The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. At a little after one a.m. on the morning of June 28, 1969, the police carried out a routine raid on the bar. But it turned out not to be routine at all. Instead of cowering - the usual reaction to a police raid - the patrons inside Stonewall and the crowd that gathered outside the bar fought back against the police. The five days of rioting that followed changed forever the face of lesbian and gay life. In the years since 1969, the Stonewall riots have become the central symbolic event of the modern gay movement. Renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman now tells for the first time the full story of what happened at Stonewall, recreating in vivid detail those heady, sweltering nights in June 1969 and revealing a wealth of previously unknown material.^

This compelling story of lesbian life in the twentieth century traces the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from the early years of the century--when career opportunities first enabled women to support themselves and spend their lives in "romantic friendships" with other women--to the diversity of today's life styles. Faderman uses journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous personal interviews with lesbians of all races, ages, and classes, to uncover and relate this often surprising narrative of lesbian life in America. Lesbian identity could emerge, Faderman maintains, only during that time, with the sexual freedom of the 1920s and the 1960s, as well as the social freedom made possible by World War II, the education of women, and the civil rights and women's movements. The term "lesbian" did not become current until the late nineteenth century, when European sexologists began to explore female same-sex loving. Where close relationships between women had once been accepted--even encouraged--the sexologists stigmatized same-sex pairing as deviant, but at the same time fostered a lesbian consciousness which was necessary before lesbian communities could be formed. This book tells how women who accepted the label "lesbian" altered the sexologists' definitions, creating identities and ideologies for themselves.--Adapted from book jacket.

"A deeply moving play inspired by the true events surrounding the controversial 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance--a play seen by some as a seminal work of Jewish culture, and by others as an act of traitorous libel. INDECENT charts the history of an incendiary drama and the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it"--Page [4] of cover.

"Elissa and Rita have forever struggled to find their place in each other's worlds. Rita, an overreaching, makeup-addicted, narcissistic Manhattan singer couldn't be more different from Elissa, her gay, taciturn New England writer daughter. Stuck in an outrageous maelstrom of codependency, mother and daughter cannot seem to extricate themselves from the center of each other's lives. Motherland is their universal story: a kaleidoscopic journey built on the ferocity of mother-daughter love, moral obligation, and the possibility and promise of healing. Having survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of her mother, Elissa is finally settled in Connecticut with her wife of almost twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, orbiting around her mother, but keeping far enough away from her to preserve the independent, quiet life she has built for herself. All of this is suddenly at risk when Rita, whose days are spent traversing the streets of Manhattan from Bergdorf's to Bloomingdale's and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall that leaves her fully dependent on her only child. Forced to confront her mother's desperate need for beauty, her view of the world through a medley of men, her lost days in the spotlight, addiction, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of maintaining her youth, Elissa must navigate the waters of their shared history, obligation, the problems of caregiving and age, and the frenetic, co-dependent love that has defined their obsessive relationship. Motherland asks the universal mother-daughter question: How much love is too much love?"--

"Elissa and Rita have forever struggled to find their place in each other's worlds. Rita, an overreaching, makeup-addicted, narcissistic Manhattan singer couldn't be more different from Elissa, her gay, taciturn New England writer daughter. Stuck in an outrageous maelstrom of codependency, mother and daughter cannot seem to extricate themselves from the center of each other's lives. Motherland is their universal story: a kaleidoscopic journey built on the ferocity of mother-daughter love, moral obligation, and the possibility and promise of healing. Having survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of her mother, Elissa is finally settled in Connecticut with her wife of almost twenty years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, orbiting around her mother, but keeping far enough away from her to preserve the independent, quiet life she has built for herself. All of this is suddenly at risk when Rita, whose days are spent traversing the streets of Manhattan from Bergdorf's to Bloomingdale's and back again, suffers an incapacitating fall that leaves her fully dependent on her only child. Forced to confront her mother's desperate need for beauty, her view of the world through a medley of men, her lost days in the spotlight, addiction, and the money that has mysteriously disappeared in the name of maintaining her youth, Elissa must navigate the waters of their shared history, obligation, the problems of caregiving and age, and the frenetic, co-dependent love that has defined their obsessive relationship. Motherland asks the universal mother-daughter question: How much love is too much love?"--

Surveys a decade of the attempt to reconstruct and understand the meaning and value of butch-femme relations for the contemporary lesbian, drawing on oral history, fiction, poetry, and fantasy. -- From the Amazon

Radclyffe Hall was born in 1884 in Bournemouth in a house of horrors called 'Sunny Lawn'. It was an unhappy childhood, until her father's death when Radclyffe inherited £200,000. She was 18. She leased a London house, dressed in chappish clothes, called herself Peter then John & wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, obsessive about work, hunted with 3 packs, got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets & had her hair cropped. She thought real women were born to be wives & disliked doing any business with them. Her 1st love was Mabel Batten, known as Ladye, who reputedly had an affair with Edward VII. Radclyffe Hall is now most famous for THE WELL OF LONELINESS, written in 1928. A novel about 'congenital inverts' - lesbian love - the book was suppressed both here & the US & caused Radclyffe to be put on trial under the Obscene Publications Act. Brilliantly written, this biography is a fresh and irreverent insight into the lives of one of the most alluring and eccentric women of this century.

My American History contains pieces written between 1981 and 1992, that document the expectations and imaginations of activists as they struggled, under impossible odds and an ever-growing opposition, to articulate a movement for freedom and dignity during the Reign of Reaganism. Also included is the Lesbian Avengers Handbook.

In this first book from an openly lesbian and celibate Catholic, widely published writer and blogger Eve Tushnet recounts her spiritual and intellectual journey from liberal atheism to faithful Catholicism and shows how gay Catholics can love and be loved while adhering to Church teaching. Eve Tushnet was among the unlikeliest of converts. The only child of two atheist academics, Tushnet was a typical Yale undergraduate until the day she went out to poke fun at a gathering of philosophical debaters, who happened also to be Catholic. Instead of enjoying mocking what she termed the zoo animals, she found herself engaged in intellectual conversation with them and, in a move that surprised even her, she soon converted to Catholicism. Already self-identifying as a lesbian, Tushnet searched for athird way in the seeming two-option system available to gay Catholics: reject Church teaching on homosexuality or reject the truth of your sexuality. Gay and Catholic is the fruit of Tushnet's searching: what she learned in studying Christian history and theology and her articulation of how gay Catholics can pour their love and need for connection into friendships, community, service, and artistic creation.

For gays and their friends, this book confronts the social and personal issue of suicide with compassion and hope.

"Finally, the writing of one of the century's most notorious lesbians is available in English. Though best known for hosting the avant garde of Paris for thirty years--Colette, Renee Vivien, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein, to mention a few--she was also a writer who challenged the male-dominated literary establishment both in the content and the form of her work. Now we can discover her views on the people, places and events of that exciting and stimulating era for ourselves. Here is a spirited translation of Barney's thought-provoking work by one of Britain's most interesting writers"--Back cover.

Winner of two Lambda Rising Awards This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past. Such notable researchers as John Boswell, Shari Benstock, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Jeffrey Weeks and John D’Emilio illuminate gay and lesbian life as it evolved in places as diverse as the Athens of Plato, Renaissance Italy, Victorian London, jazz Age Harlem, Revolutionary Russia, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, post-World War II San Francisco—and peoples as varied as South African black miners, American Indians, Chinese courtiers, Japanese samurai, English schoolboys and girls, and urban working women. Gender and sexuality, repression and resistance, deviance and acceptance, identity and community—all are given a context in this fascinating work. "A landmark of a book and a landmark of ideas that will shatter ignorance and delusion."— Catharine Stimpson, University Professor and Dean Emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University “Ground-breaking.”— Publishers Weekly “The juxtaposition of diverse perspectives and research crossing boundaries of race, gender, culture, and time encourages a lively dialogue. Highly recommended for history collections, and especially gay studies.”— Library Journal

"This delightful lesbian romp set in Elizabethan England captures the adventures of Moll Cutpurse, a swashbuckling heroine, upholder of the right of women, as she pits her wits against Puritans and tricksters, travels with the gypsies, rescues a near-victim of the anti-witchcraft hysteria, and cheats the wealthy out of their ill-gotten gains - with help from her lifelong friend and lover, Bridget, the apothecary"--P [4] of cover.

A rich heritage that needs to be documented Beginning in 1869, when the study of homosexuality can be said to have begun with the establishment of sexology, this encyclopedia offers accounts of the most important international developments in an area that now occupies a critical place in many fields of academic endeavours. It covers a long history and a dynamic and ever changing present, while opening up the academic profession to new scholarship and new ways of thinking. A groundbreaking new approach While gays and lesbians have shared many aspects of life, their histories and cultures developed in profoundly different ways. To reflect this crucial fact, the encyclopedia has been prepared in two separate volumes assuring that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered. Written for and by a wide range of people Intended as a reference for students and scholars in all fields, as well as for the general public, the encyclopedia is written in user-friendly language. At the same time it maintains a high level of scholarship that incorporates both passion and objectivity. It is written by some of the most famous names in the field, as well as new scholars, whose research continues to advance gender studies into the future.

"Martha Shelley didn't start out in life wanting to become a gay activist, or an activist of any kind. The daughter of Jewish refugees and undocumented immigrants in New York City, she grew up during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s, was inspired by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements that followed, and struggled with coming out as a lesbian at a time when being gay made her a criminal. Shelley rose to become a public speaker for the New York chapter of the lesbian rights group the Daughters of Bilitis, organized the first gay march in response to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, and then cofounded the Gay Liberation Front. She coproduced the newspaper Come Out!, worked on the women's takeover of the RAT Subterranean News, and took a central role in the Lavender Menace action to confront homophobia in the women's movement. Martha Shelley's story is a feminist and lesbian document that gives context and adds necessary humanity to the historical record"--Dust jacket flap.

Provides an overview of lesbian fiction, and analyzes the ways in which it has both mirrored and shaped the lesbian movement and lesbian culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Who was Sappho? How gay was the Renaissance? When were the first sodomy laws passed in America? Were there any gay heroes in the American Revolution? Were "passing" women lesbians? Who was Walt Whitman? Who was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs? How did San Francisco become so gay? Was Susan B. Anthony a lesbian? Who were the "berdaches"? Who was Katharine Lee Bates? What was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee? What were Oscar Wilde's trials about? What is the history of gay bathhouses? When did American gays, lesbians, and others first start calling themselves "queer"? Who was E.M. Forster? Who were Havelock Ellis and Edith Lees Ellis? How gay was the Harlem Renaissance? Who were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas? Who was Willa Cather? What was the Leopold and Loeb case? Who was Natalie Barney? What was the first gay rights organization in America? Who was Janet Flanner? What was the "Padlock" Bill? What was The Well of Loneliness? Who was Babe Didrikson Zaharias? Was Eleanor Roosevelt a lesbian? What was The Children's Hour? What happened to gays and lesbians during the Holocaust? Who were some of the lesbians in Hollywood's golden age? What is the origin of the phrase "a friend of Dorothy's"? Who were Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead? What were the army drag shows during World War II? What were "blue discharges"? When did the American gay and lesbian press begin? How gay were Tennessee Williams's plays? What was the Kinsey Report? What were the lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s? What were physique magazines? Who was Christine Jorgensen? What was the Mattachine Society? How did McCarthyism affect gays and lesbians? Who were the Daughters of Bilitis? Who was Rudi Gernreich? Who was James Baldwin? What was the Boise Sex Scandal? What was Evelyn Hooker's research about? What was the Wolfenden Report? Who was Lorraine Hansberry? What was the Supreme Court's first pro-gay ruling? What have gays and lesbians experienced in revolutionary Cuba? Who was Bayard Rustin? What was NACHO? What is the origin of the annual gay and les

This is the work of an important poet. Widely recognised for her insightful, even incendiary, prose theory and compelling fiction, Elana Dykewomon's brilliantly crafted, elegant poetry is showcased here. Nothing Will Be As Sweet As The Taste collects new and earlier verse. Steeped in the intense energy of lesbian activism, these poems contextualise a vital period in 20th century history. Intimate, ironic or explicitly sexual, this is riveting poetry. Elana's is truly an original voice, balancing vision with hilarity, intellect with warmth.