A Humming Under My Feet by Barbara Deming

The first chapter of this lesbian story was written in 1952, when Barbara Deming relates her experience of travelling in Europe in the early 1950s, and discovering many things about herself and her women friends who were struggling to make lives for themselves, and especially her love for her friend and travelling companion, Carlotta. These discoveries were triggered off for her by her feelings on visiting the matriarchal sites of Greece, where she experiences the force of women’s history quite literally as a humming under her feet. However, the friends to whom she showed this chapter and notes for the rest of the book, were embarrassed by it, and suggested that, if she must write it, it should be in the third person, with more humour... She left it alone until finding it again in 1971, when she felt compelled to complete it, which she did in 1984, shortly before her death. Barbara Deming was America’s foremost writer on women and peace, feminism and non-violence, and this book is both a gentle and powerful story of love and discovery.