Lesbian Fiction: An Anthology

by Elly Bulkin (Editor)

In very good condition

Genres: Fiction, Anthologies, Queer, Lesbian, LGBT

295 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1981

About the author

Elly Bulkin, an activist since the 1970s, has worked in DARE (Dykes Against Racism Everywhere), Women Free Women in Prison, Women in Black (Boston), and other local political groups, and was a member of the National Feminist Task Force of New Jewish Agenda. She was a founding editor of two nationally distributed periodicals: Conditions, a lesbian-feminist literary magazine, and Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends. She is co-author, with Minnie Bruce Pratt and Barbara Smith, of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984).

(from http://www.amazon.com/Elly-Bulkin/e/B...)

Reviews

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those thrift store or garage sale finds...an anthology from 1980, this has some very good stories in it.

[Ren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book and its range of diverse voices within lesbian fiction. I wish I had read this sooner. Even after all these years, it’s relevant and beautiful today.

[Monique Scheidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

such an interesting collection of short stories that feel lightyears away from what lesbian life looks like today but at the same time, everything felt so familiar (like there is a story of a woman who moves into a beach house away from her life to escape the discourse of identity politics within the community LMAO)

My faves:
⭐️ No Day Too Long (VAMPIRES)
⭐️The Woman Who Loved the Moon

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great! An incredible collection. My favorites were:

Family Reunion by Diana Rivers
Thesis: Antithesis by Jan Clausen
A Case of Telemania by Ann Allen Shockley
A River of Names by Dorothy Allison
Present Danger by Judith McDaniel
The Woman Who Loved the Moon by Elizabeth A. Lynn
The Begginning by Audre Lorde

Reading this made me want to write. I always start writing long stories and never finish them, instead of writing completed short fiction, but reading these wonderful bite-sized stories inspired me. Hopefully, I can get at it!

Also, here are 2 quotes from Dian Rivers' story that I liked. Hers was probably my favorite, though Present Danger and The Woman Who Loved the Moon are also up there in my top 3.

But mostly Sheila finds it easy loving another woman. Even in their angriest fights there are some lines not crossed, some respect for the person that remains. She never feels that threat of annihilation at the core and realizes how often in fights with Tom it was not her ideas she was defending, not the correctness of what she was saying but her very survival, her right to existence. And even Ian that she lived with for a while at the commune. He'd been so different, a much gentler man, wanting peace in the world but when he was hurt he fought that same way. How do men learn that, the words to destroy with and more than that, the will to use them? Sheila can think quick enough of things to say but women are trained not to use words that way. It's castrating, that terrible word - castrating. And men have no such restraint. Women after all don't have balls, so men can say anything, words to crush the ego, the heart, the soul. Symbolic castration, words to break the spirit - the very thing women value in each other. (64)

AND

Women in New Orleans used to say - three sons? Why'd you have three sons? Why indeed, a feminist with three sons, as if she'd done it on purpose. Whart hurt was having no daughters to share her new life with. But these are my children and I love them. I carried each one in my body for nine months - alien seed. She remembers how they each had stopped being fluid and light, had hardened, solidified, moved away from her love. Josh had kept it the longest, that loose flowing quality of the new child. That was because he was part reptile. He was the one who caught frogs and toads and turtles and most of all snakes. Snakes that he carried in his pockets and up his sleeves, wore casually around his neck. Memories of her own childhood. She'd taught all thre of them about the woods. But Josh had gotten more of it. He was most hers, softhearted, cried easily - until it was beaten out of him, over years. And she'd had to watch helpless. That man's world has no place for a boy that cries. He's learned to toughen up. His brothers aren't ashamed of him anymore. He's with them now, part of that block of maleness, the old flowing rivers parched dry - cracked and hard. (66-7)

[Ocean · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm angry that i've never heard of this. a lot of these stories are a better example of the craft than the stories we were taught in school, but many of their authors remain obscure. this anthology is important. it came out the year before i was born. i found it at the san francisco public library.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I found in the Rochester Public Library before I really knew why I was looking, as I recall. So long ago now.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only a few stories worth the time to read them.