of women; the group of Balitmore women who sponsor her medical education at home and abroad; Miss Margaret Bell, whose protégée she becomes. It speaks especially of two women who seek and find each other’s love in spite of discouragement and the prohibitions of traditional society.

 

Aldridge, Sarah. The Latecomer.  – The Naiad Press, c1982.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbianism, Romance, Political

The story of two women of unlike temperaments and differing backgrounds who come to recognize their love for each other. Coming home from a summer spent in research in Europe, Philippa unexpectedly shares her stateroom with Kay, a stranger. Philippa, nearing forty, reserved, inexperienced in close human relationships and Kay, eight years younger, lively, gregarious, agonizing over a frustrated love affair, spend five days during their stormy Atlantic crossing learning the key to each other’s natures. They believe that their arrival in New York harbor will end their brief freidnship, but circumstance intervenes. They meet again in Washington, D.C., where Kay’s lover’s career has led to possible catastrophe for all involved. It is Philippa who must act as mediator for Kay, hiding her own feelings to protect Kay’s beset interests. A love story set in the political turmoil of here and now, yet written with the romantic tone of yesterday.

 

Arthur, Bonnie Shrewsbury.  Night Lights.  – Mother Courage Press, c1967.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbianism, Romance

Jean Valentine is trying to pick up the pieces of her life, after her lover’s death. Her absent-minded daughter is about to make her a grandmother. Her beach-house neighbor Lila’s marriage is breaking up. What will Jean do about her growing love for Lila?

 

 

 

 

Bannon, Ann. Beebo Brinker. Cleis Press, c1962.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbian, Pulp Fiction, Erotica

The classic 1950’s pulp fiction love story. “She never knew what she wanted- until she came to Greenwich Village and found the love that smolders in the shadows of the twilight world.”

 

 

 

 

 

Translations by Barnstone, Willis. Sappho: Lyrics in the Original Greek.– Anchor Books c1965.

Keywords: Greek, Poetry

Of the classical poets of the first rank, one of the least read today is Sappho. The popular misapprehensions (and misconceptions) of the details of her personal life, the elusiveness (for translation) of her charged, compact style, and the difficulty of establishing intelligible reconstructions of the many available fragments of her work- all these have contributed to undeserved neglect among modern readers. Yet Sappho’s reputation as one of the finest poets of classical antiquity remains unchallenged. This edition introduces Sappho to the modern reader. It provides a vivid, contemporary translation, which captures the sparseness and the intensity of Sappho’s line. And for the reader with some familiarity with ancient Greek, the translations are printed opposite the text on which they are based.

 

Barron Barrett, Martha. Invisible Lives:  The Truth About Millions of Women-Loving Women. – New York: William Morrow and Co., c1989.

Keywords: Non-fiction, Sexuality, Lesbianism

Invisible Livesis the stories of women who early on or late discovered their capacity to enjoy erotic relations with other woman. Challenging the belief that sexual lives are static entities to be labeled and filed, these stories reveal a sexuality more akin to music in its response to variations of theme, to songs in a different key. The author traveled eight thousand miles across the country and back, and then took another trip down the east coast from Maine to Maryland. These random odysseys placed her in contact with a wide range of women. Roughly three-quarters of those interviewed had a four year college education and more, about ten percent were women of color, and well over half of the women were in their thirties and forties. Occupations ran the gamut from doctors to lawyers to skilled technical workers. Those interviewed told about their own days of ambivalence, or alcoholism, or choking anger, or relationships that hand no name.

 

Barr, Nevada.  Bittersweet. –Spinsters/Aunt Lute, c1984.

Keywords: Fiction, Romance, Drama, Adventure, Lesbianism

Set in late nineteenth-century America, rich in authentic detail drawn from women’s diaries of the Old West, Bittersweet, tells the love story of two women- a small town school teacher and a former student who comes to her for sanctuary from her battering husband. When their illicit relationship is discovered, they are forced to flee their small Pennsylvania coal town home for the anonymity and isolation of northern Nevada. Amidst a scarcity of women in this frontier outpost, Imogene and Sarah’s determination to stay together sparks a whole new set of challenges. Their daring solutions provide a full-length, old-time adventure story worth staying up late for.

 

 

Bauer, Marion Dane. Am I blue? Coming Out from the Silence. HarperColins Productions, c1994.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, Short Stories, Young Adult

Each of these stories is original, each is by a noted author for young adults, and each honestly portrays its subject and theme- growing up gay or lesbian, or with gay or lesbian parents or friends.

 

 

 

 

Beam, Joseph. In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology.

Keywords: Gay, Men, Anthology, Race

In the Life, an expression which means being gay, is also the title of this collection of writings in which more than 25 black authors explore what it means to be doubly different--both black and gay--in modern America. These stories, verses, works of art, and theater pieces voice the concerns and aspirations of an often silent minority. They can be poignant, erotic, resolute or angry, but always reflect the affirming power of coming together to build a strong black gay community. Editor Joseph Beam began collecting this material in 1984 after years of frustration with gay literature that had no message for--and little mention of--black gay men. "The bottom line," he wrote, "is this: We are Black men who are proudly gay. What we offer is our lives, our love, our visions... We are coming home with our heads held up high."

 

Ed. Beck, Evelyn Torton.  Nice Jewish Girls:  A Lesbian Anthology. - Persephone Press, c1982.

Keywords: Lesbianism, Jewish, Feminism, Poetry, Fiction, Short Stories

This book consists of recorded Jewish lesbian lives in pictures, poems, fiction and essays. It makes theories about lesbian lives. This book recognizes that although in the past Jewish lesbian women have often experience a double or triple vulnerability and a sense of isolation- as the only lesbian among Jews, the only Jew among lesbians, the only Jewish lesbian of color among white Jewish lesbians, the only Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi- this book shows that no one is alone.

 

 

 

Becker, Carol S., Ph.D. Unbroken Ties: Lesbian Ex-Lovers. -– Alyson Publications, c1988.

Keywords: Lesbianism, Romance, Relationships, Psychology

Through nearly one hundred stories and interviews, Becker- also a psychotherapist- has traced the emotional trauma of a couple’s breakup, the stages of recovery, and the differing ways these former lovers stayed in contact with each other. She finds the end of a relationship can be a time of positive personal growth, helping avoid destructive behavior in the future. Former lovers can also serve as the foundation for alternative family groups, strengthening our community and our ability to care for one another.

 

 

 

Bedford, Sybille.  Jigsaw. - Penguin Books, c1989

Keywords: Biographical, Fiction, Adventure

Bedford’s latest novel haunts the borderlands of autobiography and fiction. It picks up where her first, A Legacy, left off, leading us out of the Kaiser’s Germany into the wider Europe of the 1920’s and the limbo between world wars. The narrator, Billi, tells the story of her scholar-gipsy childhood and of her many teachers, beginning with her father, a pleasure-loving German baron, and her brilliant, beautiful, erratic mother. Later, on the Mediterranean coast of France, she meets the artists and intellectuals who will show her the way to a life’s work in literature among them the Huxley’s, Aldous and Maria. Germany, Italy, England, France; mentors, examples, seducers, friends- each place, each person is a bright piece in the puzzle of Billi’s identity. But bill is more than the sum of all these pieces, just as Jigsaw is more than the sum of Bedford’s art.

 

 

Béguin, ReBecca.  In Unlikely Places. - New Victoria Publishers, c1990.

Keywords: Fiction, Romance, Adventure, Lesbianism

Following her dream to explore the African continent, Lily Bascombe sets sail in 1895. The sea captain tells her of another white woman who has disappeared into the bush and gives Lily letters and tea should she ever find her. Along with her Faung guides, lily makes her way across the continent as a trader. But she soon finds herself obsessed with finding Miss Margery Poole. She sloshes through mosquito-ridden swamps, across raging rivers, through endless entangled jungle paths. Finally a piece of lace from an English corset leads her to the elusive Miss Poole, who, it appears has shed more than her corset. Lily’s obsession turns to romance, and then to conflict as she is torn between the enticement of Africa and Margery’s love, and her loyalty to her English past.

 

 

Béguin, ReBecca.  Runway at Eland Springs. –New Victoria Publishers, c1987.

Keywords: Adventure, Lesbianism, Romance, Fiction

At odds with the 1930’s society of white East Africa, Anna, who grew up among the peoples of the African bush, defies convention to become a pilot, tracking wild game, and flying long distance. Carrying supplies into the bush, she meets Jilu, an independent woman running a safari camp at Eland Springs. Jilu provides the support Anna needs when confronted with her conflict over tracking for the ivory hunters and the threat to the elephants. Eland Springs becomes a refuge for Anna, a home to return to where there is the comfort of a loving friendship.

 

 

Berube, Alan.  Coming Out Under Fire:  The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. - The Free Press, c1990.

Keywords: War, Biography, Non-fiction, Gay, Lesbian, History

Among the many histories of fighting men and women in World War II, little have been written about the thousands of homosexuals who during those memorable years found themselves fighting two wars- one for their country, the other for their own survival as targets of a military policy that sought their discharge as “undesirables”. Allan Berube spent ten years interviewing gay and lesbian veterans, unearthed hundreds of wartime letters between gay GI’s, and obtained thousands of pages of newly declassified government documents. Hidden in these sources were the dramatic stories of soldiers fighting in Europe and in the jungles of the South Pacific, lesbians serving in the WAC, draftees coming out to their parents, gay nightlife in the wartime boom cities, GIs entertaining each other in drag, flare ups of antigay witch hunts, and the desperate struggle to survive incarceration in the military’s “queer stockades”.

 

Berson, Betty, Ph.D. Permanent Partners:  Building Gay & Lesbian Relationships That Last. – E.D Dutton, c1988.

Keywords: Self-help, Non-fiction, Gay, Lesbian

What do same-sex couples need to know in order to build partnerships that work, satisfy, and last? What are the obstacles-internal and external- faced by two men or two women as they try to create a life together? What do gay men have to learn from lesbians, and lesbians from gay men? Berson has drawn on her professional experience and on her own partnership to create a strategy for overcoming the obstacles faced by gay men and lesbians as they try to build healthy relationships.

 

 

 

Blake, Nayland, Lawrence Rinder, Amy Scholder. In a Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice. – City Lights, c1995

Keywords: Non-fiction, Photography, Queer

In a Different Light, documents a landmark exhibition at the University Art Museum, and features curatorial essays, over 100 reproductions of all the artwork in the exhibition, and a selection of fiction, personal essays, rants, and image-text projects on the power of visual culture. This book explores the resonances of gay, lesbian, and queer experience in American culture, particularly in the past thirty years.

 

 

Boykin, Keith, E. Lynn Harris. Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America. Carroll & Graf Publishers, c2005.

Keywords: Gay, Down Low, Race

A revealing and timely look at the reality behind the down low phenomenon. This book discusses why black men are afraid to talk about their sexuality, why black women are caught in the middle, why the media got the story wrong, and why everybody is talking about the down low.

 

 

 

Brandt, Kate. Happy Endings:  Lesbian Writers Talk about Their Lives and Work. – The Naiad Press, c1993.

Keywords: Compilation, Lesbian, Non-fiction

Intimate portraits of lesbian writers whose books have shaped our lives. Reach into the soul of National Book Award nominee Dorothy Allison. Look behind the art of Lambda Award winners Jewelle Gomez, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Joan Nestle, and Katherine V. Forrest. Meet the chroniclers who powerfully convey our lives and culture: Carol Seajay, Sarah Schulman, Lee Lynch, France, Leslea Newman, Toni Armstrong Jr., Willyce Kim, Lisbet. Hear the deeply personal voices of the writers who have blessed us with the diversity of Lesbian life. Meet your all-time heroes close up. Discover the struggle and the triumph as these women strove to reach us with the books that nourish our lives.

 

 

Brecourt-Villars, Claudine. Petit glossaire raisonne de l’erotisme saphique. Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1980.

Keywords: Eroticism, Gay/Lesbian, Queer Glossary, French

A book composed of the different erotic and sexual terms within the gay/lesbian culture and community. This book is in French.

 

 

 

Brill, Stephanie, Rachel Pepper. Transgender Child, the: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. Cleis Press Inc., c2008.

Keywords: Transgender, Gender, Non-fiction, Guidebook

What do you do when your son insists on wearing a dress to school? Or when your toddler daughter’s first sentence is that she is a boy? Offering an extensive understanding of gender-variant and transgender youth, The Transgender Child answers these questions and more. Covering developmental, legal, medical, and school issues, this book is a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind guidebook for the unique challenges that thousands of families face raising children who step outside of the pink or blue box.

 

 

 

Brossard, Nicole. Lovhers. Translated by Barbara Godard- Guernica, c1980

Keywords: Poetry

A compilation of poetry by Nicole Brossard. Originally published in French, this book has been translated to English. Her work is considered to be one of the most significant in Quebec contemporary literature.

 

 

 

 

Broumas, Olga & Miller, Jane.  Black Holes, Black Stockings. –Wesleyan University Press, c1985.

Keywords: Poetry

A compilation of poetry by two accomplished poets.

 

 

 

 

Brown, Judith.  Immodest Acts:  The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy.  Oxford University Press, c1986.

Keywords: Religion, Lesbianism, Love, Biography, History, Drama

The discovery of the fascinating and richly documented story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, by Judith Brown was an even of major historical importance. Not only is the story revealed in Immodest Acts that of the rise and fall of a powerful woman in a church community and a record of the life of a religious visionary, it is also one of the earliest documented cases of lesbianism in the modern Western history. Born of well-to-do parents, Benedetta Carlini entered the convent at the age of nine. At twenty-three, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature. Benedetta was elected abbess largely because of these visions, but she later aroused suspicions by claiming to have had supernatural contacts with Christ. During the course of an investigation, church authorities not only found that she had faked her stigmata, but uncovered evidence of a lesbian affair with another nun.

 

Brown, Rita Mae.  Venus Envy.  Bantam Books, c1993.

Keywords: Fiction, Drama, Lesbian

At thirty-five, Mary Frazier Armstrong, called “Frazier” by friends and enemies alike, is a sophisticated green-eyes blonde with a thriving art gallery, a healthy blank balance, and an enviable social position. In fact, she has everything to live for, but she’s lying in a hospital bed with a morphine dirp in her arm and a life expectancy measured in hours. “Don’t die a strangers,” Mandy Eisenhart, her assistant at the gallery, says on her last hospital visit. “Tell the people you love who you are, or write them.” And so, as her last act here on earth, Frazier writes letters to her closest family and friends, telling them exactly what she thinks of them and, since she will be dead by the time they receive the letters, the truth about herself: she is gay. The letters are sent. Then the manure hits the fan in Charlottesville, Virginia, because Frazier Armstrong wakes up the next morning to hear her doctor explaining that it has all been a mistake. Frazier can look forward to a long, happy life.

 

Edited By:  Burns, Edward.  Staying on Alone, Letters of Alice B. Toklas.  Liveright W.W. Norton & Company c1973.

Keywords: Letters, History, Non-fiction

On tissue-thin paper in a tiny, often undecipherable hand, Alice Toklas described her daily life in Paris in absorbing detail, like a latter-day Madame de Sevigne. Here are shrewd, witty observations on some of the most interesting artists, musicians, and writers of the twentieth century: Thornton Wilder, Cal Van Vechten, Edith Sitwell, Anita Loos, Cecil Beaton, Janet Flanner, Bennett Cerf, among others. There are stories about Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Juan Gris, Cocteau, and Sartre- all revealing a sharp eye that was as much a part of Alice as her devotion to Gertrude and her passion for recipes and gardening.

 

 

Califia, Pat.  Sapphistry, The Book of Lesbian Sexuality.  The Naiad Press inc. c1980.

Keywords: Sexuality, Lesbian, Non-fiction, Exploration

Pat Califia’s approach to our sexuality is challenging, accepting, caring and practical. She blends specific information with a deep appreciation of the power of necessity of our sexual play. Lesbian sexuality is a full, diverse world where women please each other. Our sexuality shares our life. It changes with illness, it ages, it is a medium for theoretical as well as physical explorations. Our sexuality must be fully explored and Sapphistry helps us do this.

 

 

 

Cameron, Anne.  The Journey.  Spinsters/aunt lute c1986.

Keywords: Adventure, Drama, Romance, Lesbian

It’s the late 1800’s and the Canadian West- vast plains and mountains sprawling between two oceans. The truth is, it is not easy to move through it. Not if you are a woman and alone, not even two women who hook up to escape the violence of their pasts. Anne is fourteen years old and running from the beatings of her drunkard uncle. Sarah is tarred, feathered and running from the crazed vigilante sheriff who stung up her lover. This unlikely duo leads us episode by thrilling episode through the wild Canadian West as it really happened; past the hovels of the Chinese rail workers, through the surprising halls of Belle’s whorehouse and finally to the Pacific Ocean where the gruesome past catches up with both women. Their final triumph burns tears in our hearts.

 

 

Clarke, Dorothy. Touch of Music. New Victoria Publishers Inc. c1991.

Keywords: Fiction, Drama, Romance, Lesbian

New in town, Roxanna and her daughter Melissa share a house owned by Becky, a well-known singer of women’s music, whose fame has gone to her head. In the beginning Roxanna and Becky are in constant conflict, denying their attraction to each other. But the life-threatening illness of Roxanna’s daughter breaks down the barrier between the two women. As they are drawn together, Roxanna and Becky discover that the differences between them are not important after all.

 

 

 

Clausen, Jan.  The Prosperine Papers.  The Crossing Press c1988.

Keywords: Fiction, Feminism, Lesbian, Drama, Adventure, Comedy

Dale McNab is having a rough year. A lesbian-feminist academic in her late thirties, she has just been denied tenure. She and her lover Linda, have been fighting about everything from non-monogamy to Linda’s teenage daughter. Her job search is getting nowhere. She is drinking too much. At this vulnerable moment, her life is indelibly marked by an encounter with two remarkable female “ancestors.” One, Rose Bright Schlaghoffer, is her ninety-year-old maternal grandmother, a strong willed Minnesotan from a poor farming background who followed a conventional path to upward mobility; the other, long-dead Prosperine Munkers, once Rose’s closest friend, was a lesbian radical and writer who reported on the IWW-led labor revolt on Minnesota’s Iron Range before the Frist World War. As Dale struggles with Rose for access to Prosperine’s unpublished papers, the novel’s humorous commentary on the foibles of a middle-class Protestant family becomes background to a literary detective story.

 

Clunis D. Merilee & Green G. Dorsey.  Lesbian Couples.  Seal Press c1988.

Keywords: Non-fiction, Lesbian, Relationships, Self-help

This is the first guide for lesbians that describes the pleasures and challenges of being part of a couple relationship. Beginning with isues of definition, the book charts the stages most couples go through: romance, conflict, commitment, collaboration. Some of the topics covered are common to all couples, such as working out issues of living arrangements, work, money and time; and others are specific to lesbian couples, such as coming out to family and friends, monogamy and non-monogamy, separateness and togetherness.

 

 

Córdova, Jeanne. Kicking the Habit: A Lesbian Nun Story. Multiple Dimensions c1990.

Keywords: Auto-biography, Religion, Lesbian

Cordova takes the reader behind the forbidden convent door for a revealing look at the joys and sorrows of Sisterhood. This compelling and sometimes shocking autobiography chronicles Cordova’s early life as a naïve young woman from the Republican suburbs of Southern California. Sent to the ghettos of Skid Row and Watts by Mother Superior, Cordova runs headlong into the chaos of inner city life, the social unrest of the 60’s, disillusionment with religious life and her own burgeoning sexuality.

 

 

 

Corea, Gena.  The Invisible Epidemic: The Story of Woman and Aids . Harper Collins Publishers c1992.

Keywords: AIDS, Women, Non-fiction

This tells the dramatic, heartbreaking and often inspiring story of women and the AIDS epidemic, revealing the startling truths behind the statistics and the experiences of the many women at the forefront of AIDS activism, prevention, and caretaking. Tracing the chronology of what happened when a number of women across the country recognized the extent to which HIV/AIDS was endangering women and attempted to do something about it, Gena Corea exposes once and for all the “invisible” nature of women’s place in the AIDS crisis and confronts the inaccuracies behind the many long-held assumptions of the primarily male medical community, the media, and the often misinformed general public.

 

 

Crisp, Quentin. The Naked Civil Servant. Penguin Books c1968.

Keywords: Gay, Public Figure, Autobiography, Non-fiction, Comedy

“As soon as I stepped out of my mother’s womb… I realized that I had made a mistake,” Quentin Crisp declares, giving a small hint of the witty and wry approach he takes toward the life he describes with uninhibited exuberance in this classic autobiography, which is both a comic masterpiece and a unique testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Crisp not only came out as a gay man in 1931, when the slightest sign of homosexuality shocked public sensibilities, but he did so with grand and provocative flamboyance, determined to spread the message that homosexuality did not exclude him or anyone else from the human race. His hilarious descriptions of encounters with parents, friends, employers, soldiers and sailors, and the law reveal the strength and humor of an honest man, determined to face the world with the uncensored, unapologetic truth about himself.

 

Edited By: Curb, Rosemary & Manahan, Nancy.  Lesbian Nuns:  Breaking Silence.  The Naiad Press Inc. c1985.

Keywords: Religion, Lesbian, Non-fiction

In these unique and compelling revelations, both ex-nuns and present nuns unlock the most secret doors in their closed and mysterious communities. Under rigidly enforced rules of behavior, where women’s lives are consecrated and subjugated to the most scared of vows, where “particular friendships” are ruthlessly eradicated under pain of sin and expulsion, still the power of love manages to emerge and survive.

 

 

 

Curry, Hayden and Denis Clifford. Legal guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples. Nolo Press Self-Help Law Books- c1986

Keywords: Political, Law, Guidance

This practical book covers all important legal aspects of living together as a lesbian or gay couple such as buying property, relating to former spouses and children of former marriages, having children, adoption, estate planning and wills, living together contracts concerning income and property, and recent domestic partnership laws. This edition also has a new chapter concerning steps you can take to handle medical emergencies. Specifically, this involves preparing a durable power of attorney which allows you to give your partner authority to make financial and personal decisions if you should be unable to do so.

 

 

DeSimone, Suszanne, Cheryl Kilodavis. My Princess Boy. KD talent, c2009.

Keywords: Children, Gender, Expression, Acceptance

My Princess Boy is a nonfiction picture book about acceptance. This story was written to give children and adults a tool to talk about unconditional friendship. When the author felt her young son was going to be teased or bullied for wearing a dress to school, she spoke with his preschool teacher. She shared the fears with others and a plan was put in place to support him and others who express themselves differently. In light of many unthinkable outcomes of bullying, discussions about acceptance can help our world back to the basics- compassion.

 

 

Dreher, Sarah.  Something Shady.  New Victoria Publishers c1986.

Keywords: Mystery, Drama

A fog bound village, a strange disappearance, an unexplained death, and an old house where things go “bump” in the night. It all comes together in a suspicious “rest home” on the rocky coast of Maine. Stoner McTavish, masquerading as a mental patient, encounters mystery, terror, and some quirky characters. Will she discover what they did with Claire before the elegant Dr. Millicent Tunes uncovers Stoner’s true identity? What will she really find in her search for the missing nurse? There are those who don’t want to see her lifting the shade on Shady Acres.

 

 

 

Drummond, Mara. Transitions: A guide to Transitioning for Transsexuals and their Families. Library of Congress, c2009.

Keywords: Self-Help, Transgender, Gender, Transitioning

Having a gender identity that conflicts with one’s physical gender is a huge emotional burden. The anxiety, stress and depression that can result from having such a conflict can push a person to the point where everything in life that is held clear is risked to undertake one of the hardest challenges a human being can make transitioning from one gender to the other. If you have an incongruent gender identity and are considering a gender transition to bring peace to your life, Transitions will help you understand all of the implications of the journey you are about to undertake. Transitions will guide you through the transition process from end to end, teaching you how to come out to friends and family, maintain employment, manage transition finances, deal with sex and religion, plan your physical changes, pass and fit in as a member of your new gender and more.

 

Ebert, Alan.  The First Book in Which Homosexuals Speak for and about Themselves:  The Homosexuals:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. c1976.

Keywords: Gay, Biography, Non-fiction

Seventeen homosexual men speak for themselves, freely and without fear of judgment. In these interviews, taut with drama and self-revelation, Alan Ebert enables each man to create his own individual self-portrait. What results is not a picture of “the homosexual” but not a medley of stories filled with humor, anger, love, tragedy, and pride, which in their cumulative impact explode the myths our society still holds about homosexuals.

 

 

 

Ehrenreich, Barbara & English, Deirdre.  Witches, Midwives and Nurses:  A History of Women Healers.  The Feminist Press c1973.

Keywords: Women, Health, History, Non-fiction

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.

 

 

Emmerson, Pat.  Raging Mother Mountain.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1989.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbian, Romance, Comedy

Irene Aguilar, wending her way up the California coast, is haunted by the words of a song, and her yearning for the woman she envisions in that song. Irene knows the word lesbian, but cannot apply it to herself. In the town of Mobley, Oregon, Arliss Ellis, unable to face yet another day of knowing she is a lesbian trapped in the hideous mistake of her marriage, is getting drunk. Mary Margaret McGinniss, the town librarian, is about to begin another day of work, another day of remembering her beloved Evelyn. The startling Furosa Firechild has just breezed into homophobic Mobley. She is about to buy some land up on Raging Mother Mountain because she has a dream. An unquenchable dream called Wonderland. Brace yourself, reader, because all of these women are going to meet, and they are going to walk right into your heart. This is a richly humorous and action-filled story of lesbian love and life that you will forever cherish.

 

Ennis, Catherine.  To the Lightning. The Naiad Press Inc.  c1988.

Keywords: Adventure, Lesbian, Fiction

Chris is a lonely lesbian on a longed for camping trip with that one special woman. The problem is, she does not know whether Merry returns any felling beyond simple friendship. Then the two of them are  caught in a lightning storm of such ferocity that Chris loses consciousness, to awaken in a forested, uninhabited valley far removed from anything she or Merry have ever known before. They soon realize that they are stranded, cut off from civilization and rescue. Their survival in this primitive world will depend on the few supplies they have taken with them, along with whatever they can salvage from their storm-wrecked VW station wagon, and what they can devise with their won ingenuity.

 

 

Faber, Doris.  The Life of Lorena Hickok E.R.’s Friend.William Morrow and Company, Inc. c1980.

Keywords: History, Lesbian, Biography, Non-fiction

This is the story of a little-known figure in history, Lorena Alice Hickok, and her extraordinary friendship with the most famous woman of the 20^th century. Eleanor Roosevelt. A child of the prairie state, Hick, as she was known to her friends, was born into an emotionally and economically deprived family. It was through her own talent and determination that she rose to become one of the most eminent women journalists of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Hick first met Eleanor Roosevelt as a reporter. Their professional relationship turned into an intimate friendship when Mrs. Roosevelt became the First Lady after the 1932 presidential election. For four years, Hick, unknown to most of the world, lived in the White House.

 

 

Faderman, Lillian.  Surpassing the Love of Men:  Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present.  William Morrow and Company, Inc. c1981.

Keywords: Women, Lesbian, Love, Non-fiction, Feminism

This book is a stimulating, provocative, and often persuasive examination of women’s emotional, sensual, and sexual relationships with each other. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, some never before published, Faderman has constructed a fascinating cultural history of women’s passionate friendships with each other. Literature, trial records, love letters, pornography, and the proclamations of “experts” across the centuries vividly illustrate the changing status and patterns of romantic friendship. She explores the elusive relation between female same-sex love and the continually shifting theories of female sexuality.

 

 

Fields, Elysian.  Homosexuality in Literature.  c1974.

Keywords: Homosexuality, Literature, Gay, List

A compilation of titles of fiction, short stories, poetry, plays, films, letters, biographies, essays, memoirs, and studies that touch on homosexuality.

 

 

 

 

 

Flagg, Fannie.  Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Café.  McGraw-Hill Book Company c1987.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Fiction

It’s first the story of two women in the 1980’s, of grayheaded Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women, of the irrepressibly dare devilish tomboy Idgie in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a southern Café Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. 

 

 

 

 

Forrest, Katherine.  Amateur City.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1984.

Keywords: Lesbian, Mystery, Fiction

Ellen O’Neil has antagonized her lover by taking a job in a Los Angeles high-rise office building, only to find herself sole witness to events surrounding a baffling murder. LAPD Detective Kate Delafield, though and demanding leader of the homicide investigation team, soon discovers strong motives for the killing of Fergus Parker in an office united in its hatred of the murdered man. And with her own personal life in crisis, she finds her path increasingly intersecting with that of Ellen O’Neil.

 

 

 

 

Forrest, Katherine. Dreams and Swords.  The Naiad Press, Inc. C1987.

Keywords: Erotica, Mystery, Lesbian, Fiction

A lesbian couple must decide whether to risk their only child in the most daring and unprecedented of experiments. When LAPD homicide detective Kate Delafield visits long-time lesbian friend Jessie Graham, now Sheriff of a California seaside town, Kate immediately becomes embroiled in an inexplicable disappearance that Jessie suspects is murder. Joan Bronson Randall is a lesbian helplessly trapped in a sham marriage, but now Joan’s father lies dying in a hospital and inexorable events are set into motion. In a talk of ultimate, chilling horror, a woman awakens in a white room in a place of endless corridors and soon learns where she is and why she is there.

 

 

 

Edited By: Forrest, Katherine & Grier, Barbara.  The Erotic Naiad:  Love Stories by Naiad Press Authors.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1992.

Keywords: Erotica, Lesbian, Short Stories, Romance, Fantasy

Stories you will savor, stories of love and desire, romance and passion, from the Naiad Press authors. Such as the incomparable Isabel Miller. Enjoy her intricate tale of women who journey beyond fantasy and illusion to the essential nature of butch and femme. Meet Wilma, in Penny Hayes’ story of an older woman whose vengeance on her husband takes an astonishing turn in the bed of a lesbian, and Shelley, in Jackie Calhoun’s tale of the initiation of a married woman. And Lee Lynch’s “city Slicker,” who is given a chance to revise her past, and to change her future.

 

 

 

 

Foster, Jeannette.  Lesbian Literature:  Sex Variant Women in Literature.  Independent Women Books c1972.

Keywords: Literature, List, Books

Old, rare and out-of-print fiction, biography, poetry and drama about Lesbians and other independent women. A list of Lesbian Literature.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, Nancy.  My Secret Garden:  Women’s Sexual Fantasies.  Pocket Books New York c1973.

Keywords: Erotica, Women, Short Stories

Painfully personal, unabashedly erotic, and a milestone in sex. A plethora of sexual fantasies from the eyes of many different women. Some fantasies are romantic, some rough. You will blush, your pulse will race and you will start feeling guilty. Unquestionably erotic!

 

 

 

 

 

Fulghum, Robert.  All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten:  Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things.  Ivy Books c1986.

Keywords: Memoir, Gay, Non-fiction, Comdey

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learning in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned: Share Everything. Play Fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.

 

 

 

 

Fulghum, Robert.  It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.  Ivy Books c1988.

Keywords: Memoir, Gay, Non-fiction, Comedy

Show-and-tell was the very best part of school for me, both as a student and as a teacher. As a kid, I put more into getting ready for my turn to present that I put into the rest of my homework. Show-and-tell was real in a way that much of what I learned in school was not. It was education that came out of my life experience. As a teacher, I was always surprised by what I learned from these amateur hours. As a kid I was unsure I knew well would reach down into a paper bag he carried and fish out some odd-shaped treasure and attach meaning to it beyond my most extravagant expectation.

 

 

 

Galford, Ellen. The Fires of Bride.  Firebrand Books c1988.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbian

Set on a remote Scottish island with a rambling castle and a ruined monastery harking back to more matriarchal times. Maria, a visiting artist from the mainland, arrives and is quickly seduced by the island’s strange charm. Is it her affair with Catriona, clan chief, doctor, and witch, that makes it impossible for her to leave? Or is it the inspiration of a place where women have, since Viking times, fought off male marauders?

 

 

 

Gelder, Lindsy Van. The Girls Next Door: Into the Heart of Lesbian American. Simon & Schuster c 1996.

Keywords: Lesbian, Interview, Non-fiction

In a provocative study of lesbian America, two journalists draw on more than one hundred interviews with women around the U.S. to examine the manners, mores, institutions, attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles of lesbians throughout the country.

 

 

 

Gershick, Zsa Zsa. Gay Old Girls. Alyson Publications Inc.

Keywords: History, Biography, Oral History, Non-fiction, Lesbian

What would it have been like to be a lesbian in 1920s Alabama? 1940s New York? 1950’s Texas? In this lively and fascinating oral history, Gershick introduces us to nine remarkable women ranging in age from 60 to 85, who open their memoires and provide unforgettable glimpses of the daring pioneers who paved the way for gay liberation. The women ofGay Old Girls often lived their lives in secret or were openly despised as deviants, but all survived and many thrived either then or later. Black and white portraits and archival photography illuminate many of these glimpses into hidden lives from long ago, but it is the words of these women themselves that make Gay Old Girls an important and significant contribution to lesbian heritage.

 

 

Gibson, Andrea. Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns. Write Bloody Publishing, c2008.

Keywords: Poetry, Lesbian

Andrea Gibson’s dynamic and timely new book is an energetic collection of stirring and introspective poetry. Hauntingly vivid, the poems voyage through powerful ranges, from a soldier’s lingering psychological wounds, to the curious questions of school children on the meaning of ‘hate’, to a lover’s witty and vibrant description of longing. Gibson’s poems deconstruct the current political climate through stunning imagery and careful crafting. With the same velocity, the poignant and vacillating love poems within are queally capable of sweeping the air out of the room. This book has a bold and unforgettable internal voice that is rich with the kind of questioning that inspires action.

 

Glass, Julia. Three Junes. Anchor Books c2003.

Keywords: Romance, Family, Love, Fiction

Set in Greece, Scotland, Greenwich Village, and Long Island, Three Junes traces the members of a Scottish family as they confront the joys and longing, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.

 

 

 

 

Glassgold, Judith, and Suzanne Iasenza. Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave. Harrington Park Press c2004.

Keywords: Feminism, Lesbian, Non-fiction

This book examines recent changes in psychoanalysis that have opened the door for new perspectives on same-sex desire. Authors from a variety of disciplines and theoretical orientations combine feminism with psychoanalytic and postmodern theories to celebrate diversity in gender and sexual experience. This collection of lesbian-affirmative writings addresses transference and countertransference, gender subjectivities, privilege and racism, therapist homophobia, and violence in lesbian relationships.

 

 

Goreski, Brad. Born to be Brad. ItBooks, 2012.

Keywords: Gay, Style, Memoir, Non-Fiction

Fans know Brad Goreski as the fun-loving bow-tie-wearing celebrity stylist. They have watched the reality star climb his way through the ranks of the fashion world, as he transformed himself from an assistant stylist into a full-fledged style icon. Along the way, they have experienced his near-fashion disaster and red-carpet victories. Brad reveals the moving story of his road to success, and offers a glimpse into his world today, filled with insider access to the countless red carpets and awards shows he has worked across the globe.

 

 

Grahn, Judy. TheJudy Grahn Reader. Aunt Lute Books c2009.

Keywords: Poetry, Non-fiction, Fiction, Compellation, Feminism

This book contains work from every phase of Judy Grahn’s career, including poems from all of her major poetry collections; a number of her groundbreaking essays; as well as selected fiction and the full-length play, The Queen of Swords. Gathering together the varying strands of Grahn’s work together in this book makes visible the tremendous scope of her contribution as a feminist thinker, activist, and literary artist.

 

 

Grier, Barbara.  The Lesbian in Literature.  The Naiad Press Inc. c1981.

Keywords: Collection, List, Lesbian

A collection of poems, literature, stories, books that have lesbian themes or lesbian story lines.

 

 

 

 

Hall, Radclyffe. Adam’s Breed.  Penguin Books c1986.

Keywords: Fiction, Gay, Drama, Conflict

Illegitimate and orphaned, Gian-Luca is brought up by his Italian grandparents in their prosperous salumeria in Old Compton Street, Soho. Here, surrounded by plenty- by bottles of Chianti in straw petticoats, by pasta and garlic, strings of sausages and jars of dark olives- he lacks that more important sustenance, of the soul. A stranger in the land of his birth, denied religious identity and human love, Gian-Luca grows to maturity seeking to resolve a terrible conflict between the needs of his spirit and the demands of the material world.

 

 

 

Hall, Radclyffe.  The Well of Loneliness:  The Classic Novel of Lesbian Love.  Corgi Books c1968.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance

The book tells the story of Stephen Gordon, a sensitive girl whose parents ardently desired a son in her place. How Stephen developed a natural tendency towards masculinity, her tortured adolescence and finally the love that the world condemned, is the theme of this extraordinary novel. This story has been denounced as immoral and praised as a remarkably perceptive work. It is now regarded as the classic novel of lesbian love.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Hardy Jan.  Wanting Women: an Anthology of Erotic Lesbian Poetry.  Sidewalk Revolution Press c1990.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotic, Poetry

Forty-three lesbian poets explore the erotic, with styles and subjects ranging from formal structure to free verse, from whimsical fantasies to serious questions, from delicate suggestions to rowdy, outspoken lust. Loving with all the pride and courage we can find, we find each other- and what a gift we are.

 

 

 

Hatfield, Lee.  Breakfast in Mycenae.  Clarke & Way, Inc. c1961.

Keywords: Poetry

“Poets have always delighted as much in platitudes concerning poetry as in those concerning women. My opening platitude is therefore an inevitable synthesis. More seriously, the poetic experience- at least as I suffer it- is itself an inevitable synthesis. I have never made a single poem from a single source.” Lee Hatfield.

 

 

 

Hayes, Penny.  Kathleen O’ Donald.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1994.

Keywords: Historical Fiction, Lesbian

Filled with dreams of a golden future, Kathleen has left her native Ireland for the promise of America. But never has she dreamed of the arduous trip she will make across the Atlantic, nor of the hazards she will face passing through immigration on Ellis Island. Nor that she will be forced to befriend Rose Steward, immigrant from her country’s most hated enemy, England. Never has she dreamed of the rough and tumble of New York City, nor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, where she will find employment. Her path will once again intersect with that of Rose Stewart, this time to result in much, much more that a forced friendship of convenience. And this time both women will find themselves engulfed in a drama that will change history.

 

 

Hayes, Penny.  Yellowthroat.  The Naiad Press, Inc.  c1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Fiction, Drama

The time is the gold rush days in New Mexico Territory. Embittered Margarita Sanchez has sworn to avenge the racist lynching of her Anglo husband and the loss of the ranch they had built together. Accompanied by three male companions, she ruthlessly extracts her revenge in a series of stagecoach robberies. Then a gang member is critically wounded during a bank holdup, and Margarita is forced to take Julia Blake hostage, bringing her back to the gang’s camp. Once more Margarita’s life undergoes drastic changes. Because amid a growing emotional attachment to Julia Blake, she has discovered the unthinkable: a sexual attraction to another woman.

 

 

Highsmith, Patricia.  The Price of Salt.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1999.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction

Nineteen year-old Therese is engaged to be married. Elegant, sophisticated carol is married and has a child. In a New York City department store, Therese looks up from her work to meet Carol’s gray eyed gaze. From that moment on, the lives of the two women veer irrevocable off course. So beings the eloquent, compellingly beautiful love story of Therese and Carol.

 

 

 

 

Edited By:  Holmes, Sarah.  Testimonies:  A collection of Lesbian Coming Out Stories.  Alyson Publications, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Short Stories, Non-fiction

A new collection of lesbian coming out stories in which women of different races and backgrounds describe the excitement, passion, and conflict of their self-discovery. These stories portray the process of forming a lesbian identity and relationships, gathering sexual experience, telling families and co-workers, discovering the lesbian community, and developing a political awareness of their sexuality.

 

 

 

Hull R., Helen.  Last September.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Fiction, Romance, Lesbian

Seven luminous, insightful stories form the crucible in which adolescent Cynthia Bates, growing up in early 20^th century America, learns the fragility of romantic illusion, the limitations of her life both as a woman and as a woman drawn to other women, and the potential within her to alter the shape of those barriers.

 

 

 

 

Jay, Karla.  The Amazon and the Page:  Natalie Clifford Barney and Renée Vivien.  Indiana University Press c1988.

Keywords: Feminism, Biography, Non-fiction

The Amazon and the Page looks at the lives of two French writers, Natalie Clifford Barney and Renee Vivien, describes their relationship, and discusses their major works.

 

 

 

 

Edited By:  Jay, Karla.  TWO COPIES OF Dyke Life:  From Growing Up to Growing Old, A Celebration of the Lesbian Experience.  BasicBooks c1995.

Keywords: Anthology, Lesbian, Short Essays

A mix of the serious and the irreverent, this wide-ranging book provides a comprehensive view of the many rites and phases of lesbian life. Karla Jay, one of the lesbian movement’s best-known writers and activists, has brought together essays by a fascinating group of lesbian and bisexual women of different ages, races, and classes. Beyond providing a sweeping view of the lesbian community, this anthology takes the position that the lives of lesbians are in most ways not like those of gay men or heterosexual women. Jay has included essays focusing on specific issues and patterns unique to the lesbian community, such as two women raising children, sexual practices, and the higher incidence of certain illnesses among lesbians, as well as lesbian attitudes toward work, aging and relationships.

 

Jay, Karla & Young, Allen.  The Gay Report:  Lesbians and Gay Men Speak Out About Sexual Experiences & Lifestyles.  Summit Books c1977.

Keywords: Lesbian, Gay, Non-fiction

The Gay Report contains the results of the first comprehensive survey of the homosexual community. In 1977, Karla Jay and Allen Young distributed several hundred thousand copies of their survey to lesbians and gay men. There answers reveal frank details about their childhoods, growth and coming out; their most pleasing sexual experiences; their relationships with lovers, families, husbands or wives, and children; their hangups; fantasies and masturbation practices; oppression, politics, hopes and dreams and more. The testimonies in this book will make readers of whatever sexuality understand their own lives and experiences and come to know what it feels like to be considered “different” because of sexual orientation.

 

Edited By:  Jay, Karla & Young, Allen.  The Perceptive Voices of Outspoken Lesbians and Gay Men:  Lavender Culture. A Jove/HBJ Book c1978.

Keywords: Anthology, Gay, Lesbian, Culture

This is one of the first books to explore in-depth lesbian and gay creativity- language, literature, theater, graphic arts, poetry, dance, music. In contains a wide-ranging collection of articles about the way gay people live: sex, bars, baths, clothing, the politics of sado-masochism, the gay male and lesbian movements, economics, aging and race.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Jay, Karla.  Lesbian Erotics.  New York University Press c1995.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotica, Short Stories, Fiction

Karla Jay is one of the authentic pioneers of lesbian studies. Here she brings together 16 essays on the once-taboo, now gloriously ‘speakable’ subject of lesbian sexuality. Illuminating, often funny, full of thought and emotion and a continuous speculative intellectual energy, the essays tell a fascinating collective story about lesbian desires, past and present, and the controversial places of female homosexuality in modern society. Both spicy and thoughtful, this indispensable new collection shows just how various and vibrant is lesbian thinking these days about sexuality.

 

 

Edited By:  Jay, Karla & Glasgow, Joanne.  TWO COPIES OF Lesbian Texts and Contexts.  New York University Press c1990.

Keywords: Lesbian, Literature

Lesbian writers include some of the most innovative and adventurous writers of this century, but only recently have they been given their due attention in terms of critical study. This book is the first anthology to discuss the subject of lesbianism as it relates to the critical interaction among readers, writers, and literary critics. It explores lesbian texts in terms of identification, meaning, and interpretation, and examines the complex entanglements of identity, voice, inter-subjectivity, textualities, and sexualities.

 

 

Edited By:  Jay, Karla & Young, Allen.  Out of the Closets:  Voices of Gay Liberation.  New York University Press c1972, 1977.

Keywords: History, Gay

Filled with Joyous self-affirmation, angry manifestos, and searching personal reflections, this classic work provides a close look at the individuals and ideologies of this important social movement. In the tradition of Sisterhood is Powerful, Out of the Closets presents, in their own words, the views, values attitudes, aspirations, and circumstances of the early generation of gay and lesbian liberationists. Highlighting both how much and how little has changed since Stonewall, this work is essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of sexuality and the legal and social status of lesbians and gays in contemporary America.

 

 

Jay, Karla.  Tales of the Lavender Menace:  A Memoir of Liberation.  BasicBooks c1999.

Keywords: Memoir, Lesbian, Activism, Political

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes readers from her early days in the 1968 Columbia Universitystudent riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front. In Southern California in the early 70s, she continued in the battle for gay civil rights and helped to organize the takeover of "The Ladies' Home Journal" and "ogle-in" - where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men.

 

 

Johanna, H.H. Romancing the Dream.  Rising Tide Press c1991.

Keywords: Romance, Erotic, Lesbian, Fiction

This imaginative tale begins when Jacqui St. John leaves northern California looking for a new home, and cruises into the seemingly ordinary town of Kulshan. Seeing the lilac bushes blooming along the roadside, she suddenly remembers the recurring dream that has been tantalizing her for months, a dream of a house full of women, radiating warmth and welcome, and of one special woman dressed in silk and leather. But why has Jacqui, like so many other women, been drawn to this town? And what is the secret of the women of Kulshan?

 

 

Johnson E., Susan.  Staying Power:  Long Term Lesbian Couples.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1990.

Keywords: Lesbian, Couples, Non-fiction, Relationships

A study of long term lesbian couples. The study group is 108 couples who have been together ten years or more. Seven couples are profiled, from Pat and Anna, together 52 years, to Deborah and Kathy, together 13 years. In direct quotes from detailed interviews, all of the women talk about themselves. You will learn the nature of commitment for these couples. What they have in common and their differences. Their sexuality: the frequency, the quality and quantity; the question of monogamy and non-monogamy. The time they spend together and apart. You will learn about the problems which have most severely tested their relationships. The support systems which have helped sustain them: children, families, and friendships.

 

 

Kallmaker, Karin.  Paperback Romance.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1992.

Keywords: Romance, Fiction, Lesbian, Erotica

Literary agent Alison has been in love with her favorite author/client for years. Not that paperback romance writer Carolyn has ever noticed. She sees Alison as a close, loyal friend; she has never questioned society’s conventions. When Alison negotiates a lucrative contract for her, Carolyn seizes the unexpectedly large advance to fulfill a passion of her own. Beginning in Paris, scene of her brief, calamitous marriage, she will immerse herself in great music from the world’s great orchestras. Paris brings a dramatic encounter with Nicolas Frost, the remote driven young conductor who is creating a reputation for musical brilliance. When the smitten Carolyn discovers the conductor’s masquerade, she is suddenly faced with the true nature of her powerful attraction to Nick. Meanwhile, Alison has found her own consolation. But does sweet, passionate Samantha have any chance of winning Alison’s affections away from Carolyn? Can there be any future for Nick and Carolyn?

 

 

Katz, Jonathan.  TWO COPIES OF Gay American History:  Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.  Avon Books c1976.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, History, Non-fiction,

This work brings together for the first time a large group of historical chronicles of American Lesbian and Gay life, coupled with the heterosexual attitudes of the era. Intended for an audience of all sexual persuasions, these selections reflect a new, historical view of this once-silent, invisible minority and a dramatic reappraisal of American life, from Alexander Hamilton’s love letters to John Laurens, to the forgotten autobiography and insane asylum records of a feminist transvestite of the 19^th century, to lesbianism in the life of blues great Bessie Smith and to present in1976 report of the first Gay liberation organization of American Indians.

 

 

 

Katz Ned, Jonathan.  Gay/Lesbian Almanac. Harper & Tow, Publishers c1983.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, History, Sociology, Non-fiction

This volume presents the documents of two sexual worlds, the world of the early American colonies and that of the early modern United States. Here the colonial “Age of Sodomitical Sin, 1607-1740” is contrasted with the modern world witnessing “The Invention of the Homosexual, 1880-1950.” Here the “homosexual” and “heterosexual” appear as creations of a particular historical society. Chronologically interweaving personal testimony and news reports, diaries and medical case records, letters, trial testimony, laws, fiction, songs, cartoons, and reviews of books, movies, and plays, Katz sketches in the contours of lesbian and gay American history in two formative periods.

 

Keen, Lisa. Out Law: What LGBT Youth Should Know about their Legal Rights. Beacon Press c2007.

Keywords: Coming Out, Law, Rights, Help

Out Law lays out the basics about laws that impact LGBT youth and tells you what your rights are, how to exercise them, and when and where to seek help. Can a high school principle make you cover up your “gay pride” T-shirt? What can you do if school officials say your gay/straight alliance can’t meet on school ground?

 

 

 

Kennedy, Evelyn.  Cherished Love.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Erotica, Lesbian, Romance, Fiction

Stunned and grief-stricken over the accidental death of her lover, Dr. Megan McKenzie has invested her entire emotional life in the practice of medicine. She is not the least interested in taking telephone calls from a persistent attorney attempting to handle the neglected business affairs of her dead lover. Attorney Randal Grayson cannot understand how anyone could be so indifferent to the details of a million-dollar estate. Then she meets Megan, and when she learns of the warmth and closeness Megan shared with her lesbian lover, Randall has only her own cold, impersonal marriage to compare. Soon she discovers a new depth of passion within herself, and all the erotic pleasures to be had in the arms of Megan.

 

Kennedy, Evelyn.  Of Love and Glory.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1989.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Drama, War, Erotica, Fiction

It is 1943 in blitz-torn England. Lieutenant Jennifer Kincade is on her first assignment as a US Army nurse, newly married to a man-she isn’t sure she loves. Then she meets sexy, charming Maggie Conover in a London bomb shelter. Maggie, a journalist-adventurer covering the war for American newspapers, is irresistibly drawn to the beautiful, dark-haired Jenny. Jenny unable to fathom her attraction to the free-spirited Maggie, follows the road her curiosity takes her into an eroticism she has never known before. David, Jenny’s husband, does not want her to be a nurse, does not want her with him in England and so close to the war. And he does not want her anywhere near Maggie Conover.  

 

Kennedy, Evelyn.  To Love Again.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1991.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction, Erotica

Karen Wainwright, married and the mother of two teenagers, reenters the nursing profession by taking a job at a women’s clinic. Her first day on the job is unusual, to say the least. Caught in a cross-fire created by anti-abortion forces, she is arrested, along with clinic director Dr. Joanna Jordon, and taken to jail. To the horror of friends and family, Karen’s arrest is recorded b television cameras. Quit immediately, orders husband Phillip, but Karen refuses. Joanna is undergoing her own conflicts with long-term partner Vicki, who has lost patience with Joanna’s pro-choice activism and its perilous presence in their lives. Friendship between Karen and Joanna becomes passionate attraction.

 

 

Kilmer-Purcell, Josh. The Bucolic Plague. Harper Perennial, c2010.

Keywords: Memoir, Comedy, Gay, Non-fiction

A happy series of accidents and a doughnut-laden escape upstate take Josh Kilmer-Purcell and his partner, Brent Ridge, to the doorstep of the magnificent (and fabulously for sale) Beekman Mansion. And so begins their transformation from uptight urbanites into the two-hundred-year-old-mansion-owning Beekman Boys. Suddenly Josh- a full-time New Yorker with a successful advertising career- and Brent find themselves weekend farmers, surrounded by nature’s bounty and an eclectic cast: roosters who double as a wedding cover band; Bubby, the bionic cat; and a herd of goats, courtesy fo their new caretaker, Farmer John.

 

 

Kim, Willyce.  Dancer Dawkins and the California Kid.  Alyson Publications, Inc. c1985.

Keywords: Lesbian, Comedy, Adventure, Erotica

Dancer Dawkins views life best form behind a pile of hotcakes. But her lover, Jessica Riggins, has fallen into the clutches of Fatin Satin Aspen, the insidious leader of Violia Vincente’s Venerable Brigade. Something has to be done. Meanwhile, Little Willie Guthrie of Bangor, Maine renames herself The California Kid, stocks up on Rubbles Dubble bubble gum and her father’s best Havana cigars and heads west. When this crew collides in San Francisco, what can be expected? Just about anything.

 

 

 

Klaich, Dolores.  Woman Plus Woman.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1989.

Keywords: Lesbian, Non-fiction, Contemporary

Writing with charm, wit, and intelligence, Dolores Klaich discusses the lives and loves of a representative group of distinguished lesbians including, Sappho, Colette, Renee Vivien, Natalie Clifford Barney, Romaine Brooks, Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude Stein. She weaves the lives of dozens of contemporary lesbians into her narrative by way of in depth interviews and excepts from a comprehensive questionnaire that was widely distributed in both the public and private lesbian communities of the early 1970’s.

 

 

 

Klaich, Dolores.  Heavy Gilt.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, Mystery, Adventure, Drama, Fiction

Guess who is coming to dinner at Hilary and Dru’s restored Victorian home? A most attractive mystery writer and her vexatious weekend lover. Their house guest, a world-famous novelist. Two partners who own a bookstore and quietly publish lesbian and gay poetry and their startling houseguest, who is well along in the process of turning himself into herself. Sarah and Farnsworth Lightfood, eccentric fifty-year old twins. Hilary’s homophobic brother Malcolm and his wife Maggie. And Dru’s younger sister Bettina, a notorious lesbian-feminist writer infatuated with the attractive mystery writer, and blithely confident that a little consciousness raising would flush all of these politically incorrect folk right out of their various and silly closets. But then, during the dinner party, homophobic Malcolm Vanishes. Enter beauteous private detective Tyler Divine, who has much to sort through: suspicious goings-on and numerous suspects and her own attraction to the alluring mystery writer.

 

Edited By:  Kleinberg, Symour. The Other Persuasion:  Short Fiction About Gay Men and Women. Vintage books, c1977.

Keywords: Fiction, Short Stories, Gay, Lesbian

The editor, teacher of English literature at Long Island University and a founding member of the Gay Academic Union, has chosen 24 stories that treat the experience of homosexuals in serious ways. The writers are both straight and gay and the stories range in time from Proust's ""Before Dark"" of 1893 to Janice Rule's ""Middle Children"" of 1975. Neither apologetic nor propaganda, the book is for the questioning reader determined to explore the full spectrum of the human condition.

 

 

 

Kouloub, Out El. Ramza. Translated by Nayra Atiya. Syracuse University Press c1994.

Keywords: Foreign, Women, Oppression, Rebellion, Drama, Feminism

The story of one woman’s rebellion against her life in the harem of a wealthy Egyptian family at the turn of the century. Although she flourishes in this world, secure, in the safety it provides, she comes to despise its constraints. In describing her growing awareness of the life o women in her elite milieu, Ramza paints an intimate portrait of harem life, including the methods employed by the wives and concubines to ensure the power they seek for themselves and their children. Ramza is drawn to books, music, and eventually to the men’s quarter. She dares to express her physical, social, and sexual repression. A dramatization of a piece of Egyptian feminine and feminist history set at a time when Egyptian women were struggling to come forward. It was originally published in France in 1958.

 

 Kramarae, Cheris & Treichler A., Paula.  A Feminist Dictionary.  Pandora Press c1985.

Keywords: Dictionary, Feminism

This is a dictionary with a difference. It places women at the center of language and uses definition and quotation to take us on a fascinating journey through the development and use of the English language from diverse feminist perspectives. A feminist dictionary illustrates women’s linguistic contributions: the ways in which women have sought to describe, reflect upon and theorize about women, language, and the rest of the world. This is a unique source book that will serve as a valuable work of reference for many years to come.

 

 

Lachgar, Lina. Album Colette. Henri Veyrier, 1983.

Keywords: Art, History, French

A compilation of photos and queer art by and featuring Colette. This book is written in French.

 

 

 

 

Laing, R.D. The Divided Self: An existential study in sanity and madness. Penguin books c1960.

Keywords: Psychology, Schizophrenia, Health

Dr. Laing’s first purpose is to make madness and the process of going mad comprehensible. In this, with case studies of schizophrenic patients, he succeeds brilliantly, but he does more: through a vision of sanity and madness as ‘degrees of conjunction and disjunction between two persons where the one is sane by common consent’ he offers a rich existential analysis of personal alienation. The outsider, estranged from himself and society, cannot experience either himself or others as ‘real’. He invents a false self and with it he confronts both the outside world and his own despair. The disintegration of his real self keeps pace with the growing unreality of his false self until, in the extremes of schizophrenic breakdown, the whole personality disintegrates.

 

 

Edited By:  Laity, Cassandra.  H.D. Paint it Today.  New York University Press c1992.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotica

This novel, a never before published roman a clef by the famous Imagist writer, H.D., that explores H.D.’s love for women, is a lyrical recreation of the love and loss of her friend and first love, Frances Gregg, and of her later meeting with Bryher (Winifred Ellerman) who was to become H.D.’s lifelong companion. Spanning the years from H.D.’s childhood in Pennsylvania to the brith of her daughter, Perdita, in 1919, this turbulent love story is set against the backdrop of World War I, H.D.’s involvement in early twentieth-century London literary circles, her brief engagement to American poet Ezra Pound, and her shattered marriage to British novelist Richard Aldington. Paint It Today is H.D.’s most ‘lesbian’ novel, a modern, homoerotic tale of passage which focuses almost entirely on a young heroine’s search for the “sister love” which would empower her spiritually, sexually, and creatively.

 

Lang, Elizabeth.  Anna’s Country:  A Lesbian Love Story.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1981.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction

Here is a major novel of lesbian life. Anna’s journey from suburban housewife to loving lesbian woman is one of the true and important stories of our times. Anna’s Country is a tender, clear-eyed hopeful book about women’s love and women’s passion. It reminds us as well of the rewards of courage and personal growth and the penalties of fear and psychological rigidity.

 

 

 

 

Lapidus, Jacqueline.  TWO COPIES OF Ready to Survive.  Hanging Loose Books c1975.

Keywords: Poetry, Political

Her poetry recreates the experience of the contemporary expatriate- in exile from her own country, in political exile from her second country, in love with an exile, in love itself as a kind of alienation. Her poetry is strong, intelligent and often quite witty, a poetry of a woman becoming always more conscious of herself, her mind, her life, her body, her politics.

 

 

 

 

Lapidus, Jacqueline.  TWO COPIES OF Starting Over.  Out & Out Books c1977.

Keywords: Poetry

In these poems, suffering, anger, and hope are weaved together into a tapestry of change. Change is not innocent, as we want to believe. Instead, as in these poems, she is a gnarled woman, old beyond her years- rebellion burns cold within her, she has lost too much to dance with her feet off the ground, her anger is dispassionate, and her transforming principles are love without sentimentality and freedom without romance. Lapidus is the poet who mourns her bitter defeats, celebrates her resolute victories, paints her marked face on the bedrock of our age.

 

 

 

Lapidus, Jacqueline.  Ultimate Conspiracy.  Lynx Publications c1980/1987.

Keywords: Poetry

Complex, savory, specific, these poems render the interpenetration of quotidian and extraordinary on three continents, and create their own world, generous, unpredictable, matrifocal, polyglot, resonant with secrets and silences as the author recounts its infinite variety.

 

 

 

 

 

Lynch, Lee.  The Amazon Trail.  The Naiad Press, Inc.  c1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Non-Fiction

Lee covers the lesbian and gay scene from coast to coast, from inside our bookstores to inside our bars, from campfire to coven to careers, into and out fo love. Growing up lesbian and being openly and proudly lesbian for thirty years and the rich perspective that comes from “the good life”; just one of the many section of this delightful, sobering, fascinating and enriching collection. Follow Lee from “The Good Life” through “Gay Lit,” “Portraits,” Gay Rites” and “The Geography of Gay,” into adventures as diverse as the secret haunts of famous writers to the food dubbed “Lesbian Stew” recommended for the temporarily bereft, from exploration of a notorious bar to learning to live soberly.

 

 

Martin, Michelle.  Pembroke Park.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Drama, Erotic

When Lady Joanna Sinclair meets Lady Diana March on horseback and clad in male attire, she is outraged. Such bizarre behavior is simply unacceptable in Herefordshire. But she is irresistibly drawn to the headstrong Diana, whose eccentricity cloaks a mysterious darkness in her past. Joana learns that Diana’s coterie of ‘unusual’ friends has among them her own brother-in-law, who is in headlong pursuit of the beautiful and elusive Geoffrey. Under Diana’s influence, falling ever more deeply in love with her, Joanna asserts her independence from her brother, the arrogant and overbearing Hugo, who vows to subdue both of these defiant women.

 

 

Maupin, Armistead. Further Tales of the City.  Harper Perennial c1982.

Keywords: Romance, Drama, Gay, Comedy

The calamity-prone residents of 28 Barbary Lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement, Michael Tolliver looks for love at the national Gay Rodeo, DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track a charismatic psychopath across Alaska and society columnist Prue Giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in a San Francisco park.

 

 

 

Maupin, Armistead.  More Tales of the City.  Harper Perennial c1980.

Keywords: Drama, Comedy, Gay

The divinely human comedy that began with Tales of the City rolls recklessly along as Michael Tolliver pursues his favorite gynecologist, Mona Ramsey uncovers her roots in a desert whorehouse, and Mary Ann Singleton finds love at sea with the amnesiac of her dreams.

 

 

 

 

Maupin, Armistead.  Tales of the City.  Harper Perennial c1978.

Keywords: Comedy, Gay

Few works of fiction have captured the carefree chaos of the seventies as hilariously or as truthfully as Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. Originally published as a daily newspaper serial in 1976, Maupin’s groundbreaking comedy of manners went on to become six bestselling novels that have beguiled readers worldwide with their wryly inclusive vision of humankind.

 

 

 

McConnell P., Vicki.  Mrs. Porter’s Letter.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Mystery

 

 

 

 

 

 

McConnell P., Vicki.  Double Daughter.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Drama, Mystery

Denver- the city of Journalist-Detective Nyla Wade’s past, the city where she formed her youthful dreams. Nyla has returned to where her heart lies, only to discover clouds of menace hanging over the lives of gay friends old and new. Outlaw Lez Teachers and other hate messages become terrible reality when lesbian teacher Pat Stevens is ruthlessly assaulted. And when another gay teacher is attacked, when vicious vandalism occurs, Nyla Wade goes after the hate group responsible with all the resources at her command.  On friend lies in a death-like come; another is marked for certain violence. When Nyla finally uncovers the truth about the campaign of hate she finds herself in the greatest peril of her life.

 

 

Edited By:  McEwen, Christian.  Naming The Waves:  Contemporary Lesbian Poetry.  The Crossing Press c1989.

Keywords: Poetry, Lesbian

Love and desire, childhood and children, the value of sisterhood, self-identity and racism, day-to-day pleasures and sorrows, the reality of lesbian oppression and defiance of that oppression: these are some of the themes in this collection of contemporary lesbian poetry by more than 70 poets from both sides of the Atlantic.

 

 

 

McNally, Terrence. Love! Valour! Compassion! Penguin Group, c1995.

Keywords: Gay, Drag, Cross-dressing, Dance, Play

Beautifully written, moving, and very funny, Love! Vlaour! Compassion! Gathers together eight gay men at the upstate New York summer house of a celbrated dancer-choreography who fears he is losing his creativity and possibly his lover. Infidelity, flirtations, soul-searching, AIDS, truth-telling, and skinny-dipping mix monumental questions about life and death with a wacky dress rehearsal for Swan Lake performed in drag.

 

 

 

McNally, Terrance. A Perfect Ganesh. A Plume Book, c1994.

Keywords: Adventure, Drama

The play follows the life of two very rich, middle-aged women, Margaret Civil and Katherine Brynne, who struggle with the concept of inner peace. On their journey for inner peace, Katherine and Margaret travel to India instead of to the Caribbean Resorts. They travel to India as a way of healing from the deaths of their sons. While in India, they meet an Indian god by the name of Ganesha meaning "wisdom." This Ganesha happens to be their tour guide. However, Ganesha is not just one person, but is able to change form. With Ganesha as their tour guide, their journey comes to find many twists and turns. In one such twist, Katherine is convinced that she is to kiss a leper. However, this is not so. She learns a valuable lesson from meeting this leper. Instead of kissing him like she though she needed to, she gave him money.

 

 

Edited by: Melia, Paul. David Hockney. Manchester University Press. c1995.

Keywords: Art, Gay

David Hockney is one of the most widely discussed artists of his generation. Drawing on recent research, this book advances the critical debates on his work. By offering a wide range of approaches, in analyses the key themes and moments in the artist’s career from 1959 to 1994. Topics discussed include- Hockney’s Place in Swinging London, Images of Southern California, Photo-collages, landscapes, portraiture, theatrical manipulations of the spectator, recent paintings, and opera designs.

 

 

Miller, Isabel.  A Dooryard Full of Flowers:  and Other Short Pieces.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1993.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance

The beautiful continuation of Isabel Miller’s acclaimed all-time classic, Patience and Sarah. Glimpse these two beloved women in their “slow ardent, exalted life together” as you rejoin them in a segment from the never completed second novel of their lives. A married women who falls in love with her mother-in-law. Tildy, who is visited by a young pregnant girl wanting something Tildy is determined not to give. A woman in the post-world war II Navy, who is certain that this time she will not fall in love with a new woman bunkmate. Teenager Robin, who knows so much more than either her lesbian mother or her newly remarried father dream she knows. A young woman who comes under the scrutiny of a government security check, with both expected and unexpected results. Lucille, who meets the woman she has written to for years and finds surprise answers to questions about both of their lives.  

 

 

Miller, Isabel.  Patience & Sarah.  Ballantine Books c1969.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Drama

Early in the nineteenth century, in a puritanical New England town, two women did something unspeakable, something unheard of- they fell in love with each other. With nothing and no one to guide or support them, Patience and Sarah tried to follow their hearts. When family pressures separated them, the two women dreamed of leaving their homes, of being together. Defying society and history, they bought a farm and discovered they could live together, away from a world that had put limits on them and their love.

 

 

 

 

More, Meredith.  October Obsession.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1988.

Keywords: Romance, Mystery, Fantasy, Lesbian

Laura Westmoreland has come to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to assist Sheriff Bill Tate in his search for her cherished Aunt Josie, who has vanished from the seaside cottage in which she has lived alone for decades. Seeking out any clue, Laura sifts thought the contents of Josie’s rustic cottage, and discovers a diary- an astonishing document unveiling Josie’s rich, secret, and fantastic lesbian life. Josie has for years loved and been loved by a golden, mythical being named Selene who, during the fullness of the moon each October, joined Josie for the passionate consummation of their love, a love which over the decades has been tested by assaults from hurricanes, illness, and the hostility of the entire exterior world.

 

 

Morgan, Claire.  The Price of Salt.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Drama, Romance, Fiction

The novel's two main characters are Therese Belivet, a lonely young woman, and Carol Aird, an elegant stranger Therese encounters one day at her temporary job in a New York department store. Therese is just starting out her adult life in Manhattan and looking for her chance to break through into her dream job as a theater set designer. Therese was semi-abandoned as a small girl by her widowed mother, who sent Therese to an Episcopalian boarding school. She is dating a young man, Richard, whom she does not love and does not want to have sex with. The women are unaware that Carol's husband has hired a private investigator to follow them and collect any evidence that would incriminate Carol as a homosexual in the upcoming custody hearings.

 

 

Edited By:  Morse, Carl & Larkin, Joan.  Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time:  An Anthology.  St. Martin’s Press c1988.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, Poetry, Anthology

This anthology combines almost 100 great poets and touches on an expansive range of interesting topics.

 

 

 

 

Murphy A., Patricia.  We Walk the Back of the Tiger. The Naiad Press, Inc.  c1988.

Keywords: Drama, Mystery, Lesbian, Fiction

It is 1974 in the California coastal town of Santa Clarinda. With the women’s movement beginning to erupt all around her, Cara Doherty becomes the administrator of the university’s fledgling Women’s center. Neil Norma, 18 years old, is pumping gas and dealing drugs in Sana Clarinda. A customer gives Neil a gun for drugs, and Neil exults in his newfound power, an unimagined power that can make his most cherished fantasies real. Marti McDavid is a new divorcee, new to the women’s movement, new to her love for Cara. She is not new to drugs. She is a customer of Neil’s. Young women vanish from the streets of Santa Clarinda and the lives of Cara, Marti and Neil explode in the evens that transform their lives and galvanize the entire city.

 

 

Murphy A., Patricia.  Searching For Spring.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1987.

Keywords: Comedy, Drama, Fiction

Annie Malloy does not know that within her lies a hidden core of pure fury. Nor does she realize the strength she possesses, nor her capacity to act. Annie has accepted her lesbian identity yet cannot seem to assemble the scattered pieces of her life. Then, at a fateful reunion with her four sisters, she discovers that the secret ugliness in her childhood is not confined solely to her. It is in seeking a therapist for one of her nieces that Annie learns she must first examine her own life. And so she becomes embroiled in group therapy with five other incest victims who will not allow her to hide anywhere. As Annie unearths her rage, she unleashes her strength.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Myron, Nancy & Bunch, Charlotte. Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement.  Diana Press c1975.

Keywords: Lesbian, Essay, Feminism, Political

This collection of articles presents part of that history: A segment reflected through The Furies, a lesbian-feminist collective and newspaper in Washington DC. Written over a two-year period, the articles were authored by members of the collective and/or appeared in the newspaper. Each article discusses different questions raised by lesbian-feminist politics: heterosexual privilege, lesbian separatism, bisexuality, etc. The importance of these issues in the on-going debate over lesbianism and feminism makes this book much more than an historical relic. It is grist for the political mill.

 

 

Nestle, Joan.  Restricted Country.  Firebrand Books c1987.

Keywords: Feminism, Lesbianism, History, Non-fiction

From the fevered interiors of 1950’s butch-femme bars, through the fervor of the Selma-Montgomery Civil Rights march, to the hotheaded feminist sex wars of today, the cofounder of Lesbian Herstory Archives presents it like she lives it- fully engaged with her mind, her heart, and her body.

 

 

 

 

 

Nonas, Elisabeth.  TWO COPIES OF For Keeps.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1985.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotic, Romance

Kate’s lover has left her. The television moive based on her script has been placed on hold. And now she is on a chaotic path that leads her to the enigmatic Hilary, to the delicious Nicky, to the dazzling and frightening Lauren.

 

 

 

 

 

Nonas, Elisabeth.  A Room Full of Women.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1990.

Keywords: Lesbian, Drama, Romance, Fiction

Unlike her friends, advertising designer Blair Wilder revels in her freedom, disdaining a permanent lesbian relationship. Real estate attorney Natalie Bazarian, as she approaches forty, envies Blair’s freedom. Yet she herself is the envy of her friends over her ten-year relationship with film editor Annie Weiss. However, all is not fun and games in Blair’s bachelor existence. The mother who repudiated Blair for her lesbian lifestyle continues to haunt her life. Next door neighbor Ted grows ever weaker in his battle with AIDS. And new love interest Roxanne awakens to many echoes of a lost relationship. For Natalie, young, idealistic Maggie has come into her life, and Natalie is seriously questioning everything: her career, the unremitting pressure of being a role model for her community of friends, and most of all her relationship with Annie.

 

 

N.S.B. Figuring it Out. c2006.

Keywords: Lesbian, Coming Out, Memoir, Diary

A lesbian's personal story of recognizing and accepting her sexual orientation and coming out as gay - as expressed in her journals and other writing over the course of 9 years. An attempt to expose the internal struggle a person must go through - the inner monologue as it progresses from a subconscious knowledge of a difference, to consciousness and all of the phases that make up the journey to living the truth.

 

 

Nugent, Beth.  City of Boys.  Alfred A. Knopf c1992.

Keywords: Short Stories, Fiction, Lesbian, Romance, Drama

A collection of short stories. In the title story, “City of Boys,” a small town girl flees home and domineering mother. She is almost immediately picked up off the streets of New York City by an older woman with whom she has an obsessive love affair. During the summer of “Locuasts,” Susan, not quite sixteen, envies her Cousin Francine’s sex appeal while she herself carefully maneuvers to avoid the attentions of her middle-aged uncle. And more.

 

 

 

Nutter, Chris. Way out, the: Gay Man’s guide to Freedom no Matter if You’re in Denial, Closeted, Half In, Half Out, Just Out or Been around the Block. Health Communications, c2006.

Keywords: Gay, Men, Coming Out, Memoir, Non-fiction

Christopher Lee Nutter came out of the closet in 1994 with a bang in a brutally honest essay for Details magazine, thrusting him into the spotlight as an unofficial mentor for gay men across the country. Twelve years later in this edgy memoir, Nutter chronicles his journey from closeted Southern boy to gay New York bartender and party boy, sharing everything he has learned about how gay men are taught to see themselves in a fundamentally destructive way. Assaulted with programming from the ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ worlds alike, gay men are left to ask themselves, am I the coolest, sexiest, trendiest thing ever, or an illegitimate cancer on society? Nutter contests that gay men are neither,  but rather conscious beings on the path to realizing that they have the power to create their likes according to their own will rather than the will of the world, or the illusion of their fears.

 

 

Nye, Jr. S., Joseph.  Understanding International Conflicts:  An Introduction to Theory and History.  Longman c2003.

Keywords: Political, Conflict, Non-fiction, International

Understanding International Conflicts balances history and theory to give students of international politics and framework for analyzing the past and using it to understand the issues confronting use today.

 

 

 

O’Donnell, Mary, Pollock, Kater, Leoffler, Val & Saunders, Ziessel. Lesbian Health Matters! .  Santa Cruz Women’s Health Center c1979.

Keywords: Lesbian, Health, Self-help

This booklet touches upon specific aspects of our society that, for lesbians, make having healthy bodies and minds an even harder struggle. During the process of bringing about change in our society lesbians need to keep in mind that we’ve got to take care of, and bring about change in, ourselves, our sisters and our families, while at the same time confronting the larger issues that are making us sick. We need to develop the balance between being strong enough to fight social injustices and lesbian oppression, and gentle enough to nurture our bodies, our minds, and each other.

 

 

 

Orend, Brian.  Human Rights Concept and Context.  Broadview Press c2002.

Keywords: Political, Legal

What are human rights? What justifies us in believing we have them? What are rights-holders and duty-bearers? Who should bear the costs and responsibilities for making human rights real? Why have some criticized the human rights perspective> And how can those supportive of human rights best respond? These and other conceptual issues are discussed in full in the first part of this book. The second part offers a detailed account of how the human rights idea came to be such a powerful force in the contemporary world; it traces the evolution of human rights from their origins to their present position in our daily lives, in political struggles, and in both national and international law.

 

 

Pass, Gail.  Surviving Sisters.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1989.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotic, Drama, War

Irena Lampros has lost two brothers, one to death in Vietnam, one to sanctuary and then death in Canada. Constantine, the tyrannical patriarch of her family, considers one son a hero, the other a disgrace. Alexandra, Irena’s sister, wages an enraged and lethal war of attrition against Caonstantine, demanding honor for both her brothers. Young Irena, drawn into the deepening tragedy of this family battle, is herself soon transformed into a militant and implacable avenger. Amid this strife, she becomes research assistant to archeologist Maggie Leland. The formidable, seemingly self-contained Leland is assembling artifacts traceable to an ancient earth goddess. When Irena confronts her passion for this intimidating woman, a different emotional war breaks out on a wholly new front. 

 

 

Edited By:  Penelope, Julia and Wolfe J., Susan.  The Original Coming Out Stories.  The Crossing Press c1980.

Keywords: Coming Out, Lesbian, Non-fiction

For many lesbians, the process of coming out remains an intensely emotional and often painful experience, even in the 1980’s. The stories of the first edition recorded the struggle of contributors to name their lesbian identity, a process that often preceded by years their decision to act on their love for women.

 

 

 

 

Piercy, Marge.  Circles On The Water.  Alfred A. Knopf Inc. c1982.

Keywords: Poetry

Marge Piercy writes about her poetry selected for “Circles on the Water.” “Usually the voice of the poem is mine. The experiences, however, are not always mine, and although my major impulse to autobiography has played itself out in poems rather than novels, I have never made a distinction between working up my own experience and other people’s. I imagine that I speak for a constituency, living and dead, and that I give utterance to energy, insight, words flowing from many lives. I have always desired that my poems work for others, be useful.”

 

 

 

 

Plant, Richard.  The Pink Triangle:  The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. Henry Holt and Company, Inc. c1986.

Keywords: War, Non-fiction, Gay, Rights, Politics

This is the first comprehensive book to appear in English on the fate of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The author, a refugee from Nazi Germany, examines the climate and conditions that gave rise to the vicious campaign against Germany’s gays, directed by Himmler and his SS, a war that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests and thousands of deaths. In this Nazi Crusade, homosexual prisoners were confined to death camps where, forced to wear pink triangles, they constituted the lowest rung in the camp hierarchy. The horror of camp life is revealed through diaries, documents never before translated from the German, and interviews with and letters from survivors.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Pollack, Sandra and Knight D., Denise.  Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States.  Greenwood Press c1993.

Keywords: Lesbian, Non-fiction, Historical, Biographical

The first comprehensive biographical, critical, and bibliographical source on lesbian writers. This reference book features essays on 100 contemporary writers of poetry, fiction, and drama in the United States. Many had written as self-identified lesbians at some point during the 1970-1992 period of coverage. Each essay comprises a biography, with personal history often derived from interviews, an analysis of major works and themes, an overview of the critical reception, and bibliographies of primary works and of critical studies and reviews. The volume introduction, by Tucker P. Farley, situates contemporary lesbian literature in its historical and political contexts. Appendices list publishers of lesbian writers and periodicals featuring lesbian writing. An extensive bibliography provides nonfiction resources focusing on lesbian issues, including works in psychology, sexuality, parenting, health, history, and theory, as well as literature.

 

Potter, Clare. The Lesbian Periodicals Index. Naiab Press, c 1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Literature, Periodicals

An index of Lesbian writing and more.

 

 

 

Pratt Bruce, Minnie.  Crime Against Nature.  Firebrand Books c1990.

Keywords: Lesbian, Poetry, Drama

In spare and forceful language Minnie Bruce Pratt tells a moving story of loss and recuperation, discovering linkages between her own disenfranchisement and the condition of other minorities. She makes it plain, in this masterful sequence of poems, that the real crime against nature is violence and oppression.

 

 

 

Pratt Bruce, Minnie.  We Say We Love Each Other.  Spinsters Ink c1985.

Keywords: Lesbian, Poetry

These poems- sensual, fierce, accurate- touch me in many familiar places. Yet, they are also feel new and original, a poetry perhaps only possible now, in this very decade. Her poems about the south, her childhood, the love between women are wonderfully detailed, precise, evocative and wise. She is a poet of clear expression. Her voice is powerful. Her song true.

 

 

 

 

Princeton Review. The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life. Princeton Review, c2011.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, College, Self-help

A comprehensive resource for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender students and their allies.

 

 

 

 

 

Ramstetter, Victoria.  The Marquise and the Novice:  A Lesbian Gothic Novel.  The Naiad Press Inc. c1983.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Erotic

In a sumptuous chateau in nineteenth century provincial France, an innocent Irish girl, fresh from convent restraints but prepared to return to take religious vows, meets a beautiful, wealthy, sophisticated older woman, a widow whose son she is to tutor. What could be more deliciously titillating than the erotic encounter of young red-haired Kathleen Thorn, aching with repressed sensuality and the Marquise Anneliese de Rochelle, the dark Lesbian noble woman whose raven tresses whip wildly in the wind as she gallops off to a rendezvous in riding attire?

 

 

 

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Signet. c1957.

Keywords: Mystery, Fantasy

The astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world- and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is unlike any other book you have every read. It is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder- and rebirth- of a man’s spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

Read, Kirk. How I Learned to Snap: A Small Town Coming-Out and Coming-of-Age Story. Hill Street Press, c2001.

Keywords: Memoir, Gay, Coming Out, Non-fiction

With bold Southern humor, journalist and performer Kirk Read takes readers on a guided tour of his precocious and courageous adolescence. Recalling his years as an openly gay high school student, Read describes how he navigated the hallways with his sense of humor and dignity intact. He fondly recalls his initiations into sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, as well as his "shy as neon" acts of rabble rousing during high school. How I Learned to Snap is a refreshingly victim-free story in which queer teenagers are creative, resilient, and ultimately heroic.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Reti, Irene and Sien, Shoney.  Cats (and their Dykes).  Herbooks c1991.

Keywords: Cats, Lesbian

Stories, poems, photographs, essays, political analysis, love stories. There is something between cats and women that is not based on domination or condescending adoration. There is something the cat is trying to tell us, if we would only listen.

 

 

 

 

 

Robertson, William.  K.D. Lang:  Carrying the Torch.  ECW Press c1992.

Keywords: Biography, Non-fiction, Lesbian

Canadian born K.D. Lang sent shock waves through the music establishment by playing country music while dressed something like a punk rocker and claiming to be the reincarnation of the late country music star Patsy Cline. Since the release of her first album, A Truly Western Experience, in 1984, Lang has galvanized listeners and the media alike with her amazing voice while battling for a place in the music industry and fighting off prejudice against her unique appearance and attitude.

 

 

 

 

Rule, Jane.  Memory Board.  The Naiad Press, Inc. 1987.

Keywords: Drama, Lesbian

For forty years David Crown has kept his twin sister Diana a secret. Until his wife’s death, not even his children have known about Diana and her lifetime companion Constance. But now David seeks to bridge over those years and recapture the closeness of childhood, to become part of Diana’s life, to have her be a major part of his. For the independent, irascible Diana, the overtures from her brother are an unwelcome intrusion. Retired from her medical practice, she spends her days fully occupied with Constance, for whom memory is increasingly a sometime thing. David, growing ever more fond of the enchanting Constance, struggles to win her trust, and Diana is inexorably drawn into the event and drama of David’s family life.

 

 

Rule, Jane.  This is Not For You.  The Naiad Press, Inc. 1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Fiction, Romance

This Is Not For You, perhaps Jane Rule’s most self-consciously literary and philosophical novel, tells the story of a young woman in the late 1950s and early 1960s as she negotiates her lesbian sexuality. This epistolary lament - an unsent letter to a lover who was never quite a lover - depicts New York and London and a group of friends as they search, sometimes in vain, for a sustaining love in a time of strict societal constraints.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Ruitenbeek M., Hendrik.  The Problem Of Homosexuality In Modern Society.  E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. c1963.

Keywords: Gay, Anthology

It is the consensus of both psychoanalysts and sociologists that homosexuality is apparently increasing in contemporary society. The reasons why this should be so are not easily discovered. In an attempt to provide information generally inaccessible to the lay reader, this splendid anthology of sixteen essays by outstanding students of the subject probes deeply into this enigma by presenting a psychoanalytic discussion of the genesis and treatment of homosexuality from many important and differing points of view, and by including several essays which examine the topic purely as a sociological phenomenon.

 

 

 

Sanchez, Alex. So Hard to Say. Simon Pulse, c2004.

Keywords: Fiction, Teen, Gay, Romance, High School

When Frederick shows up at school, Xio is thrilled. The new boy is shy, cute, and definitely good boyfriend material. Before long, she pulls him into her lively circle of friends. Frederick knows he should be flattered by Xio’s attention. After all, she’s popular, pretty, and a lot of fun. So why can’t he stop thinking about Victor, the captain of the soccer team, instead? 

 

 

Sands, Regine.  Travels with Diana Hunter.  Lace Publications c1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Erotic, Romance, Comedy

When 18 year old Diana Hunter runs away from her hometown of Lubbock, Texas, she begins an unparalleled odyssey of love, lust, and humor that spans almost twenty years. The array of women drawn to Diana’s wit and body is only overshadowed by Diana’s own versatile capacity for meeting their amorous needs.

 

 

 

Sarton, May.  Joanna and Ulysses.  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. c1987.

Keywords: Romance, Comedy

For Joanna the month’s holiday was to be an escape, a chance to paint and think and release the bitter memories of the war in Greece and of her mother’s death. She had chosen the dazzling island of Santorini, remote and inaccessible as her own heart. The holiday was to be a solitary experience. But that was before Joanna met Ulysses, the mistreated little donkey.

 

 

 

Sarton, May.  Miss Pickthorn and Mr. Hare.  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. c1966.

Keywords: Fable

Miss Jane Pickthorn, known to her neighbors in the small New England village as the ‘Maiden Porcupine,” is highly annoyed when someone moves into the tumbledown henhouse across the road. The fact that the new tenant is the quiet and shy Mr. Hare means nothing to her. He is an intruder and interferes with her solitary round of daily pleasures. As these enjoyments consist in reading Latin verse and eating McIntosh apples, the Village Selectmen are less than receptive to her demand that they abate the nuisance of Mr. Hare. He is, they point out, unobtrusive. He may, if the henhouse proves winter proof, become a taxpayer and add to the village revenues.

 

Scoppettone, Sandra.  TWO COPIES OF:  Everything You Have is Mine.  Ballantine Books c1991.

Keywords: Fiction, Mystery, Drama, Lesbian

Lauren Laurano is surely not the first gay P.I. in New York City, but she is in a class by herself. Smart, stylish, and self-determined, she lives with her longtime lover, Kip, in a Greenwich Village brownstone. Their lives together usually simmer along nicely- except when Lauren becomes obsessed with a case. Lovely, shy Lake Huron has been raped and reuses to talk to the police. Her older half-sister, Ursula, brings in Lauren, who seems to win the young woman’s trust. Before she can tell Lauren everything, Lake is found dead, leaving Lauren to decipher a 21^st century clue and a dysfunctional family tree that a good, stiff wind could blow to bits. The closer Lauren gets to the truth, the more her own life is endangered- by a past that cannot stay buried and fragile questions that have no easy answers.

 

Scopperttone, Sandra.  Happy Endings Are All Alike.  Alyson Publications, Inc. c1978.

Keywords: Fiction, Romance, Lesbian, Drama

It was their last summer before college, and Jaret and Peggy were in love. But as Jaret said “it always seems as if when something great happens, then something lousy happens soon after.” Soon her worst fears turned into brute reality.

 

 

 

Sewell, Richard H. A House Divided: Sectionalism and Civil War 1848-1865. Johns Hopkins University Press, c1988.

Keywords: History, Slavery, War, Non-fiction

What caused the Civil War? Perhaps no question in American History has attracted more interest or sparked more debate. While recognizing the impact of other political disputes and of such concerns as temperance and nativism, Richard Sewell refocuses attention on slavery as the root of sectionalism and ultimately, the war.A House Divided traces the growth of bitter sectional discord in the years after 1848, when the acquisition of new American territories rekindled old controversies over the expansion of slavery.

 

 

Sexton, Anne.  The Complete Poems.  Houghton Mifflin Company c1981.

Keywords: Poetry, Lesbian

The stuff of Anne’s life, mercilessly dissected, is here in poems. Of all the confessional poets, none has had quite Sexton’s courage to make a clean breast of it. She drew her poems from a great depth in herself, and they continue to stir us. Her voice remains a distinctive one in American poetry of the past half century.

 

 

 

Shockley Allen, Ann.  Loving Her.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1987.

Keywords: Fiction, Lesbian, Romance, Drama

Terry is a wealthy and successful writer. Renay is a pianist at a supper club. Terry is white; Renay is black. Forced by pregnancy to marry the irresponsible abusive Perry lee, Renay is struggling for economic and spiritual survival. When she finally flees with her young daughter, Terry offers protection and a love beyond all Renay’s erotic imaginings. Terry’s wealth and her loving arms are fragile protection against the turbulence of the world that confront their love and against Perry Lee’s murderous rage that Renay would leave him for a ‘bulldagger”.

 

 

 

Sigal, Pete. Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America. University of Chicago Press, c2003.

Keywords: Essays, History, Latin America, Gay, Homosexuality, Non-Fiction

What did it mean to be a man in colonial Latin America? More specifically what did indigenous and Iberian groups think of men who had sexual relations with other men? Providing comprehensive analyses of how male homosexuality’s were represented in areas under Portuguese and Spanish control, Infamous Desire is the first book-length attempt to answer such questions. In a study that will be indispensable for anyone studying sexuality in colonial Latin America, seven esteemed contributors view sodomy through the lends of desire and power, relating to male homosexual behavior to broader gender systems that defined masculinity and femininity.

 

 

 

Simon, Linda.  The Biography of Alice B. Toklas.  Avon Books c1977.

Keywords: Biography, Non-fiction, Lesbian

She was a cook, critic, publisher, lover, and muse to one of the most celebrated women of letters in this century. This first biography of Gertrude Stein’s companion, Alice B. Toklas, takes us from her childhood in San Francisco through her instant attraction and forty year devotion to the woman she believed to be a genius. Toklas emerges as a formidable personality, choosing and rejecting Gertrude’s friends from their brilliant coterie: Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Matisse, and many more.

 

 

 

Smith, Artemis.  Hark The Pterodactyl.  Vague Press c1963.

Keywords: Poetry

The poems and pieces in this collection are from her “notes and diary 1960-63,” Out of which her first surrealist novel emerged. Part of this period was spent touring fifteen European cities on a bicycle. An ardent disciple of Gertrude Stein and EE Cummings, her own work is marked by a sharp return to realism within a framework of ambiguity often recalling works of Rousseau and Dali.

 

 

Soble, Alan. The Philosophy of Sex and Love. Paragon House, c1998.

Keywords: Non-fiction, Love, Philosophy, Sexuality

Alan Soble’s book is a wonderfully rich, engaging, humane, witty, literate, but above all, philosophy rigorous study of love and sex. It offers an impeccably fair-minded and comprehensive guide to what is now an extensive and very varied philosophical literature on these subjects. Soble provides a judicious and intelligent appraisal of the many claims made about gender, sexual perversion, marriage, and eternal love by a long and not always distinguished line of conservatives, liberals, and feminists, without losing either his sense of balance or of humor.

 

 

Stein, Gertrude.  Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings.  Liveright c1971.

Keywords: Fiction, Short Stories, Lesbian

Gertrude Stein began the creative work that was to earn her the reputation as one of the most original writers of this century with the three pieces of this volume. Fernhurst, a fictional episode based on a Bryn Mawr scandal of the early 1900’s, explores the labyrinth of love between man and woman and between woman and woman. Q.E.D finalizes an early Stein romance- an affair complicated by her frustrated attempt to fathom the soul of the woman she loved, and doomed finally by the existence of a rival. The third selection is an unpublished early draft of The Making of Americans, which records Stein’s struggle toward maturity as a person and as an artist.

 

 

Stein, Gertrude.  Three Lives.  New American Library c1985.

Keywords: Fiction, Stories, Romance, Sexuality, Lesbian

Gertrude Stein’s first significant work presents extraordinary psychological portraits of three women. “The Good Anna” is the story of a kindly but domineering German serving woman. “The Gentle Lena” tells of a passive German girl who apathetically endures her miserable life until she dies in childbirth. These two stark stories contrast sharply with the third, “Melanctha” the passionate depiction of a young black woman’s sexual searching and tragic love affair. Gertrude Stein claimed that the book’s style was influenced by the Cezanne portrait under which she sat while writing. The repetitive sentences, juxtaposition of sounds, and simple language follow her famous method of composition: “to begin again and again,” to “use everything,” and to maintain a “continuous present.”

 

Stevenson, Sylvia. Surplus.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1986.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction

Often the road to heaven on earth, which some call happiness and some mirage, is a tangled pathway, broadening slowly as it winds along, till at last the haven is in sight. But now and again, there is no road at all. One step out of the thicket, and there are the white walls and golden turrets, so near that they dazzle you. So it was for Sally Wraith. She came out that June morning, expecting simply to give a message to a friend of Miss Landison’s. And that morning she first met Averil.

 

 

Stewart-Park, Angela and Cassidy, Jules.  We’re Here:  Conversations with Lesbian Women.  Quartet Books Limited c1977.

Keywords: Lesbian, Sociology, Non-fiction, Interviews

Countless volumes have been written about ‘lesbians’ for male sexual titillation, so it is important that there should be a book which presents ordinary lesbians to the world in an open and honest way. Here are women of various ages and backgrounds talking about themselves, their preference for other women, about the Women’s Movement, the pressures of society, and about their particular problems and the decisions they have had to make.

 

 

 

Strieber, Whitley.  The Hunger.  Pocket Books c1981.

Keywords: Mystery, Drama, Lesbian, Fiction

She knows the uses of the dark and the purpose of her own maddening beauty. She has taken many lovers to share unheard of ecstasies, undreamed of terrors. She will take another now. No one can resist her ultimate embrace. No man, no woman, is safe from the Hunger. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Studies, c2008.

Keywords: Transgender, History, Non-fiction

This book covers American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today. From the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II to trans radicalism and social change in the ‘60s and ‘70s to the gender issues witnessed throughout the ‘90s and ‘00s, this introductory text will give you a foundation for understanding the developments, changes, strides, and setbacks of trans studies and the trans community in the United States.

 

 

 

 

Taylor Ortiz, Sheila.  Spring Forward Fall Back.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1985.

Keywords: Lesbian, Fantasy, Romance, Fiction

This story focuses on two women, separated by twenty-six miles of ocean, whose lives are passing through distinct crises. Elizabeth Rivers, 17, gradually falls in love with her English teacher, must at summer’s close, sever herself from her lover, family, and home on Catalina Island to begin the next passage of her life. On the California mainland, at the same point in time, Marci Tyson, 29 and pregnant, buys her own house, leaves her husband and has a child. Ten years later, in a bar called the Daily Plant, two women meet and eventually fall in love, discover that their individual striving has always been a part of the same cyclic and mythic movement of time.

 

 

 

 

Taylor, Valerie.  A Novel of Lesbian Love:  Journey to Fulfillment.  A Volute Book c1982.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction, Series

Erika Frohmann, Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, relocated in the United States, meets Marilyn- her first serious woman lover. A welcome and nicely written piece, with an appealing fictional lesbian character. #1 in the Erika Forhmann series.

 

 

 

 

Taylor, Valerie.  Prism.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1982.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction

Who said “life beings at 40?” For Eldora it began at 60, when she met Ann, a closeted lesbian who had retired from her job and traded the hustle of big city life for the solitude of a small town to live out her remaining years. In her previous novels Valerie Taylor described what it was like in our youth and middle years. Now she brings us a tender story of two “mature” women who discover that love and sex and dreams are not just for the young.

 

 

 

 

Taylor, Valerie.  Return to Lesbos.  A Naiad Press, c1982.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction, Series

After years of denying her Lesbianism, Frances Ollenfield takes the steps that will lead her to Erika Frohmann, and the beginnings of their life together. #3 in the Erika Frohmann series.

 

 

 

 

Taylor, Valerie.  Ripening.  Banned Books c1988.

Keywords: Lesbian, Romance, Fiction, Series

In what Valerie Taylor calls ‘the conclusion of the Erika Frohmann series,’ we follow the lives of Erika and Frances from the late sixties to the eighties. The tears, the laughter, the setbacks, and the small triumphs, all these combine to create a feeling of strength and unity as their relationship spans more than two decades. The novel is written through the eyes of two women who have seen many changes over the years and have always relied on the one constant in their lives, each other.

 

 

 

Taylor, Valerie.  A World Without Men.  The Naiad Press, Inc. c1982.

Keywords: Romance, Lesbian, Fiction, Series

Erika becomes involved with Kate in the second book of her continuing adventures as a lesbian. #2 in the Erika Frohmann series.

 

 

 

 

 

Thompson, Karen and Andrzejewski, Julie. Why Can’t Sharon Kowalski Come Home?  Spinsters/Aunte Lute Book Company c1988.

Keywords: Non-fiction, Homophobia, Biography, Political, Lesbian

In 1983, Sharon Kowalski was seriously injured when her car was struck by a drunk driver, leaving her unable to move or to communicate in traditional ways. Karen, her lover of four years, was by Sharon’s side constantly, helping her in the arduous fight to regain basic life-skills. In 1985, the court awarded Sharon’s father sole guardianship, and within 24 hours, he denied Karen visitation rights.

 

 

 

Toklas B., Alice. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.  Harper & Row, Publishers c1984.

Keywords: Food, Lesbian, Auto-Biographical, Non-fiction

Alice Babette Toklas was born in San Francisco and moved in 1907 to France, where she and Gertrude Stein presided over what was perhaps the most famous salon of the century, frequented by Ernest Hemmingway, Alfred North Whitehead, F. Scott Fitzgerald and more. Through many rich years, two world wars, the two led an extraordinary life, and its flavor is fully captured in this very special cookbook.  Filled with marvelous stories and forthright opinion on matters of gastronomy and art, this book recounts the comings and goings of this brilliant American pair and the splendid meals they shared.

 

 

Torres, Lourdes. Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression, Inmaculada Perpetusa-Seva. Temple University Press, c2003.

Keywords: Lesbian, Culture, Hispanic, Latina, Anthology

The first anthology to focus exclusively on queer reading of Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. Latina lesbian literature and culture, Tortilleras interrogates issues of gender, national identity, race, ethnicity, and class to show the impossibility of projecting a singular Hispanic and Latina lesbian. Examining carefully the works of a range of lesbian writers and performance artists, including Carmelita Tropicana and Christina Peri Rossi, among others, Tortelleras creates a picture of the complicated and multi-textured contributions of Latina and Hispanic lesbians to literature and culture. More than simply describing this sphere of creativity, the contributors also recover from history the long veiled existence of this world, exposing its roots and its impact on lesbian culture, and making the power of lesbian performance and literature visible.

 

 

Trager, James.  The Women’s Chronology:  A Year-By-Year Record, From Prehistory to the Present.  Henry Holt & Company c1994.

Keywords: Women, History/Herstory

These chronicles aim in some small measure to correct a historical oversight and to provide a compact overview of women in history. Designed as a handy desk reference, the chronology relates events as they happened, giving precise dates and details wherever possible, to record landmarks in the rise of women through the years. It integrates all facets of women’s role, how women have been treated, the developments that have most affect them, what women have achieved, what some of them have said and what has been said about them.

 

 

Van Buuren, Hanneke.  The Last Five Years of Women’s Emancipation in the Netherlands.

Keywords: Women, Emancipation, Law, Political

In the Netherlands, as in other countries this second emancipation wave came not altogether unexpectedly. Round about 1840 feminism made a hesitant start in the circles of protestant women from the “revival” movement, who exhorted to a strict religious experience based on sentiment. For Dutch men it is not uncommon to speak depreciatively toward women.

 

 

 

Edited By:  Vida, Ginny.  Our Right to Love:  A Lesbian Resource Book.  Prentice-Hall, Inc. c1978.

Keywords: Women, Lesbian, Feminism, History, Political

Reflecting on growing awareness of the special concerns of lesbians, this ambitious project embodies the spirit of the basic human rights issues of all women and presents an explosive, stimulating exploration of the nature and scope of lesbian life-styles. Our Right to Love succeeds in erasing the myths, the stereotypes, and misjudgments concerning female homosexuality.

 

 

 

Vivien, Renée.  The Woman of the Wolf and other stories.  The Gay Press c1980.

Keywords: Poems, Short Stories, Fiction, Lesbian

Written in 1904, this book combines powerful characters and exciting narratives with the poetic clarity of style and vision so apparent in all of Vivien’s other books. Part of the glittering set of American expatriate lesbians who gathered about Natalie Barney, Vivien’s life and work are the stuff legends are made of. Vivien manages to touch on all the themes and ideas that obsessed her  throughout her short life.

 

 

 

Waters, Sarah. Fingersmith. Riverhead Books, c2002.

Keywords: Adventure, Drama, Fiction

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

 

Waters, Sarah. Tipping the Velvet. Riverhead Books, c1998.

Keywords: Erotica, Lesbian, Romance, Drama, Gender Queer, Fiction

"Lavishly crammed with the songs, smells, and costumes of late Victorian England" (The Daily Telegraph), this delicious, steamy debut novel chronicles the adventures of Nan King, who begins life as an oyster girl in the provincial seaside town of Whitstable and whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer named Miss Kitty Butler. When Kitty is called up to London for an engagement on "Grease Paint Avenue, " Nan follows as her dresser and secret lover, and, soon after, dons trousers herself and joins the act. In time, Kitty breaks her heart, and Nan assumes the guise of butch roue to commence her own thrilling and varied sexual education—a sort of Moll Flanders in drag—finally finding friendship and true love in the most unexpected places. Drawing comparison to the work of Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters' novel is a feast for the senses—an erotic, lushly detailed historical novel that bursts with life and dazzlingly casts the turn of the century in a different light.

 

Wickham, Ken N. Other Genders, the: Androgyne, Genderqueer, Non-Binary, Gender Variant.

Keywords: Gender, Non- Binary, Non-fiction

This book tries to introduce this seldom talked about subject of other genders. It tries to present some basic information concerning those that identify as non-binary. Basic analysis is given towards several surveys and polls. Aspects of gender are shown in different gender varieties, other than male and female. The challenges that non-binary genders face are revealed. Arguments for those that oppose non-binary gender are presented.

 

 

Witt, Lynn, Sherry Thomas and Eric Marcus. Out in All Directions: The Almanac of Gay and Lesbian America. Wright Creative Associates, c1995.

Keywords: Gay, Lesbian, Almanac

This book takes the mystery out of gay and lesbian history, lifts the lid off pink politics, and paints the town lavender with hundreds of lively articles and intriguing facts covering every aspect of gay life, culture, and community. From debunking myths to creating family, from fighting for rights to battling AIDS, from showbiz superstars to military heroes, dozens of notable contributors come out in all directions, providing both a useful guide to issues and resources and an entertaining and informative mirror of the American lesbian and gay experience.

 

 

Winterson, Jeanette.  Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.  The Atlantic Monthly Press c1985.

Keywords: Memoir, Lesbian, Religion, Non-fiction

Adopted into an evangelical household in the dour industrial Midlands- where the heathen are everywhere, especially next door- Jeanette cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is on of God’s elect. She knows all the verses to “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and very little about the world. Although never exactly lamblike, Jeanette embroiders grim religious mottoes and shakes her little tambourine for Jesus like a good missionary-to-be. But a this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles. Her mother, the pastor, and the flock go to work on Jeanette’s demons, denouncing her as someone “to whom it is impossible to speak the truth”.

 

 

Zanger, Molleen.  The Year Seven.  The Naiad Press, Inc. 1993.

Keywords: Drama, Adventure, Fiction, Fantasy, Lesbian

It is an ordinary evening in July. Vic sits in front of her television set: “One minute Connie Chung was smiling her elegant understated smile and promising to be back in a moment, and then the TV went out…” A power shortage, Vic is sure. But when she awakens the next morning, the world of human and animal life as she knows it has come to an end. Stunned, grieving, incredulous, she locates a survivor. Nance too is dazed by the catastrophe, but stubbornly determined to continue her life by the strait-laced rules she has always known. Vic discovers a small band of female survivors. Among them is BJ, resilient and confident that she can provide some order and leadership, and willing to wait for Vic to deal with her sexual obsession with Nancy.