Reading Across the Genres

May you hold hands with a cute girl!

Lisa Jenn Bigelow in Drum Roll, Please

Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman : Set in New York City in the 1990s, this novel centers around a friend group who’ve all faced rejection from their family and friends for coming out as gay now forming their own community and relationships with one another. These characters all have their own struggles apart from their relationships, David is HIV positive before some of the major breakthroughs in AIDS research and they all grapple with financial difficulties in an increasingly gentrifying area of NYC. Compared to the others on this list this is definitely not as happy a read, but one that shows the incredible solidarity between gay men and lesbians who’ve had to make their own families and support circles, especially at the peak of the AIDS crisis. (alternating POV between one gay man and two lesbians)

Stories of 1950s lesbians with happy endings are not exactly easy to come by, so rest assured that this is one of the few. There was a recent movie of the same title; I haven’t seen it but I know that others have said the movie has a completely different ending, so don’t let that deter you from picking up the book it’s based on. Lydia is an outsider in the small English town that her husband grew up in, especially now that her marriage of a decade is quickly dissolving. While Lydia’s husband is spending fewer nights at home, her ten-year-old son is making a friend in the local doctor, a woman with few friends but a lot of bees. Lydia already has the enmity of her sister-in-law and it doesn’t take long for rumors about her growing closeness with Jean to spread around their small factory town. If you were disappointed with the ending to Carol / The Price of Salt, you should definitely check this book out. It has similar themes around vacant husbands and struggles for child custody with a much more satisfying end (which isn’t a knock on The Price of Salt at all - I still loved the book and it’s amazing that it got published with its lesbians together in that time period). This book does start off a bit slow, it takes quite a while for Lydia and Jean to even become friends, let alone begin their relationship, but once they do it’s quite the testament to the lengths that lesbians of earlier times went to to express their love for one another. Read for happy lesbian endings and for a low-income mother getting a second chance at love after divorce in a time when both were disturbingly difficult.

I didn’t realize quite how little I know about the English Civil War until I started reading this book. I think I maybe heard Oliver Cromwell’s name mentioned once in AP World, but that’s about all I had got. Ruth Flowers is a servant in the home of Oliver Cromwell until the beginning of a round of witch hunts forces her to flee to London. With little to go on she ends in the home of Elizabeth Poole, a woman who would soon become a prophet testifying at the trial of a king. This novel depicts many of the horrors of the time period, from the mob mentality of the witch hunts to a deserting soldier clearly suffering from PTSD. Much of this book revolves around the politics of who’s currently in charge and how exactly to spread your opinions about them, which adds plenty of intrigue on top of Ruth’s growing closeness with her mistress. While Ruth’s character is imaginary, Lizzie’s is not. She’s a woman who dared to advocate for the rights of women in a time not only hostile to such ideas but ravaged by a civil war. There’s incredibly little information about her available, despite the fact that she published many treatises and appeared before Oliver Cromwell to oppose the execution of King Charles I. I love to read about forgotten women of history, so I thank this book for introducing me to yet another lost figure. However, let me just say that this book fell into some of the more tired tropes in wlw representation. Keep reading ahead if you don’t mind the spoilers. I found the ending of the book quite heart breaking but also poetically done as Lizzie made quite the statement on her way out and then.... I read the author’s note at the end. Elizabeth Poole is not in fact executed, but rather lives to a much older age. I was incredibly upset that the author chose to deviate from the character’s real fate and instead to show her punished for her opinions and sexuality. Why would Clements chose to kill a gay character whose real life counterpart lived a long life when “kill your gays” is one of the most prevalent harmful tropes in LGBT literature? I also had major issues with Ruth then ending the novel with a male character she had previously rejected because of his violent past. While I enjoyed the body of this novel, the end made me uncomfortable with its similarity to so many of the lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s and their mandated “death or heterosexuality” endings, especially given that this was the author’s invention rather than historical realism. 

Brigitte Bautista in Don’t Tell My Mother

Lucy has just been left by her long term girlfriend when she’s approached by an odd-mannered man with a strange proposition: move to Chicago and work for the government. She takes him up on it and joins an odd crew of grammatically-challenged scientists and a very few female employees. She’s pretty quick to find close lesbian friends even while working in the government during the peak years of the Lavender Scare. When unmarked packages containing lesbian pulp fiction titles start appearing on her desk, she begins to think she might be the next one out the door. Because there are so many lesbian characters in this book it’s a really interesting look at the many ways individuals responded to the persecutions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Some crumple, others are so paranoid to hide to the detriment of their relationships, and some know exactly who they are and what they want. In general the people that Lucy meets are understanding, slowly learning to accept a woman editing their papers and pointing out mathematical errors and, for some of them, learning of and accepting the fact that she only loves women. My favorite part was after reading this novel, where Bledsoe goes through in much more detail about her process in finding out information about her aunt and where exactly the gaps that she filled were. I’d hope that the original Lucy Bledsoe would be happy that lesbians today are able to read her story and find some joy in her unwillingness to cave to a loveless marriage or a lie. 

Dipali comes from a highly traditional family, but she got lucky with a caring husband; one who’s suddenly lost in the 1992 Mumbai religious riots. Now her family expects her to accept a joyless widowhood and her domineering brother is happy to consign her to watching over their ailing mother. Far away in Calcutta, Moushumi falls in love with a high society woman, a relationship that is not founded on equality but which teaches Moushumi exactly who she is: a lesbian. An unexpected friendship between the two gives each of them the power to defy the societal norms they’ve been raised with and the support to arrange their own lives. I really love novels like this, where a lesbian woman’s growth is paralleled with a straight woman defying expectations in her own way. I found quite interesting Dipali’s conversations with Moushumi where she compares how widows and lesbians are treated in Indian society, how both are on the outside for not having a man in their lives. I also really liked that for the most part Dipali and Moushumi’s stories are timeless, but woven in are occasional scenes that tie the novel to the ‘90s. There are references throughout to the religious violence across the country during this period as well as the arson of several movie theaters for playing a lesbian movie, which I’m relatively sure is supposed to reference Deepa Mehta’s Fire. To get back on track, the alternating perspectives played off of each other quite well and I’m glad that these two had each other to push towards a more empowered future. At times this book feels more like a narrative than a novel; the character’s emotions are explicitly spelled out on the page rather than detailed through their actions. It was a bit inconsistent because at other times Bhattacharya does a beautiful job giving so much life to the two women, especially in their scenes together. All in all, if you like women living their authentic lives, you’ll like this book.

I’m a bit late (as usual) but I wanted to make sure to wish everyone a good Passover! I hope you’re all surrounded by people who are loving and supportive, but if not, you’re so strong and will one day have your own family/found family to celebrate with!  👩‍❤️‍👩✡👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

And they link to reviews over on my blog, if you want a little more info before checking the books out. I’m doing my best to add to this as quickly as I can read, but I hope you all find it useful (or at least worth the click)!

Brigitte Bautista in Don’t Tell My Mother

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta : This is one of my favorite books and easily one of the most satisfying endings I’ve read, but I will preface it by saying there is a good amount of very violent homophobia throughout that makes it a difficult read. Beginning with the Nigerian Civil War, Ijeoma is sent away to live with another family where she falls in love with another girl. This book stands as a testament to the futility of trying to change sexuality, set in a country that criminalizes same-sex love. Ijeoma is faced with so much pressure to continue to be a societal success story, even as it’s clear she’s incapable of being fully happy with the man she’s married. It’s also a rarity to see a character come from religious-based disgust of homosexuality to acceptance of a loved one, and it’s part of what made the end of this book so deeply satisfying. Be warned that it doesn’t shy away from the ugly and violent end of homophobia, but it’s a book with a happy ending in an era and region where lesbians often find those hard to come by.