Inventing Ourselves by Hall Carpenter Archives; Lesbian Oral History Group

Fifteen gay women discuss their childhood, family life, work, friends, relationships, and involvement in political and social causes.

This is an entertaining, moving and revealing book which places lesbianism at the centre of a wider social history. It is an oral history and, as such, allows many stories and versions to be told; it opposes the idea of history as a seamless 'heritage'. Because the speakers deal with change, narratives unfold of cause and effect. The stories here cover time from the 1930s to 1987.