This post was submitted by Philip Clark

Hidden History is my Monday afternoon column for The New Gay. Each week, I’ll cover a different nook or cranny in gay and lesbian history.

After my first Hidden History reading roundup, I received an e-mail from a female TNG reader. Why, she wondered politely but accusingly, were all four entries in the roundup “boy books”?

My flip answer is, “Because I’m a boy.” But that’s the logical answer, too. When I began to try to understand my sexuality during high school, it was natural for me—a heavy reader—to search for books to help. This led me to reading things like Carl Wittman’s “A Gay Manifesto” or Essex Hemphill’s Ceremonies when I was 14 or 15 years old. Too young? Some would say so, but they would be wrong, because those essays and poems and novels helped shape me—and, I think, for the better. They have set me on a course of continuing to read writing by gay males as a method for discovering the world around me.

But this doesn’t mean that lesbians are absent from my reading lists. This confused the hell out of a fellow Lambda Rising patron not so long ago. During the course of what I now suppose was an attempted pick-up in the used books section, he asked me what I had under my arm. I proudly displayed my next purchase: Sappho and the Virgin Mary, an anthology of essays about lesbianism and “the English literary imagination.” “Why would you want to read that?” he sputtered. “You’re a guy.” And here I was just thrilled I had found it for three bucks.

So, to confound everyone and redress the boy-girl book balance in this column, here are four lesbian-related titles I wholeheartedly recommend: a collection of historical short stories; a book of poems even non-poetry-lovers will enjoy; a massive sourcebook of lesbian writing; and the ur-text of lesbian bibliography and analysis. Just in time to buy ‘em for Christmas presents! Click on “Read More” to…well…read more.

Emma Donoghue, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (2002)

Donoghue is a fabulous Irish ex-pat living in Canada; she wrote the We Are Michael Field biography that first turned me on to that highly particular Victorian/Edwardian duo. She is also, enviably, one of the few writers who is equally adept writing nonfiction and fiction. A collection of seventeen short stories, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits was inspired by odd and often obscure historical people and events Donoghue came across while researching her other books. In its pages, we’re treated to a marvelous recreation of “Effie” Chalmers Gray’s dismaying wedding night with art critic John Ruskin (“Come, Gentle Night”); one woman’s struggle with her physician’s brutal “treatment” for her back injury (“Cured”); and the aged Margery Starre’s surprising participation in the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt (“The Necessity of Burning”). My vote for the most brilliant story in this collection’s firmament, though, is “Revelations”: if you have ever wondered how religious demagogues are able to attract such followings, Donoghue makes understandable the appeal of even the most drastic among them.

Gloriously written, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits is my favorite book of short stories.

If you enjoy The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, try: any of Donoghue’s other books. You want nonfiction? We Are Michael Field. A novel? Slammerkin. More short stories? Kissing the Witch or the recent Touchy Subjects.

Minnie Bruce Pratt, Crime Against Nature (1990)

At about the same time that I was interviewing Dan Savage for Lambda Book Report about his book The Kid, I first read Crime Against Nature by Minnie Bruce Pratt. The Kid was one of a number of books at the end of the 1990s that looked at lesbian and gay parenting. Parenting was, it seemed, the new big thing in GLBT life, as book after book made the gay bestseller lists. Despite many difficulties, it did (and does) seem to be a great time to be a GLBT parent.
If this is true, though, then it is criminal for Crime Against Nature to be out-of-print. Minnie Bruce Pratt’s suite of 27 poems, a Lamont Poetry Award winner in 1989, delivers a crucial reminder that it was not so long ago when being lesbian and a parent could equal shame and danger. From the opening “Poem for My Sons,” Pratt is in total control of her material, and the material is powerhouse stuff: her husband’s attempt to deny her access to her two boys unless she will “choose” not to talk about being lesbian, not to write about being lesbian, not to be lesbian. The poems are immediate, the emotions running the gamut from shame to fear, sadness to the white heat of anger. This is poetry with something at stake behind it.

The best recommendation I may be able to give for Crime Against Nature is the response of hesitant friends upon whom I have insistently forced the book. Complaints about not having the time to read a whole book of poetry have dissolved upon contact with “All the Women Caught in Flaring Light” or “My Life You Are Talking About.” Female, male, gay, straight, poetry lovers and those who scoff at verse—everyone loves this book.

If you enjoy Crime Against Nature, try: more of Pratt’s poems. Her most recent book, which also has (in case you can’t find a copy) an extremely generous selection from Crime Against Nature, is P
ratt’s “greatest hits” in The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems (2003).

Terry Castle, The Literature of Lesbianism (2003)

Unlike the last two books, this over-1,000 page anthology is a bit big to curl into bed with. But compromise and don’t miss out: sit on a big comfy couch with The Literature of Lesbianism in your lap and take the time and the pleasure to delve. From the Renaissance all the way to the mid-20th century, Castle’s task is to give a representative sample of how men and women, gay and straight, have addressed lesbianism in their writing. A helpful, thoroughly readable introduction, intelligent and well-researched historical background for every piece, and suggestions for further reading supplement the diverse entries. A random sampling of those-not-to-be-missed: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; Aphra Behn; Christina Rossetti; Michael Field; Marcel Proust; Aleister Crowley; Angelina Weld Grimké; Amy Lowell; Ronald Firbank; lesbian blues lyrics; Elizabeth Bishop; and Mary Renault.

If you enjoy The Literature of Lesbianism, try: Lillian Faderman’s anthology Chloe Plus Olivia. It hits a few writers that Castle doesn’t and also includes selections from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Jeanette H. Foster, Sex Variant Women in Literature (originally published in 1956; reprinted in 1975 and 1985)

There’s a reason Terry Castle dedicates The Literature of Lesbianism to Jeanette H. Foster. A professor of library science, Foster is the towering pioneer in studying and making known the past’s lesbian writing. Working out of Kansas (!) in the 1950s—a time when lesbians weren’t generally discussed, let alone studied—Foster uncovered the history of discussion of lesbians from ancient times to the present. She then wrote a fascinating analysis of those works and compiled an over-800 item bibliography of literature, essays, scientific and psychoanalytic studies, and primary source materials that address lesbianism. Not only that, but she published it under her own name when most, out of necessity, hid behind pseudonyms.

Already in her sixties when Sex Variant Women in Literature was published, Foster lived long enough to see it reprinted and to see it become the standard-bearer for all those who wanted to read about or research lesbians in history. Honor her. Read her book.

If you enjoy Sex Variant Women in Literature, try: any of the works contained within. Or read the recently-released biography Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeanette Howard Foster by Joanne Passet.

Author’s Note: Some of the books I mention in this reading roundup are now out-of-print, even though they shouldn’t be. Fortunately, the Internet has now made it possible to easily find copies of most books, even if they aren’t available in general bookstores. If you check with your local gay/lesbian bookstore, most of them can order most gay/lesbian books, even if they don’t have them in stock. Or if you’d prefer, the website BookFinder.com can track books and provide you with price comparisons from a variety of online sellers. I can also recommend ABEBooks as an easy-to-use source for out-of-print books.

For Hidden History, I’ll write more about pornographers and poets, furies and faggots, books and bootleggers, singers and scandals. If you’ve got suggestions about people, places, and ideas I should cover, particularly if they have a D.C. connection, shoot me an e-mail: philipclark@hotmail.com.

In the next Hidden History: probably something presidential, in honor of the positive results in the recent presidential election.

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