Except For One Little Problem by Joan Denson

Denson sheds light on what it was like to struggle with her sexuality as she grew up in the 50's & 60's- a time before lesbian chic, a time before women openly embraced their lesbianism.

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Joan Denson was the American Dream except for one little problem: she was a lesbian. This is a memoir of the girl-next-door who faces her homosexuality and finds herself unwelcome in her surroundings.
A child during WWII, the author came of age reading The Diary of Anne Frank. The memories of oppression and suffering of the innocent so captured her imagination that she struck up a friendship with Anne Frank's father and visited Anne's annex, where she found in her desire for Anne a hidden piece of herself.

By early adulthood Denson absorbed the culture of the fifties, an era famous for its 'loud events and quiet discontents.' With a husband and children, she coveted suburban bliss as much as the next girl. But something was amiss. That something came in the form of a lesbian experience that led her to realize what had been missing all along.

A precursor to the 'lipstick lesbian' the author, now a prominent Beverly Hills psychotherapist, recounts the struggles, joys, and humor of growing up homosexual in an era of repression. Her memoir provides a first-person account of the evolution of sexual mores over the last thirty years.