Ruby

by Rosa Guy

Ruby Cathy
—Eighteen and desperately lonely, she has adjusted from a life in the sun and blue seas of the West Indies to the mean, crowded streets of Harlem. Her mother is dead, and her father is obsessed with the American passion to succeed. Ruby makes the painful transition from girl to woman when she meets the beautiful and bitter Daphne.

Daphne Duprey —
She prides herself on always being "cool, calm, collected, poised, sophisticated, cultured, and refined." Ruby is drawn to this girl,who, in Ruby's eyes, is everything she is not. They fill the aching emptiness in each other, love each other, despite the shared knowledge that their happines will end as abruptly as it began.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Lesbian, Romance, African American

183 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1976

About the author

Rosa Cuthbert Guy (1925-2012) was an American writer.

Born in Trinidad, Rosa Guy moved to the United States with her family at the age of seven, where they settled in New York in 1932. Soon after, her parents, Henry and Audrey Cuthbert, died. After, she and her sister went to many foster homes. She quit school at age fourteen and took a job to help support her family.

During World War II she joined the American Negro Theatre. She studied theatre and writing at the University of New York.

Guy wrote a number of books aimed at young adults. Many of her books reflect on the dependability of family members who love and care for one other. Her works include: Bird at My Window (1966), Children of Longing (1971), The Friends (1973), Ruby (1976), Edith Jackson (1978), The Disappearance (1979), Mirror of Her Own (1981), A Measure of Time (1983), and New Guys Around the Block (1983), Paris, Pee Wee and Big Dog (1984), My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl (1985), And I Heard a Bird Sing (1987).

She is divorced from Warner Guy, with whom she had a son, Warner Guy Jr.

Reviews

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

since it's supposedly the first sapphic YA novel ever published, it's a shame that ruby is relatively unknown. we can probably chalk that up to the black protagonists and black author, and pervasive erasures of BIPOC stories.

while the book is very much of its time (1976), it's stylistically on par with other YA novels of the 70s and 80s, and it's an important milestone in the development of lgbt+ YA lit. also, it's a really sweet and complex coming of age story. it's a story of first love and of family bonds (steadfast and at times restrictive).

the book is set in 1970 NYC, and follows 18 year old ruby, who lives with her younger sister phylisisa and her overprotective father, who is from trinidad. ruby falls for daphne, the tall, brazen, super smart young revolutionary who prides herself on being "cool, calm, collected, poised, sophisticated, cultured, and refined."

‣ the historical component makes this book a really interesting slice of life. NYC in the 70s was another world! the book also doesn't shy away from politics and includes many discussions of black liberation, which makes sense because rosa guy was an outspoken black nationalist.

‣ stalking your crush to find out where she lives, then showing up at her place just to say hi... very sapphic.

‣ one of the highlights of the book is ruby and phylisia's sisterhood. the love/hate closeness, and deep responsibility to one another despite frequent irritation with one another, is perfectly portrayed!

‣ the tender secret love affair is sweet while it lasts. "The house was a house of intrigue. Secrets, whispers, eye signals, tiptoing, the silent opening and closing of doors, creaking floors as Daphne came and went, Locked doors, silent laughter, snickering, whispered discussions, planning, reading, and lovemaking." pure teenage love!

‣ ruby's overbearing father seems semi-understandable until the scene where he catches her out where she isn't supposed to be, and he downright beats her in the street? not even for being gay, but for deceiving him?? and to make matters worse, it's played off as almost normal, and daphne is the only person in the book who is disturbed by this.

‣ love interest daphne herself is downright mean, and never takes the time to understand ruby on a deeper level. there is tenderness in their relationship, but ruby is always the one who loves more deeply.

‣ daphne's mother, a light skinned black woman who spends her time out on the town, is a super interesting character. daphne says of her, "She wanted to be a woman-libber but has to settle for being a liberated black. She's bitter."

‣ ruby's eventual heartbreak is a painful pulsing living thing, just like any first heartbreak. "She tasted the ashes of her love, thick on the back of her tongue. How can I let her go? I shall never let her go."

‣ in the end, daphne breaks ruby's heart, and ruby tries to jump off her apartment building's roof. her father stops her, and while he is humbled to tears (a rare occurrence), there is no conversation stemming from the suicide attempt. no one in the book really knows how to communicate on a deep level. and of course it's always a challenge to be vulnerable, but they all act as though it's normal not to have deep conversations... perhaps another way the story is of its time?

‣ as ruby recovers, there's a suggestion of a boy coming over, a glimmer of hope for compulsory heterosexuality to bring her on a new path. very disappointing, but it's vague and open enough that i don't think it undoes the sapphic representation up to this point.

[Briony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! The beginning of this book was enjoyable enough, but let me tell you, by the end, I just had to keep reading to find out what happened to all the characters! This was a touching and real exploration of Ruby's own discovery of her sexuality, and who she is as a person. All the characters were so real - all flawed, all human, and I actually could emphathise with all of them, even Ruby's father (believe me, I surprised myself by feeling sorry for him by the end). The writing style, or editing, isn't the absolute best it could be, but the feeling of the novel is right on the money. I felt everything that Ruby did (damn, those last few chapters though!!) Definitely worth hunting down a copy of this old, obscure classic :)

[Siena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably closer to 3.5. This is the first lesbian YA novel, so it's shocking to me that it's kind of faded into obscurity. It was really difficult to read Ruby and Daphne's relationship, which verged on a toxic co-dependency, and the writing was a bit overstuffed with purple prose. However, I found Ruby's struggles to be sympathetic and her sister Phyllisia endearing, and really enjoyed hearing the voices of young WOC in 70s Harlem.

[Karen Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating novel about a young woman's budding sexuality and the dynamics of her immigrant family. Ruby, the protagonist, is the older sister of Phyllisia, the protagonist of Guy's The Friends, another fine YA book. Guy is somewhat fearless in her wonderful characterization of Ruby, who has her strengths but is instinctual, innocent, and not given to thinking things through. That makes for some problems in her romantic, sexual relationship with the intellectual, sophisticated Daphne. Ruby is also unwilling to express herself with her strict, traditional father, which generates conflict. From the mid 1970s, the novel emerged during a renaissance in black women's writing, which included children's and YA literature (e.g., Lucille Clifton's Everett Anderson books and June Jordan's His Own Where), in addition to the early works of Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara.

[Sonia Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosa Guy was an important writer who explored the lives and experiences of black youth with great depth and sensitivity. I learned of Guy in my early research of black women authors and the Harlem Writers Guild in which she was a founding member. Many of her books are out-of-print but Just Us Books has an unwavering commitment to Guy's novels.

I had the opportunity to read Guy's novel, Ruby. First published in 1976, she tackles such subjects as sexuality, parental loss, peer pressure, white racism, familial strife, black empowerment, and immigration. What makes this novel particularly interesting for its time period is that the protagonist Ruby pursues a lesbian relationship with her classmate name Daphne. During the 1970s, women in the United States were becoming very radical in their fight for equal rights in society and asserting their personal autonomy. Same gender loving was considered taboo, immoral. Ruby is a smart, sensitive yet passionate Caribbean immigrant teenager who struggles to feel validated by her father Calvin and sister Phyllisia and make sense of her position in high school and local Harlem community. Ruby's mother died from breast cancer. Calvin's strict control and life values alienates her within their home. Daphne becomes the 'catalyst' for Ruby to think about her status as an immigrant, high school student, young adult, and black female in American society. Ruby allows herself to be sexually and emotionally vulnerable to the intellectualized and autonomous Daphne. However, Ruby's sense of self and personal choices become muddied by her dependence on Daphne. There are moments in the novel where Ruby's conflicted emotions become melodramatic and Daphne's verbal antics a little redundant. Overall, I think Guy wanted to bring awareness to black youth of the LGBT community who struggled to reconcile their sexual identity. The novel Ruby reminds me of another young adult novel by Alice Childress entitled Those Other People which chronicles a black male teenager who is having a hard time dealing with his homosexuality.

Rosa Guy like other conscious-raising black women authors like Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Childress, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ann Petry, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and Alice Childress have done the critical work of addressing societal ills impacting black people. They directly address issues of racism, sexism, silencing, and poverty in unflinching, realistic ways. I encourage readers to explore Rosa Guy's novels.

[Nascha · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a native New Yorker, and Harlemite, this book brings back so many fond memories of my growing up in Harlem, New York in the 1980s.

I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen years old. I was in high school and as an only child, I'd often experienced the loneliness that Ruby felt. I immediately identified with her character. Daphne DuPrey is an intriguing character, someone that you would want to know and know about. You learn about Ruby as she learns more about herself and about Daphne as Ruby learns about her.

It is a wonderful coming of age story. Though it deals with a lesbian romance, I don't think it's the primary focus of the book. The fact that it is a same-sex relationship, that is. I think it's more about a young woman coming to terms with who she is as a person and being free to be herself.

I highly recommend it.

[Amy! · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, I don't really like stuff written in the 70's (or earlier). The style just doesn't jive with me.

The basic story here is good, all about first love featuring WOC, unfortunately, due, I think, to the time when this was written, both girls end up looking like they're going to be in hetero relationships.

[Angélique (Angel) · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first chapters of this book, I knew two things for certain.

First, I knew that I adored the character of Ruby. Her emotional intensity and melodrama, her obsessiveness and ignorance, her loneliness and need - all of these things reminded me so much of my teenage self and my teenage writing that I loved her immediately. It felt especially refreshing to resonate so strongly with a main character after the last novel I finished.

Second, I knew that my final rating of this book would depend heavily on how it ended. While I spent most of the book rating it a 3.75, the emotional and mental impact of the final chapter bumped it up to 4 stars for me. I couldn’t help thinking as I read it that this was the kind of uncomfortable, authentic sapphic storytelling I had hoped for when I read Lies We Tell Ourselves years ago. There’s a bitterness to the ending but there’s also something necessary there, like medicine. I felt like it forced me to really sit with what the choices Daphne and Ruby made said about love, about human relationships, about intimacy, about identity, about growth, about society. I appreciated the way it lingered in my heart and mind after I finished.

While I immediately had an affinity for Ruby, I saw parts of myself in Daphne too (especially her teenage arrogance and need to be right). I saw parts of my first relationship in both of them as well, so it made sense to me that Ruby’s low self-worth and inability to choose growth and Daphne’s beliefs about the world and her need to remain emotionally unaffected would be a large part of their relationship ending and their openness to consider dating boys once again. Unlike several other readers, I didn’t read these choices as wins for compulsory heterosexuality but as evidence of the emotional immaturity of both girls and as authentic portrayals of the ways we, especially multisexual/bisexual+ folks, have been taught to cut parts of ourselves off to protect ourselves from our desires or fears. The ending scenes with Calvin also really resonated with me, helped me see his character in a fuller light, and felt painfully true to my experience growing up with a mental illness in a Black household in some ways (and I would definitely argue that Ruby is likely mentally ill and needs a good Black therapist in her life).

All in all, I’m grateful for this first known sapphic YA novel. While I’m not sure teens today would enjoy the 70s style, I enjoyed this book much more than expected and feel like it helped me process some things from my own sapphic relationships while also being thoughtful and fun at various parts. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the other two books in this loose trilogy so I can learn more about some of the other young women in this world Guy created. (And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone will adapt this book into a mini-series or a play someday because it deserves it.)

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book in which teens talk like literally no one ever in the history of spoken language has ever talked. Where the sex is signified by a red light and so heavily coded that I think I missed it in spots. Where the protagonist, Ruby, behaves totally inappropriately towards her father and sister (kissing on lips, spooning, treating them like romantic partners rather than as father and sister.

Overall...a slightly strange book. I did find the sister to be great, and the Miss Effie stuff was at least amusing in its weirdness.

[Imani406 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️’s. I really enjoyed this story & kind of went into it blind sided which made it better. It was a rather quick read. Very relatable. I didn’t her a sense of place in this novel. It takes place in Harlem but it had little to no description of setting. Also there were many grammatical errors which sometimes made it difficult to read especially when the characters spoke in dialect. Despite those 2 cons, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book & look forward to reading more by this author.

[Bijou Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad I discovered Rosa Guy's work. I love these characters more than I did in The Friends. Yes, even Calvin.

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ruby is a high school-aged Black girl from the West Indies, which gives her a different experience than the African-Americans in her age group in her new home of Harlem. It's a coming-of-age story and she experiences relationships with boys (referenced as past experiences and presumed for the future) and a girl (a main plotline), Daphne. She has a fraught relationship with her activist, bookish sister, Phyllisia, and is submissive to the whims of her father, Calvin, who terrorizes the girls. Plus, she and the people around her are struggling with racism and activism.

But what we have is the realism and complications as they apply to Ruby, a West Indies teen girl investing in a sometimes toxic relationship with an African-American girl. In considering if this adds to the literature on marginalized communities, it helps that Ruby is caught in the intersectionality of being Caribbean Black, lesbian (or bisexual), and motherless. She faces broad discrimination by virtue of skin color (Miss Gottlieb is unrelenting) and by not conforming to the understandings Black students in Harlem have developed about their resistance to White domination (she’s referred to as an Uncle Tom for giving Miss Gottlieb the courtesy she was raised to give to her elders). Daphne alternately loves her and hates her for this (the story thrives on a dominant/submissive relationship), toying with Ruby’s devotion, but also rising as Ruby’s savior at times.

I understand this was an early attempt to place a young woman of color in a same-gender relationship, and I respect Rosa Guy for bravely pushing the envelope of the era. However, if it’s the only thing a young woman (of any color) can lay her hands to see her experience reflected, I think the relationship can be damaging and suggestive that Black lesbians have to “settle.” This concern differs from the discussions other have had about Kuklin's Beyond Magenta in that--I’ll emphasize again--this was published at a time when the Western literary world was missing these stories, so there is no room for additional literary comparison. We can criticize the portrayal of experiences in Kuklin’s book, but the youth of 1976 had a relative void for reflection.

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you know that this was the first lesbian YA novel*? (In the U.S. or in English, I'm assuming.) And I would have been impressed, too, for how well the lesbian relationship is treated for 1976, if it weren't for the last page. Ugh, compulsory heterosexuality. Oh well. It turns out this is the second book in a trilogy, and the first book is about Ruby's sister — one of my favorite characters in the book: a bookworm who stands up to her abusive father — and the third is about her best friend, so I'm looking forward to reading those, which, if devoid of lesbian characters, will at least be very critical when it comes to race and class, since Rosa Guy was involved in black nationalist and other civil rights movements and you can see those politics in her fiction.

*It's also the first lesbian or gay YA novel to feature a non-white protagonist.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great opening, brilliant ending, patchy middle.

This is a YA book about Black lesbian teenage love -- however there are many differences between Ruby the main character and Daphne, her girlfriend. Cultural background, family life, values, goals -- a sense of self.

This is more of a 5. I found parts of it to be really didactic--which I dislike--but I think it would have been a very special discovery if you were young lesbian/bi Black woman back then and even now!

I was interested in the dominant/submissive relationship between Ruby and Daphne, and I think it's good to acknowledge that there can be a lot of complex dynamics between teenage women -- that words like codependency aim to pathologise -- without being misogynistic about it.

Definitely worth a read though.

[Natasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good read throughout, although the language used at some parts was a bit heavy for my liking. I did struggle to keep my interest going during most conversations between Ruby and Daphne because they mostly had 'intellectual' banter on issues such as politics and the like (not really my cuppa tea).

I liked the development of all the characters; my favourite has got to be Ruby's father. The portrayal of his character is realistic. He almost reminds me of my own father. It's a good read, although a little draggy at some parts. I do have to admit that I felt a stab of annoyance at whatever was disclosed on the last page, although it doesn't alter the storyline in any way. I guess the author just had to!

[Imjustme · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love even like this book, I really did but...it just fell flat to me. Some of the language was a struggle but that was because teh book was written at another time. It's hard to like the main character Ruby because she was so needy, dependent, and childesh even though she's 18. I felt that throughout the whole story she didn't grow at all, in fact she became even more dependent at the end of book. In the end I was annoyed by her and her father.

[D.k. Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book I read in high school. This book helped me to understand the feelings I was developing and to put a name to them. It's sort of a coming of age story of a young and somewhat naive girl. West High School media center got me through some tough times.

[Lisa]

Read ??/??/??

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Christ, it was terrifying. It was glorious and beautiful and mind altering. Truly fantastic.