THE LESBIAN EDITION
OF BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR
February 2004
Volume 1 Number 4

In this issue…
NEWS
- Publisher News
- Live from Amazon
- Awards
- Writing Wanted
- Sexism at NYT Book Review
BOOKS
- Find of the Issue
- Short Reads
- Love, Sex, and Romance
- Weddings & Marriage Law
- Lives
- Fiction & Science Fiction
- Briefs
- Periodicals
- What They Are Reading
- The Crime Scene
Books reviewed in this issue -->
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Welcome to TLE #4.
This issue starts with news of lesbian publishers and feminist
bookstores, then moves into the Find of the Month, Fiction, Lives,
and takes a quick look at sex and romance and Gay Marriage books,
before checking in to see what they’re reading at the Toronto Women’s
Bookstore and The Crime Scene Short stories and essay collections –
perfect for people who are “too busy to read” – are a sturdy
sub-theme running throughout the issue. The scoop on the current
batch of literary awards (Lammy nominations, the Stonewall Awards,
and a couple more) – and a little commentary – follow the book
columns. This issue also premieres our new feature, “What Are You
Reading?” a question BTWOF is likely to ask whenever we encounter
book people. Last – and perhaps least – the non-news that The New
York Times Book Review covers almost three times more books by men
than by women 
On the tech side, the innovation this issue is a link to a Super
Printer-Friendly/Plain Text version for people whose printers can’t
handle the lightly-formatted (but much more aesthetically pleasing)
Printer-Friendly version. You’ll find both immediately below the
table of contents. This issue also features click-through pages for
the Lambda Literary Awards short list and for the complete list of
all the books nominated. If you’re printing this issue out to read
off-line, you might want to click up to the Table of Contents, then
click to the Lambda Lit Shortlist and the Nominations list and print
them out as well. There’s a lot of wonderful reading in those lists,
and we encourage you to check them out.
Yours in spreading the words,
Carol Seajay

NEW LESBIAN PRESSES
BYWATER BOOKS
Building on a friendship that evolved from years of working together,
mystery writer J. M. (Jean) Redmann, novelist Marianne K. Martin, and
publisher/bookseller Kelly Smith are launching a new lesbian
publishing company, Bywater Books. Their Fall list will include Under
the Witness Tree, a new novel by Martin, and a reprint of Redmann’s
third Micky Knight mystery, The Intersection of Law and Desire. I’m
not at liberty to tell you what they have lined up for 2005, but it
looks great .
Bywater’s priorities are to publish well-written commercial fiction
for lesbians and other discerning readers, to nurture emerging and
established writers, to build community, to operate with extreme
fiscal responsibility, and to have a rollicking good time. Bywater,
by the way, is a neighborhood in New Orleans, “probably the
neighborhood where Micky Knight lives.”
And, yes, they are looking for additional titles. Check out the web
site for submission guidelines.
Consortium will distribute Bywater titles. Bywater Books, PO Box
3671, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3671; email: Bywaterbooks@aol.com -->
mailto:Bywaterbooks@aol.com. Watch for their forthcoming web site at
www.Bywaterbooks.com.
BELLA BOOKS
Bella Books, the heir to the Naiad Press publishing dynasty, is back
on track and on schedule with an awesome 39-book publishing schedule
for 2004. “That’s two new books and a reprint every month, plus a few
irresistible additions,” proud Bella publisher Linda Hill points out.
Bella is also launching a new series, Bella After Dark (BAD),
featuring books that are a bit edgier and offer more risqué sexual
adventures than fit Naiad’s strictly vanilla, implement-free
tradition. The first title in the series, BACK TO BASICS: A
BUTCH-FEMME ANTHOLOGY edited by Therese Szymanski, will be published
later this month.
The Bella team is now Linda Hill, Terese Orban, and, staffing the
Havana, Florida office, Becky Arbogast and Stefy Bau.
www.BellaBooks.com.

LIVE FROM AMAZON
Amazon – that’s the original Amazon Bookstore, thank you very much,
not the online imposter – has streaming video on their web site. I
think that’s a first for women’s bookstores. Amazon is moving to a
great new (and more affordable) space two blocks from their current
location but in a very up-and-coming little shopping district with
some great restaurants, a movie theater, gift shops, and lots of foot
traffic. Of course moving takes cash and, if Amazon was rolling in it
they wouldn’t be moving, so the video is a fundraising appeal for
donations to help cover the moving costs.
Kudos to the Amazon volunteers who made this, the oldest feminist
bookstore in the US, the first in this techno-innovation. Check it
out at http://www.fourthcanyon.com/kate/bookstore/amazon4.mov. More
details on Amazon’s Web site --> http://www.amazonfembks.com/.


 FIND OF THE MONTH
 OK, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit, before I review
this book, that I spent many a childhood Sunday in Three Rivers,
Michigan, visiting my (great) aunt and uncle, Grandma Van Horne, and
crushing out on my bad-girl, older cousin, Sherry. Having abandoned
all of that for the queer left-coast decades ago, I still suspect
that there is a deep current of humor running through, oh, say, the
greater Mississippi River valley, that is inaccessible to those
raised on either coast. I hope not. I wouldn’t wish anyone to be
deprived of the laugh-out-loud humor of Cheryl Peck’s FAT GIRLS AND
LAWN CHAIRS. It’s nothing serious – just a series of short vignettes
– addressing the everyday realities of life, growing up in a family
where children are routinely sacrificed to protect flowers from
escaped cows, and, of course, the dangers of lawn chairs. Warner
Books is touting Peck as “the new female David Sedaris” and a “gay
Erma Brombeck”, but she’s neither – she’s Cheryl Peck, slicing life
down to manageable bites and giving us the drama and humor of daily
life. Not that she treads lightly over things that need to be said,
mind you. She has more than a few bones to pick and her aim, when she
throws them, is all any athletically inclined dyke could wish for.
Maybe it’s a Three Rivers thing, but she makes me laugh and nod even
when I disagree with her. Or maybe it’s just that the purple-wigged
cat on the cover sets you up for the ride. In any case, move over
Ellen, move over Lily, move over Kate, and make room for Cheryl: We
need this midwestern poignancy to round out our laughter. Originally
published by Flower Press, the home of that ecological (and lesbian)
classic of vermicomposting, Worms Eat My Garbage, Warner picked it
up, cover and all, and stands ready to make a killing on one
supersized dyke’s take on life in Three Rivers, Michigan. Give it to
your sweetie, give it to your Mom for Mother’s Day. Save it for
yourself for a rainy day. $12.95. Warner Books
CHERYL PECK ON GYM LIFE:
It happened again this morning. I was sitting there, half-naked on a
bench when a fellow exerciser leaned over and said, “I just wanted to
tell you – I admire you for coming here every day. You give me
inspiration to keep coming myself.”
“Here” is the gym.
I have become an inspirational goddess.
In a gym.
I grinned at the very image of it: here is this woman who probably
imagines herself to be overweight – or perhaps she is overweight, she
is just not in my weight division – sitting on the edge of her bed in
the morning, thinking to herself, ‘There is that woman at the gym who
is twenty years older than I am and has three extra people tucked
under her skin, and she manages to drag herself to the gym every day
. . . ‘
“It is not my goal here to be unkind to myself or to others. Perhaps
I am an inspiration to her because I am easily three times her size
and I take my clothes off in front of other women. Being fat and
naked in front of other women is an act of courage. . . .
From “Queen of the Gym”
AND ON PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL – FOR EITHER GENDER:
Girls don’t learn the difference between personal victory and team
victory or personal loss and team loss. Girls learned that if you
don’t do it yourself, it doesn’t get done. Girls were never asked to
fight the war in Vietnam or in any other war. But if they had been,
girls would have won. Girls would have felt guilty for not winning it
sooner, and girls would have restored all of the roads, rebuilt all
of the bombed homes, adopted all of the orphans, established daycare
centers, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters, and girls
would have processed endlessly what we could have done to have
prevented war and what we still can do to prevent it from happening
again.
From “The Southwest Michigan Jaguars”


SHORT READING
For more good reads by and about fat women, check out Susan
Koppelman’s latest anthology, THE STRANGE HISTORY OF SUZANNE LAFLESHE
AND OTHER STORIES OF WOMEN AND FATNESS. Koppelman is a world-renowned
scholar of U.S. women’s short stories, and here she uses her
considerable resources (including her own archive of 3,500 short
stories) to compile these gripping, poignant, sly, funny, disturbing,
surprising, brave, and illuminating stories that celebrate bodies
deemed transgressive or that simply acknowledge that fat women exist
in life and in literature. The stories span 100 years; the authors
range from Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Edna Ferber (1913 and 1910
respectively) up through the Fat Liberation classics. Contemporary
writers include J. California Cooper, Roz Warren, Leslea Newman,
Susan Stinson, Judy Freespirit, and Elana Dykewomon. Alix Kates
Shulman introduces the collection while an afterword by Koppelman
puts the stories in historical and political context. $16.95 paper,
The Feminist Press.
Koppleman’s life long labor of love has been researching and
preserving women’s short stories and collecting them into anthologies
that reclaim and validate women’s lives: Old Maids, Between Mothers
and Daughters, Women’s Friendships, and Two Friends (which focuses on
nineteenth century lesbians). To ensure that her gift endures, the
Feminist Press has launched the American Women’s Stories Project
which will, under Koppelman’s supervision, create an online catalog
of stories by women writers and will also reprint some of her
hard-to-find collections and publish several new anthologies as well.
Is it fact or is it fiction? – and where do lesbian writers draw the
line? That was Lynda Hall’s question when she edited TELLING MOMENTS:
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LESBIAN SHORT STORIES. The stories – from the likes
of Gloria Anzaldúa, Marie-Claire Blais, Emma Donoghue, Karla Jay,
Anna Livia, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Rothanne Robson, Sara Schulman, Peggy
Shaw, Carmelita Tropicana, and others – range from poignant to
hilarious, from grief-filled to joyful. And the brief commentaries
following each story, sorting out the facts from the fiction – where
that’s possible, add an interesting layer to the reading experience.
It’s too bad that Wisconsin has priced it so far above standard trade
paperback prices. $26.95 paper. (Ouch ) Terrace Books/The University
of Wisconsin Press. 
I never understood the allure of those contests where the prize is a
celebrity date, but I’d be all over any contest where the prize was a
good conversation with one of our community’s best thinkers. But ten
long lunches with QUEER IDEAS might be even better. QUEER IDEAS
collects the first ten annual David R. Kessler lectures – an ongoing
series organized by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS),
which invites some of our best and brightest to talk about their
work, their concerns, and our community. Beginning in 1992 with Joan
Nestle’s “The Life of Mabel Hampton as Told by a White Woman” all the
way through Judith Butler’s 2001 lecture, “Global Violence, Sexual
Violence,” the lectures – many of which read like a relaxed
conversation – are interesting, stimulating, entertaining, and
excellent. Check out Edmund White’s 1993 perspective on gay
publishing during the height of the “gay publishing boom,” Barbara
Smith on excavating African American Lesbian and Gay history, Esther
Newton on the importance and sometimes-unpopularity of butch
identity, Monique Wittig reading what she couldn’t write in the U.S.,
John D’Emilio’s “A Biographer and His Subject: Wrestling with Bayard
Rustin,” Cherríe Moraga (“The fiction of our lives – how we conceive
our histories by heart – can sometimes provide a truth far greater
than any telling of a tale frozen to the facts….”), Samuel R. Delany
speaking for the importance of interclass contact while mourning for
the banished sexuality of Times Square, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on
love. What a treat  What luxury. $17.95 paperback, The Feminist
Press.
One of the most essential books of 2004. .–Richard Labonte


LOVE, SEX, AND ROMANCE
“I’m not giving up my sex life until I die ” Renate Stendahl vowed at
a recent reading. And she forswears lesbian bed death for all time in
TRUE SECRETS OF LESBIAN DESIRE: KEEPING SEX ALIVE IN LONG-TERM
RELATIONSHIPS.
Telling the truth – the hard, difficult, lovely, challenging,
endearing truth – about what you want sexually and in the
relationship, she advises, is the secret to ongoing passionate
intimacy. It’s that simple and that challenging. Stendhal, a
sixty-something counselor, also writes about cycles of lesbian
relationships and draws on her 18-year relationship as well as her
experience in the passionate days of the early feminist movement in
Paris in the late 60’s and early 70s. Read it, even if you’re not in
a long-term relationship, for the sheer pleasure of a writer who uses
the F-word while talking about a very active and passionate
sexuality. Originally published in cloth as Love's Learning Place:
Truth As Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships by Edgework
Books, it’s now in paperback from North Atlantic Books with a new
foreword by Jewelle Gomez. $14.95. 
Bett Williams (Girl Walking Backwards) takes the opposite approach in
THE WRESTLING PARTY, a raucous mix of essay, cultural crit, erotic
tell-all, memoir, and internet journalism. Stalking The Girl through
a lot of angst, riot grrrl music festivals, Trash Discos, and that
new performance art, oil wrestling, while only occasionally telling a
truth (or even remembering that she already has a girlfriend) would
seem to be the point here. Does she ever actually get the girl? Not
exactly. But then, that wasn’t really the point. If you followed that
– and enjoyed it – it’s your book. $12.95, Alyson.
On the other end of the age and literary spectrums, Aynda Merchant,
our oldest living lesbian writer and publisher, has just published O,
MISTRESS MINE under her nom de plume, Sarah Aldridge. I haven’t seen
it yet, but it promises to address the far right, organized religion,
same-sex marriage, adoption, abortion and discrimination – as well as
being a love story. This is Merchant’s fourteenth Sarah Aldridge
novel. Now 92, she and her partner of 55 years, Muriel Crawford were
the quiet (though never silent) partners when Naiad Press was
launched. They now publish as A&M Books. Fifty-five years  Now that’s
a Valentine story  $15, A&M Books, PO Box 283, Rehoboth Beach DE,
19971.
Perhaps it was a mistake to read True Secrets of Lesbian Desire
concurrently with Karin Kallmaker’s MAYBE NEXT TIME – I kept wanting
to yell, “Just talk to each other ” at the longing and tortured young
musician and her beloved. But the gals in Kallmaker’s more recent ONE
DEGREE OF SEPARATION do a better job – eventually – of passing the
Truth Telling test. ONE DEGREE is centered in a close-knit midwestern
community; MAYBE NEXT TIME is set in Hawaii and in the surreal world
of a constantly traveling classical musician, but bad things happen
to good women in both books, and walking through it is the only way
out. Both are classic Kallmaker – steamy, erotic romances. $12.95,
both from Bella Books.


WEDDING BELL BLUES AND THE LAW
Whether you’re itching to get to the alter or whether you’re a
smash-patriarchy-and-destroy-the-nuclear-family kind of gal – or both
– lesbian and gay marriage is shaping up to be one of the key
political issues of the 2004 presidential campaign. It’s going to be
quite a donkey-and-elephant road show, in a campaign with more than a
few gay children of politicians. Here are a few books to read along
the way.
My just-married cohort, Richard Labonte, writing in The Gay Men’s
Edition of BTOWF, highly recommends David Moats’ CIVIL WARS: GAY
MARRIAGE IN AMERICA:
“The most gripping of the recent reads. Moats, whose editorials in
support of Vermont's civil unions legislation won him and his
newspaper a Pulitzer, has a good journalist's insatiable curiosity….
[T]he book – touted appropriately by the publisher as "a remarkable
drama of democracy at work on a human scale" – is packed with
mesmerizing detail. Moats focuses almost totally on the Vermont
story, but his quietly epic examination of how civil unions came to
be the law of that small state has wider implications for the
freedom-to-marry forces in America, both in the wake of the
pro-wedding ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts a
few months ago, and also in the face of what's sure to be the
virulent demagoguery around gay marriage by George W. Bush's handlers
in election year 2004.
"... it was also by chance that I happened to witness the story of
civil unions in Vermont. I did not come to the issue as a gay man. I
came to it as a journalist discovering the most extraordinary story I
had ever covered," Moats writes in his prologue.
JUST MARRIED: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE EXPANSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, by
Canadians Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell, is a first-hand account of
their January, 2001 wedding in Toronto's Metropolitan Community
Church and the subsequent legal process which resulted in Ontario
Supreme Court approving same-sex wedding licenses in June, 2003.
Published by Doubleday in Canada, and by University of Wisconsin in
the U.S. $26.95.
And watch out for these books, all to be published in April:
WHY YOU SHOULD GIVE A DAMN ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE by Davina Kotulski
promises to be an easy-to-read guide outlining the rights, benefits,
and protections that legally recognized marriage guarantees. It also
outlines the impact of not having those rights on various gay
couples. Sounds like a good book for well-meaning straight friends
and family who think that domestic partner laws – or even civil
unions – solve the problems. $12.95, Advocate Books.
WHY MARRIAGE MATTERS by Evan Wolfson connects gay marriage to other
equality movements. $23, Simon and Schuster.
Journalist Jonathan Rauch confronts conservatives on their own turf
in GAY MARRIAGE: WHY IT IS GOOD FOR GAYS, GOOD FOR STRAIGHTS, AND
GOOD FOR AMERICA. He argues that it’s good for society to have people
taking care of each other, that it benefits society as a whole, and
that excluding certain groups of people from participating is
corrosive to the institution itself. $22,Times Books.
And, while we’re addressing things legal, the Fourth Edition of the
American Civil Liberties Union’s handbook, THE RIGHTS OF LESBIANS,
GAY MEN, BISEXUALS, AND TRANSGENDER PEOPLE by Nan Hunter, Courney
Joslin, and Sharon McGowan, is just out from Southern Illinois
University Press. $19.95.


LIVES
“Say what you will about Mercedes, she’s had the most important women
in the twentieth century,” was how Alice B. Toklas summed up the
dashing (and, at that time still married), Spanish American society
girl in the years before the two became friends. But it was true: de
Acosta (1893-1968) was obsessed with – and at times lovers with –
Greta Garbo, as well as Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, and theatre
stars Eva Le Gallienne, Ona Munson, Michael Strange, and Alla
Nazimova, among others. But Robert Schanke’s “THAT FURIOUS LESBIAN:”
THE STORY OF MERCEDES DE ACOSTA” also gives us the Mercedes de Acosta
who was a playwright, poet, and a novelist – a woman who got (and
lost) writing jobs in the emerging movie industry as easily as she
found (and lost) lovers. Her 1926 novel, The Arrow of Longing, if not
ahead of her times, was certainly far ahead of publishers’ mores,
addressing as it did lesbianism, the plight of single mothers and
their bastard children (albeit those with ambition and class), and
unrequited love. The legal battles following the publication of The
Well of Loneliness, a couple years later, did nothing to encourage
publishers to risk publishing Mercedes. But Mercedes’ first love was
theatre, and her plays (often written for her lovers) were not an
easy sell on Broadway, addressing as they did Sapphic love
(successful and otherwise) and anti-Semitism, as well as loneliness,
rejection, and spirituality. And, best of all, Schanke gives us a
woman fiercely committed to loving women, a woman who wasn’t afraid
of the L-word – or its passions – despite the way it compromised her
writing career.
$45, cloth, Southern Illinois University Press. Theatre aficionados
will also want to check out WOMEN IN TURMOIL: SIX PLAYS BY MERCEDES
DE ACOSTA, $40, also edited by Schanke and published by SIU.


FICTION & SCIENCE FICTION
Lesbianism, as we practice it in twenty-first century America,
presumes that women are allowed to live independently, and that we
can support ourselves, rather than relying on fathers, husbands,
family or clan. But what of women who lack these essential luxuries?
How do they make their way? Nalo Hopkinson’s THE SALT EATERS and
Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s THE MOON PEARL explore the possibilities – and
the creativity required – of newly enslaved women in the seventeenth
century America, of their descendents in Paris, and of young women in
China’s silk districts in the nineteenth century.
Jamaican, Guyanese, Trinidadian, Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson
(Midnight Robber, Skin Folk, Brown Girl in the Ring) uses a twist of
science fiction (the creation of Ezili, born from hope destroyed, who
flits across continents and centuries, seeking a way to manifest
freedom and desire) to explore and connect the lives and
determination of brilliant, passionate, loving, and wonderfully
sexual women who love who they will (women and men) when they can,
and who love who they must when that freedom is in short supply.
Jewelle Gomez calls it “A raw, passionate adventure…grounded in
women’s senses: the sound of whispered desire, sweat’s salty taste,
hands catching a newborn baby.” Kirkus calls it “Sexy, disturbing,
touching, wildly comic. A tour de force from one of our most striking
new voices in fiction.” Jewell Parker Rhodes calls it “A fabulous,
wonderful, inventive novel…a fine celebration of African heritage.” –
To which I would add: “And of all women’s heritage.” Thanks to
Cecelia Tan of Circlet Press, for bringing this book to my attention.
$22.95, Warner.
THE MOON PEARL considers the lives of “self-combers,” women who
combed their own hair up rather than waiting for marriage, lived in
communities of women, renounced sexual intimacy with men (but not
women), and supported themselves in the labor-intensive silk
industry, a tradition that flourished in China’s Sun Duk province for
100 years. Ruthanne Lum McCunn grew up in Hong Kong, amidst the
diaspora of these independent spinsters who left China when the silk
trade declined. She was inspired by their example to seek her own
fortunes in a wider world. Later she began to wonder how the first of
these women were able to conceive – and initiate – lives of self-rule
and build an alternate, woman-oriented community structure.
Eventually she went to China to interview elderly self-combers. From
that research, she realized that what made life possible for the
independent spinsters was their recognition that independence and
community were not exclusive states. THE MOON PEARL imagines the
lives of women whose defiance of community tradition could launch
women-oriented worlds in the midst of a fiercely held patriarchy.
Told with the deceptive simplicity of a folktale, it remains one of
my favorite explanations of how the world came to be. $14, Beacon
Press.


IN BRIEF
STONE BUTCH BLUES, Leslie Feinberg’s classic and compelling tale of
politics, passion, butch identity, and the transgendered life, is
back in print – this time from Alyson Press. What a relief  I’ve
heard tales of desperate young women and trans kids paying $30 and
$40 to get their hands on a used copy. $14.95.
Out lesbian and Islamic scholar Irshad Manji demands cultural
diversity, freedoms for women, and her right to be a lesbian and
leaves the wearing of hijabs and chadors to Muhammad’s wives in her
Canadian bestseller, THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM: A MUSLIM'S CALL FOR
REFORM IN HER FAITH, which has just been published in the U.S. by St.
Martin’s Press. When asked if she’s willing to be an international
lightning rod for the cause of reform, she responds, “I don’t fear
the consequences of having written this book. God gave me a thick
skin, a big brain and, I’ll be the first to admit, an even bigger
mouth. And that’s a pretty good combination to take on a cause as
ambitious as this.” BTWOF says, “You go, girl  And maybe we’ll
achieve peace in our times yet.” $22.95
WHAT ARE YOU READING?
BTWOF asked mystery writer J. M. Redmann our favorite question:
“Helen Humphreys’ LEAVING EARTH," she answered. "Like Sarah Waters
and Emma Donoghue, she writes brilliant historical fiction. LEAVING
EARTH, set in Toronto in the 1930s, features an aviatrix, her plane,
Moth, and her co-pilot as the two women attempt to break the world
flight endurance record. AFTER IMAGE, which is gorgeously written, is
loosely based on Julia Cameron’s life. Both books have a clear
lesbian sensibility.” Try libraries if your local bookstore can’t get
these books – both may be out of print. And see, “What They’re
Reading,” below, for a review of Humphreys’ new novel, The Lost
Garden.”


PERIODICALLY YOURS
SINISTER WISDOM is publishing again. Issue #61, Women Loving Women in
Prison, is just out. Lesbians are, indeed, everywhere, and women are
the fastest growing population in prisons – in part because women get
longer sentences than men for the same actions, in part because women
are often charged with “conspiracy” when a male partner or
acquaintance is arrested for drug-related activities, and because so
many women are imprisoned for problems that would be better served by
drug or alcohol addiction treatment or job training programs. Eighty
percent of the women in prison are there for non-violent crimes.
This issue, comprised of writing by current or recent prisoners,
including political prisoners, looks at how constrained women’s lives
are in prison, at the intense discrimination against and punishment
of lesbians, and also documents moments of tenderness, passion,
delight and love.
The next issue is due out in June, and the lesbian literature issue
is already in the works. The last issue, “Love, Sex, and Romance” is
also available, so now would be a good time to subscribe or to renew
if your subscription has lapsed. $20/year, $34 for two years. Back
issues are $6 plus $1.50 p&h for the first issue, $.50 each for each
additional issue. Free on request to women in prison or mental
institutions. The rest of us can send checks to PO Box 3252, Berkeley
CA 94703
BITCH
BTWOF caught up with Mary Ellen Kavanaugh, who was traveling around
California after having just closed My Sisters Words in Syracuse.
What was she reading? BITCH: A FEMINIST RESPONSE TO POP CULTURE. Of
course we asked what she likes about it:
“BITCH is the right magazine for anyone looking for hip, right-on
feminist analysis of the culture we live in. I look forward to it the
way I used to look forward to Ms. There’s always something pithy and
unexpected that I didn’t even know that I wanted to know before I
picked it up. Each issue has a theme (i.e. #23, Winter 2004 is "taste
& appetite") and an array of very smart women weigh in on how that
topic plays out in our lives. BITCH even has ads you'll want to read,
for very cool products that make sense in your life, whether you're
23 or 63, straight, bi, or lesbian. If you call yourself a feminist,
you need to check this out. Look for it in any good independent
bookstore or online at www.bitchmagazine.com or call 877-21-BITCH.
$4.95.”
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•••
WHAT THEY'RE READING AT
THE TORONTO WOMEN'S BOOKSTORE
 Each issue BTWOF asks the staff at a different women's bookstore
what they're reading and what they're loving. This issue we asked
Anjula Gogia and the rest of the crew at the Toronto Women's
Bookstore. Not surprisingly, they read a lot of Canadian books. Some
of which are also published in the U.S. But never fear, if something
grabs your fancy, you can order it online or by mail from TWB or many
other Canadian bookstores. (Web site and mailing address below.)  
THE SWINGING BRIDGE by Ramabai Espinet. A moving story of race and
displacement, The Swinging Bridge carries us effortlessly from
nineteenth-century India to the cane fields of Trinidad and then to
modern-day Toronto. An exquisite novel that explores the immigrant
experience with compassion and humour. A deeply feminist novel that
explores history, exile, and longing for truth. C$32.95, Harper
Collins. – Anjula Gogia
THE LOST GARDEN by Helen Humphreys. New in paperback from the author
of Afterimage, this is the story of a shy, solitary young
horticulturalist who flees London during the Blitz and discovers a
"lost" garden on a country estate which helps her discover her
capacity to reach for love, even in the face of pain. Humphreys, a
local lesbian writer, writes with the subtlety and grace of a poet.
C$28, Harper Collins; $13.95, US Norton. – Anjula Gogia
QUIXOTIC EROTIC by Tamai Kobayashi.* Superbly written erotic tales
that make you feel "dirty" in only the best of ways. These stories
turn you on while simultaneously subverting both old myths/folktales
and new realities with feminist sensibilities. This is neither the
kind of erotica that puts you to sleep nor the brand of bawdy porn
that makes you cringe for its lack of literary skill. Instead, it
represents a new genre of incredibly sexy, race-y (pun intended),
one-handed reading that places lesbians of colour front and centre as
empowered sexual subjects. C$19.95/ $16.95US, Arsenal Pulp Press. –
Jin Huh
SALT FISH GIRL by Larissa Lai. Salt Fish Girl intertwines the stories
of Nu Wa, a shape-shifter from Old China, and Miranda, a girl from
Serendipity, a walled city on the west coast of North America (circa
2044), who stinks of durian fruit. This pleasurable and politically
fantastical read reveals a future where corporations, biotechnology,
and capitalism rule the world. Reminiscent of Marge Piercy's He, She,
and It or a tale in which Donna Haraway meets Chinese Canadian-style
magical realism, SALT FISH GIRL is about love, gender, intrigue, and
resisting the dark forces of biotechnology. C$23.95, Thomas Allen. –
Jin Huh 
SMALL ARGUMENTS by Souvankham Thammavongsa.* Thammavongsa's poetry
gracefully achieves the book's epigraph: the power of philosophy to
"...show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even
in the commonest things in daily life." The poems are precisely
crafted with beautiful and deceptive simplicity, exposing both the
fragility and the immutable strength of small things while creating a
space in the world where they have an inalienable right to exist.
C$17.95. Pedlar Press. – Alex Macfadyen
RIGHT TO BE HOSTILE: A BOONDOCKS TREASURY by Aaron McGruder. One of
the hottest books at TWB this winter  For all fans of "Dykes To Watch
Out For," this rip-roaringly funny comic strip comments on black
suburban life, American politics, and BET [Black Entertainment
Television] among other things. I was constantly reminded of Mo with
main character Huey's endless cynicism and rants  C$25.95, Random
House; $16.95 US, Crown. – Anjula Gogia
CARMEN'S RUST by Ana Maria del Rio. In simple, engaging prose, del
Rio describes repressive life under the Chilean dictator Pinochet via
allegorical metaphor. Carmen and her half brother (the novel's
narrator) are sent to live with their oppressive aunt and grandmother
who maintain complete control over their lives. In effect, it becomes
a relentless struggle between the sexually repressed teenagers and
their merciless captors. Del Rio captivates the reader with her
flowing narrative and cleverly paints for us her beloved Chile under
tyrannical rule in the 80's. First published in 1986, and now
available in English from Overlook Press. C$29/$19.95 US. – Tammi
Sulliman
*Toronto-based writer
Many thanks to Anjula for compiling these reviews, and to all the
staff at TWB for their help with this column. Check out TWB's web
site at http://www.womensbookstore.com. It's a great site with new
book and staff favorites, booklists by subject, and online ordering.
TWB, 73 Harbord St., Toronto ON M5S 1G4, Canada. Phone: 416-922-8744.
 There's also a current list of women's bookstores at
www.litwomen.org/WIP/stores.html -->
http://www.litwomen.org/WIP/stores.html.
About international online ordering: The good news is that it's easy
– credit card companies take care of the currency conversion and most
bookstores will send you anything they sell, which means you can get
books that aren't (or aren't yet) published where you live if you're
willing to pay the shipping costs. If you haven't yet established a
relationship with a particular store, it's often worth emailing ahead
to check shipping costs and to be sure they know how to mark the
packages so you don’t get stuck with import taxes. Then it's just a
matter of placing the order and waiting (im)patiently for the package
to arrive. -CS
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•••
THE CRIME SCENE
BY NAN CINNATER
The prolific mystery writer Lawrence Block writes a series about a
part-time burglar who's also a bookseller, and his best friend, a
lesbian named Caroline (THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET, THE BURGLAR IN THE
LIBRARY, etc., $6.99, Signet). At one point, Caroline expresses her
firm conviction that the character Kinsey Millhone is a lesbian, but
author Sue Grafton doesn't know it. In that spirit, I offer you some
ostensibly heterosexual mysteries whose heroines display the
toughness, independence, good sense, and feminist instincts that we
often associate with lesbians.
If you haven't discovered New York Times best-selling author Nevada
Barr's mysteries, what are you waiting for? National Park ranger Anna
Pigeon is just the kind of flawed but fascinating heroine we love,
and Barr is a master of both nature and action writing. Plus, she
takes you to a different National Park in almost every book  The
first book in the series is TRACK OF THE CAT ($6.99, Berkley/Prime
Crime) set in Guadaloupe Mountains National Park. Hot off the press
are FLASHBACK ($7.99, Berkley/Prime Crime) – Dry Tortugas National
Park – and HIGH COUNTRY ($24.95, Putnam) – Yosemite. Sharp-eyed
bibliophiles know that Barr's first novel was a superior lesbian
Western called BITTERSWEET ($13.95, Avon). Serious fans may want to
check out Barr's recent collection of personal essays, SEEKING
ENLIGHTENMENT ... HAT BY HAT ($21.95, Putnam).
Farther North, Dana Stabenow writes an atmospheric Alaskan series
about tough, psychologically and physically scarred Inuit private eye
Kate Shugak. A full cast of quirky supporting characters, a good
grasp of state and Native politics, and lots of authentic details
about life in the bush give these books convincing local color. In A
FINE AND BITTER SNOW ($6.99, St. Martin's/Minotaur), Stabenow takes
on the issue of oil drilling in a wilderness preserve. Her most
recent hardcover is A GRAVE DENIED ($24.95, St. Martin's/Minotaur).
The first in the Kate Shugak series is the Edgar Award winner, A COLD
DAY FOR MURDER ($6.99, Berkley). Note that Stabenow also writes
another series, about state trooper Liam Campbell, which shares the
Alaskan atmosphere but not the same feminist appeal.
Linda Fairstein was a real-life sex crimes prosecutor in the
Manhattan DA's office and she has brought much of her own experience
to her books about assistant DA Alexandra Cooper. In THE KILLS
($25.00, Scribner), Alex has two cases, a rape and a murder. (Is
anyone surprised when the two cases turn out to be connected?) The
murder victim is "Queenie" Ransome, a legendary dancer of the Harlem
Renaissance, who was once King Farouk's lover. The title refers not
just to the murders, but to the creeks and channels that separate
lower Manhattan from several small islands. Fairstein's new paperback
is THE BONE VAULT ($7.99, Pocket). The series began with FINAL
JEOPARDY ($7.99, Pocket). 
In 1995 Lynn S. Hightower introduced Lena Padget, a private eye on a
personal mission to protect – or revenge – women and children who are
victims of crimes. Padget debuted in the pulpy but mesmerizing
thriller, SATAN'S LAMBS, which won the Shamus award for best first
private eye novel (out of print; we can only hope some publisher will
be smart enough to re-issue it). Hightower has finally brought Padget
back in FORTUNES OF THE DEAD ($23.00, Atria). Now Lena has a
boyfriend, a homicide detective who is working on the same case Lena
is hired to investigate – the disappearance of a college intern.
Enter the FBI, who believe Lena's case has something to do with the
Waco debacle. Not surprisingly, Lena does not take well to
interference by male authorities....
Hightower's prose is lean and mean, and she has an unflinching
understanding of the violence that ordinary women face. Her other
novels are also worth checking out. Her series about Cincinnati
policewoman Sonora Blair consists of: FLASHPOINT, EYESHOT (both
published in paper by Harper, available used or from the library), NO
GOOD DEED ($6.50, Dell), and THE DEBT COLLECTOR ($6.99, Dell). Her
most recent paperback, HIGH WATER ($6.99, Pocket), is a stand-alone
novel about a suspicious suicide in a South Carolina family with two
daughters and a gay son.
Poisoned Pen Press has made a brilliant move that other small presses
could emulate: publishing Libby Fischer Hellmann's mysteries in
hardcover simultaneously with mass market paper editions from
Berkley/Prime Crime. Thus the hardcovers garner the reviews, make
library sales, and become collectibles, while the paperbacks reach
hard-core readers like us. In AN IMAGE OF DEATH ($24.95, Poisoned
Pen, and $6.50, Berkley/Prime Crime), video documentarian Ellie
Foreman receives a mysterious package containing a surveillance video
of a murder. A little digging leads to intrigue in Eastern Europe
during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hellmann's books are
intricately plotted, with detailed Chicago ambience and connections
to Jewish history and culture. The previous books were AN EYE FOR
MURDER and A PICTURE OF GUILT (both $6.50, Berkley/Prime Crime).
Carol O’Connell writes about one of the most enigmatic heroines in
crime fiction, policewoman Kathleen Mallory, a kid who grew up on the
streets (literally), who is now a brilliant but rebellious cop – also
sociopathic, manipulative, and obsessive/compulsive. In DEAD FAMOUS
($24.95, Putnam), Mallory's latest case combines a dead FBI agent in
Chicago, murdered jurors in New York, a hunchbacked woman whose job
it is to clean up crime scenes, an edgy shock-jock, and an extremely
mean housecat. Mallory first appeared in the Edgar Award-winning
MALLORY'S ORACLE ($7.99, Jove). O'Connell's latest paperback is
CRIME SCHOOL ($7.99, Jove).
THE 37TH HOUR ($21.95, Delacorte) by Jodi Compton is a first novel
that looks like it might belong in this company. Minneapolis
sheriff's detective Sara Pribeck is a missing-persons investigator
whose husband is missing. The title derives from the experts'
contention that the first 36 hours in a missing-persons case are the
most important. Publisher's Weekly called this "first-class, serious
crime fiction."
A word about violence: I am the most squeamish mystery reader I know.
(To give you an idea of my threshold for violence, let me say I can't
stand to watch "CSI," and I wouldn't go near the movie "Silence of
the Lambs" even for Jodi Foster.) Although I can't predict what might
push other people's buttons, I can tell you that Fairstein,
Hightower, and O'Connell sometimes push the edge of my envelope.
Mysteries contain murders, so there will be violence, but we can pay
attention and try to respect each other's limits. –Nan
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•••
THE LAMMIES, THE STONEWALLS, AND A FEW INVENTIONS
It’s Lambda Literary Award Season. Actually, its almost always is –
the nominations start in November, the shortlists start circulating
soon after the beginning of the new year, and the awards banquet is
in June, followed by media flurries, small and large bits of grieving
from the didn’t-wins, and then the stickering of the winning books
with those nifty "Lambda Literary Award Winner" stickers. It’s almost
a year-round phenomenon – as is critiquing them. Anyone can nominate
a book and more people should – the fee is only $20 (which goes to
help defray the cost of the awards). Everyone has an opinion on what
should have been nominated, shortlisted, and/or what should have won.
Armchair coaching is a national sport, and, in that spirit, BTWOF
offers you both the Shortlist for the 2004 Lambda Literary Awards and
the long list of all the books nominated, all 300+ of them. Some
nominations are well deserved, some seem to be vanity trips but, all
in all, reviewing the lists provides an interesting look at what’s
been published over the last year. Some categories are overflowing
with excellent books, many of which deserve shortlisting, and a few
categories seem to exist just to nurture a specific – and hopefully
growing – segment of our literature.Take a look and see what you
think.
Looking at the breadth and depth of the books nominated, it’s hard to
give any credence to the idea that gay literature is in decline. 
That’s the good news. After doing a bit of categorizing and
hair-splitting* (see below for details) we came to some further
conclusions: Only 30 of the 100 shortlisted books came from
mainstream or corporate presses, eight or nine came from university
presses, 20 from miscellaneous small and independent presses, and a
whopping 40 or so from gay, feminist, and lesbian-owned presses. That
speaks well of GLBT publishing, it should be totally embarrassing to
mainstream publishing (especially if you take out the eight
Kensington nominations), and it confirms what we have been saying for
a long time – that the independent and university presses are where
the bulk of exciting, challenging ideas will be published once the
corporations devour one another into profit-seeking uniformity.
The news isn’t so good for lesbians, though. Lesbian books garnered
35 of the spots of the 100-possible on the shortlist. Books by and
about gay men, 60 spots. (That leaves 5 books that don’t fit easily
into either category.) That’s 37% to 67% – a hell of a long way from
gender-equity in this queered literary marriage. Just to mix apples
and oranges, we’re not doing a lot better – and certainly not enough
better – than the 28:72 ratio of women’s books to men’s reviewed in
the NYT Review of Books (see story below). Does this inequity reflect
what is written, the quality of what is written, what gets published,
who gets published, what gets publicity and visibility, who has the
money and/or who decides where it will be spent (or what interests
those people most), or just good old, traditional, all-American
prejudice that what men do is more, better, and more valuable? There
are only two things I can say for sure: It’s not that lesbians make
up only 37% of the population, queer or otherwise, and it’s not that
this wave of lesbians doesn’t have a long and strong literary
tradition. OK, and a third thing seems obvious, too: merging what
used to be separate categories for lesbian and gay men's books has
benefited the visibility of men’s books at the cost of lesbian books’
visibility and recognition.
How did the publishers stack up by gender?
Alyson gets the gender-equity prize with eight books on each side of
the aisle, as well as the grand prize for having twice as many titles
on the shortlist as any other publisher.
Pilgrim and Broadway both weigh in with two each in the trans
categories.
On the women’s side of the aisle, Bella and Cleis made out with three
each, Red Hen with two, Southern Illinois with two (Robert Schanke
writing about Mercedes de Acosta). And seventeen publishers (Akashic,
Conviction, Curbstone, Firebrand, Harrington, Manic D, Millivres, New
Victoria, Soft Skull, University of Wisconsin, Harper, Houghton,
Knopf, Little Brown, Norton, Simon & Schuster, and University of
Pittsburgh) each had one title shortlisted on the lesbian side of the
aisle.
On the guy’s side, Kensington matched Alyson with 8 shortlists (but
zip on the women’s side), Cleis scored two (plus their three on the
women’s side). Harrington and imprint Southern Tier had four (plus
one on the women’s side). Wisconsin, Houghton, and Norton each
garnered two nominations on the guy’s side (plus one each on the
women’s side). Knopf and Simon & Schuster both had a nomination on
each side of the aisle. St. Martins scored four on the men’s side
(but none on the women’s side). Fourteen independents and four
mainstream presses had one nomination on the men’s side, but none on
the women’s side.
*Truth in hairsplitting: Is worker-owned Norton a mainstream press or
an independent press? (Mainstream, by history, we decided.)
Kensington? That’s harder. Without Kensington the mainstream has such
a poor showing that we counted them in, just to ease the corp’s loss
of face. Where do you count Cleis? Transgender-oriented books? Books
by men about women, books about both – or all – genders? Hey, this is
a sport, not statistics  Which way the hair spit was rarely
statistically significant. These are my estimates. Other people would
come up with other totals. But the gist is still there. And I’d
challenge anyone to also look at how well we are or aren’t, as a
literature, addressing and including other kinds of diversity.
Equality is rarely achieved by accident – it takes effort. But it’s
always worth it.
THE STONEWALL AWARDS
 Congratulations to Monique Truong and John D’Emilio, winners of the
American Library Association’s GLBT Round Table’s Stonewall Awards.
The awards will be presented at the ALA Conference in Orlando, June
24-30. Truong will take home the Barbara Gittings Literature Award
for THE BOOK OF SALT and D’Emilio will receive the Israel Fishman
Nonfiction Award for THE LOST PROPHET: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BAYARD
RUSTIN.
The Stonewall Awards also recognize four honorable mentions in each
category. 
HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR FICTION
 CUTTING ROOM by Louise Welsh
 KEEPING YOU A SECRET by Julie Ann Peters
 LIVES OF THE CIRCUS ANIMALS by Christopher Bram
 SOUTHLAND by Nina Revoyr
HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR NONFICTION:
 BEAUTIFUL SHADOW: A LIFE OF PATRICIA HIGHSMITH by Andrew Wilson
 BEFORE STONEWALL: ACTIVISTS FOR GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS IN HISTORICAL
 CONTEXT edited by Vern L. Bullough
 INTERTWINED LIVES: MARGARET MEAD, RUTH BENEDICT AND THEIR CIRCLE by
Lois W. Banner
 RIDICULOUS : THE THEATRICAL LIFE AND TIMES OF CHARLES LUDLAM by
David
 Kaufman
And, hey, in Britain, The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories won the
Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year. Who says lesbians
don’t have a sense of humor? It’s a collection of – yes – humorous
short fiction… (“Alisa Surkis and Monica Nolan invite readers back
into the curves of third-sex pulp fiction where odd-girls-out now
ride free….”) Published in 2002 by Kensington Books.
BEST BOOK PROMO STUNT
 Metrosexuality (straight guys with a gay man’s aesthetic for
grooming and fashion) is the next big thing, well, for straight guys.
DaCapo press gets this issue’s promo award for distributing 200,000
coasters to bars in seven cities to promote their book, The
Metrosexual Guide to Style: A Handbook for the Modern Man. I wonder
how that would work for lesbian erotica titles in women’s clubs and
bars?
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INPUT WANTED
Felice Newman is updating The Whole Lesbian Sex Book and is looking
for lesbian, bi, and queer women – young, old, partnered and single,
trans and traditionally gendered, sexually experienced and new to
exploration – to share their experience, teach others, and generally
rant and rave about their sexual experience. Email her
fnewman@cleispress.com --> mailto:fnewman@cleispress.com for her
survey.
Sinister Wisdom’s Lesbian Literature issue is accepting submissions
until March 1. Email them to Fran Day, fran@sonic.net -->
mailto:fran@sonic.net.
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WHAT?  SEXISM IN THE NYT BOOK REVIEW?
Just in case you needed documentation: The NYT Book Review
overwhelmingly favors books and book reviews written by men. Feminist
writer and psychologist Paula Caplan and psychotherapist Mary Ann
Palko analyzed 53 consecutive issues published in 2002 and 2003 and
found that 72% of the books reviewed were written by men and that 66%
of the reviews were written by men.
Book Review editor Charles McGrath claims that the situation (at
least in terms of reviewers, if not books reviewed) has improved
during his eight-year tenure. Caplan and Palko conclude that the
Times’ over reliance on male authors and reviewers is demoralizing to
women’s psychological development.
And, BTWOF would add – to women’s reputations, publishability, sales
figures, income, and general ability to impact the world. Meanwhile
McGrath is in the process of shifting to a new job as Times
writer-at-large and the paper is searching for a new editor for the
Book Review. Most of the people reported to be under consideration
are women. Let’s hope that whoever it is, she or he is also empowered
to remedy such blatant imbalances.
And, in closing, congratulations to the workers at the Borders
flagship store in Ann Arbor, who have not only voted union, but who
have also successfully negotiated a contract. Employees at Borders’
other unionized store (Minneapolis) have been working without a
contract since 2002. Workers of the world unite: Vote union but shop
independent.
Yours in spreading the words,
Carol Seajay
for Books To Watch Out For
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•••
(c) 2004 Books to Watch Out For
******