I just read an interesting historical tit-bit in the book Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, by David Carter. The name of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, NYC, goes back to a lesbian book titled The Stone Wall, the (fictionalized) autobiography of “Mary Casal” published in 1930. In the same year, a “notorious” lesbian tearoom was opened in the Village and named Bonnie’s Stone Wall. Carter believes the choice of name was meant as a signal to lesbians, because of the book title. But by the 1940s Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn changed its character and its lesbian origins were forgotten. It became a more ordinary restaurant that hosted wedding banquets and even policemen. It didn’t go queer again until the 1960s.
She works well as a role model. In addition to being a good writer (even bitchy old Gore Vidal praised her work), she risked her life many times as a nurse in WW2 and was a very outspoken anti-Apartheid activist in South Africa in the 60s and 70s.
Sampiro, as soon as your post above made me start digging, I went and ordered Renault’s novel The Middle Mist (title of the U.S. edition of The Friendly Young Ladies). See how a seemingly casual offhand remark can directly affect someone else’s life. Mary, I think this is the continuation of a beautiful friendship.
The main characters in Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith are lesbians. Not surprising, since I found it in the Lesbian section of the bookstore, but the bookstore I used to work in had Ms. Waters’ books in the general fiction section.
Errmm . . . well . . .
cough
Look, when two guys say that . . .
Ahh – you already covered that possibility, didn’t you, Sam? My bad.
In S.M. Stirling’s Nantucket trilogy there is a prominent lesbian character, Marian Alston. She’s a Coast Guard captain, caught up, with ship and crew, with the rest of the Islanders in the Event.
Robinson Crusoe’s first description of Friday always stuck me as the gayest thing since queer came to Homoville.
May I congratulate you on your excellent taste in alternative-history belles-lettres. (Hint: Post #34 above)
I believe Melissa Scott’s Trouble of Trouble and Her Friends is a bisexual woman, and I’m sure a gay male couple in a BDSM-based relationship show up in another of her books, but I can’t remember more than that. It might not even have been her, actually, though Trouble surely is.
In David Eddings Tamuli trilogy, the Atana slave Mirtai belonged to a gay man when she was a teenager. He used her as a “beard” and unobtrusive bodyguard; when he was betrayed and killed by his lover for another man, she gutted them, tied them to chairs facing each other, then set the house on fire around them.
It’s my speculation that Mrs. Danvers had a lesbian affair, or at the very least, an unrequited love for her mistress, Rebecca de Winter.
I thought I was the only person to ever read that book! Read it 20 some years ago, fell in love with Malone of course.
Ashley Wilkes? What about Rhett Butler? Here’s a overly macho man who notices all the latest details in Paris fashions, pursues a woman who clearly doesn’t want him, endures a sexless marriage, and leaves when his wife admits to loving him and wanting to have his children?
How gay is that?
Don’t forget that the woman he marries is the ultimate drama queen!
Wow, I can’t believe I’m the first one to mention this, but there is an excellent (if little known) book by Marion Zimmer Bradley titled The Catch Trap.
The book is about circus life (specifically trapeeze artists) in the 1940’s/1950’s and the two main characters are gay.
The book has some of the “uneven writing” problems that MZB occasionally has, but it is probably one of the best books I’ve EVER read…and I’ve read a lot. (This is desert island good, IMO.)
Gary Jennings’ historical novel Raptor (set in Europe during the last century of the Western Roman Empire) is the only book I’ve ever read with a hermaphrodite protagonist. (And sexually active both ways.)
Startled by the absence of what I thought was the prototypical gay novel: [The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren.
I read whatever gay youth stuff I could get my hands on when I was one, and one that I most fondly remember discovering was [url=“http://www.lambdarising.com/NASApp/store/Search;jsessionid=a1I16dcs2FAc”]Entries from a Hot Pink Notebook](http://www.lambdarising.com/NASApp/store/Product;jsessionid=a1I16dcs2FAc?s=showproduct&isbn=0964109964) by Todd D. Brown.
There’s a burgeoning gay literature field (well, as burgeoning as any field of literature can be in this postliterate age); I was pleased to discover a wild field of gay novels when I was in Spain, including the book I’m translating, Yo también lo sé by Alberto Ciáurriz. I had the opportunity to meet him while I was in Spain and to read his other works, one of which became a best-seller across Spain, including in the mainstream press: El gran salto.
There’s also tons of fabulous gay and lesbian comic collections out there, some of whose leading lights include Alison Bechdel, Diane DiMassa, and Iván Vélez Jr.. I also discovered some great ones while I was in Spain, such as Sebás Martín.
There’s Faggots by Larry Kramer – according to the Amazon review, “perhaps the most reviled novel in the gay literary canon.” http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802136915/qid=1135455308/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-9291609-1967151?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
The novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was a bestseller and prizewinner two years ago and has a hermaphrodite main character. The character, like most hermaphrodites, only has the visible sexual attributes of one gender, however.
After fourteen years as a girl it is discovered that the main character is biologically a boy whose testicles are internal and who has phalloplasty to create a penis. Totally worth reading if you’re at all interested in the subject as it’s probably the best researched book on the subject of hermaphroditism out there.