In 1983, a Mohawk lesbian writer named Beth Brant edited A Gathering of Spirit, a special issue of the lesbian feminist journal Sinister Wisdom. It collected writing and art by Native women from across North America, and it became one of the first anthologies of its kind. Plenty of Indigenous women writers who are now … Read more
In August 2012, a lot of people were suddenly paying attention to women’s sports. The London Olympics had just wrapped, and the US women’s soccer team had won gold at Wembley with Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe on the roster. (If you’ve ever mixed those two up, no judgment. It happens to the best of … Read more
There’s a particular kind of grief that comes with an aging dog. You know the end is coming, you can see it in how slowly they get up in the morning, and you hold on tighter every day. Now add a divorce and the death of someone you love to that, all in the same … Read more
Most poetry collections are organized by theme or mood. Belinda Betker’s Phases is organized like a life. It starts with a girl at her grandfather’s funeral and ends with a drag king tearing up the stage, and everything in between follows one woman’s slow, sometimes painful route to herself. Coteau Books published it in 2019, … Read more
Here’s how Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons opens: “A carafe, that is a blind glass.” Go ahead and read it again. It doesn’t help. A carafe isn’t a blind glass, and if it is, what does that mean? Stein keeps going like this for the whole book, which first appeared in 1914. She describes objects, food … Read more
“We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock … Read more
“There are two things you should never do with your father: learn how to drive and learn how to kill a chicken.” ― Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Here is the official-type book review of Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter: Before chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton opened … Read more
“What do you do when you love your farm… but it doesn’t love you?” That’s the question Catherine Friend asks at the start of Sheepish, and anyone who has ever loved a house, a job or a relationship that kept breaking their heart will recognize it. Swap “farm” for almost anything and it still works. … Read more
Here’s a question that makes some city-dwelling queers uncomfortable: what if the most interesting LGBT stories in America aren’t happening in New York or San Francisco at all? Samantha Allen set out to find out. The result is Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, published by Little, Brown in 2019. Allen, a journalist … Read more
“The real question is: why would a person rather have an enemy than a conversation? Why would they rather see themselves as harassed and transgressed instead of having a conversation that would reveal them as an equal participant in creating conflict? There should be a relief in realizing one is not being persecuted, but actually, … Read more