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Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement Marcia M. Gallo, 2006

Nearly fifteen years before the birth of gay liberation, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the world’s first organization committed to lesbian visibility and empowerment. Like its predominantly gay male counterpart, the Mattachine Society, DOB was launched in response to the oppressive anti-homosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply because of their sexual orientation. It was against this political backdrop that a circle of San Francisco lesbians formed a private club where lesbians could meet others in a safe, affirming setting. The small social group evolved over the next two decades into a national organization that counted more than a dozen chapters, and laid the foundation for today’s lesbian rights movement.

Different Daughters chronicles this movement and the women who fought the church and state in order to change not only our nation’s perception of homosexuality but how lesbians see themselves. Marcia Gallo has interviewed dozens of former DOB members, many of whom have never spoken on record. Through its leaders, magazine, and network of local chapters, DOB played a crucial role in creating lesbian identity, visibility, and political strategies in Cold War America. (GR)

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Frost in May Antonia White, 1933

Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient, and eager to please, she adapts to this cloistered world, learning rigid conformity and subjection to authority. Passionate friendships are the only deviation from her total obedience. Convent life is perfectly captured by Antonia White. (x)

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“‘I have been loved,’ she said, ‘by something strange, and it has forgotten me.’”

― Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

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And the derision of female lives does not stop with these toxic, ugly, insidious slanders because there is always, in every circumstance, the derision in its skeletal form, all bone, the meat stripped clean: she is pussy, cunt. Every other part of the body is cut away, severed, and there is left a thing, not human, an it, which is the funniest joke of all, an unending source of raucous humor to those who have done the cutting. The very butchers who cut up the meat and throw away the useless parts are the comedians. The paring down of a whole person to vagina and womb and then to a dismembered obscenity is their best and favorite joke.

-- Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (1983)

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Odd Girl Out [Beebo Brinker #1] Ann Bannon, 1957

In the 1950s, Ann Bannon broke through the shame and isolation typically portrayed in lesbian pulps, offering instead women characters who embraced their sexuality. With Odd Girl Out, Bannon introduces Laura Landon, whose love affair with her college roommate Beth launched the lesbian pulp fiction genre. (x)

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The Other Sappho Ellen Frye, 1989

Obscure Greek folklore inspires this novel about a young lesbian slave named Lykaina (“wolf-woman”). After her mistress instructs her to seek out the elegant Sappho and her famous school of poetry, Lykaina undertakes her own small odyssey from Sparta to the celebrated island of Lesbos. En route she meets Maia, a travel companion extraordinaire who initiates her into the worship of the Earth Mother. Once in Sappho's home, Lykaina thrives: “This is a palace of love. ... This is a land of poetry. Here I belong.” Eventually, however, she leaves the court, offended by the other poets' disdain for the less privileged. Lykaina returns to Maia, who urges her to recite for the country people so close to her heart. With Maia's patronage, the “other Sappho” evolves her own school of poetry. From descriptions of markets and clothing to expositions of women's love affairs and the art of verse, Frye (The Marble Threshing Floor: A Collection of Greek Folk Songs) shores up her imaginings with persuasive research. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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The Woman’s Bible Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1898

The Woman's Bible is a two-part non-fiction book, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 women, published in 1895 and 1898 to challenge the traditional position of religious orthodoxy that woman should be subservient to man. By producing the book, Stanton wished to promote a radical liberating theology, one that stressed self-development. The book attracted a great deal of controversy and antagonism at its introduction. (x)

Goodreads Link to PDFs (cornell.edu) OpenLibrary Project Gutenberg

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The Vintage Book of American Women Writers Elaine Showalter, 2011

The Vintage Book of American Women Writers is the first of its kind: a dazzling, monumental showcase of 350 years of poetry and fiction by American women. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage Elaine Showalter, 2001

Sure to take its place alongside the literary landmarks of modern feminism, Elaine Showalter's brilliant, provocative work chronicles the roles of feminist intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the present.

Focusing on paradigmatic figures ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller to Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag, preeminent scholar Elaine Showalter uncovers common themes and patterns of these women's lives across the centuries and discovers the feminist intellectual tradition they embodied. The author brilliantly illuminates the contributions of Eleanor Marx, Zora Neale Hurston, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and many more. (x)

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Sister’s Choice: Traditions and Change in American Women’s Writing Elaine Showalter, 1991

When Elaine Showalter's study of English women writers, A Literature of Their Own, appeared in 1977, Patricia M. Spacks hailed it in the New York Times Book Review as "provocative....thoughtfully argued," and certain to "generate fresh social and literary understanding." Now Showalter--who also edited the influential New Feminist Criticism (for which the New York Times Book Review found "cause to celebrate")--turns her critical insight to a wide range of American women authors in order to explore the diversity of our culture and question the concept of a single national literature or identity. After a lucid discussion of recent African-American, feminist, and post-colonial scholarship, Showalter provides provocative readings of classic and lesser-known women's writings. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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Speaking of Gender Elaine Showalter, 1989

Elaine Showalter has brought together influential essays by male and female critics dealing with such topics as the representation and effect of gender in literary criticism and interpretation. Among the contributors are: Barbara Johnson, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Sandra Gilbert and D.A. Miller. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980 Elaine Showalter, 1985

This incisive study explores how cultural ideas about proper feminine behavior have shaped the definition and treatment of madness in women as it traces trends in the psychiatric care of women in England from 1830-1980. (x)

Goodreads Mediafire PDF OpenLibrary

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A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing Elaine Showalter, 1976

Showalter is one of the few scholars who can make her readers rush to their bookshelves to refute her point, or simply to experience again Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, or the bitterly illuminating stories of Katherine Mansfield. Her chief innovation is to place the works of famous women writers beside those of the minor or forgotten, building a continuity of influence and inspiration as well as a more complete picture of the social conditions in which women's books have been produced. (x)

Goodreads Mediafire PDF OpenLibrary

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Women’s Liberation and Literature Elaine Showalter, 1971

Examples of fiction, poetry and drama dealing with the feminine experience and historical, psychological and sociological statements about women. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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Lesbian/Woman Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, 1972

Martin and Lyon describe their book as a subjective account of lesbianism. They try to recuperate the experiences of lesbians from what they see as the distortions of most medical and scientific accounts. They claim to have produced neither a true confession nor a scientific book, but one written from subjective experience. Rejecting the idea of objectivity and scientific neutrality, they affirm the book as partisan and argue that lesbians must speak in their own terms, not through those set out in the experts' frameworks.

The authors argue that a woman's sexual orientation as a political choice. They define a lesbian as "as a woman whose primary erotic, psychological, emotional and social interest is in a member of her own sex, even though that interest might not be overtly expressed." They believe that lesbian relationships are appealing because of the absence of clearly defined gender roles. (x)

Goodreads OpenLibrary

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her complete works (or most of them) are here. you can find some other pieces on my blog under her tag.

in my opinion, there’s no wrong place to start. i began chronologically with woman hating.

right-wing women is very topical right now.

i find her collections of speeches and essays are quite accessible and can be good for someone just getting into her writing—our blood, heartbreak, letters from a war zone.

pornography is a staple and if it’s not where you start it should at least be where you end

reading dworkin is always emotionally demanding for me—and that’s not a complaint—one of the things i fiercely love about her is that she refused to look away from the horror of women’s suffering, for her it was always real and immediate and never abstract or theoretical.

but i always budget lots of breaks when i’m reading her writing because it is hard on the heart. “it is an agony to be fully conscious ...”

i think dworkin is uniquely demonized not bc she was more radical than other radical feminists of her time and not bc she was a “super terf” (she was actually pretty pro-trans as she understood it, at least in some of her writings) but bc of how brilliant a writer she actually was. liberals are afraid of dworkin bc dworkin changes minds, bc it’s easy, it’s natural to be enamored with her thought. the only way they have to prevent this is by preventing you from reading her at all.

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Thank you so much for making this account by. I have learned so much.

sorry this is so late, somehow I missed this message in my inbox! I’m really pleased you’ve found it useful.

I’ve also learned a lot by making the blog and chatting to followers. everyone please feel free to message and inbox with opinions and feedback!

I’m not on all the time but I do check in regularly and I’m getting ready to fill the queue again.