On Strike Against God
Joanna Russ, edited by Alec Pollak
The Feminist Press, 2024, 309 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Bailey Hosfelt

On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ has long been relegated to outlier status in the acclaimed feminist science fiction writer’s broader oeuvre. Originally published in 1980, the work went out of print after its 1987 reissue and remained lost to contemporary readers until 2024, save for those who managed to acquire a second-hand copy.

The new edition from The Feminist Press asserts that On Strike is integral to Russ’s literary canon, not marginal. In addition to the book itself, this edition includes an introduction from editor Alec Pollak, essays by Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj, an interview with Samuel R. Delany, correspondence between Russ and Marilyn Hacker, and archival material, including alternate endings of the book.

While these elements provide critical historical, cultural, and literary insight into the long-overlooked text, it is ultimately Russ’s voice that stands out. A tour de force work of fiction—undoubtedly drawn from Russ’s own experience, as the paratext highlights—On Strike is equal parts rage against the machine and a vulnerable study of the courage necessary to let one’s guard down and come fully alive. This makes it essential, luminescent lesbian fiction for anyone who has articulated and embodied a language they once feared was impossible, especially those just beginning to cross its threshold.

Aptly described by Pollak as Russ’s “attempt to be brave right now” (9), On Strike presents the possibility of love between two women without the alternative reality portal Russ relied on in The Female Man. The work follows Esther, an English professor in an upstate New York college town in the 1970s. Surrounded by infantilizing patriarchy—vocalized by men including patronizing academics, napkin-shredding potential suitors, and pathologizing psychoanalysts singing the praises of Freud, Esther rejects the arbitrary confines of gender and sexuality and attempts to make a place for herself in a world that polices non-normativity.

Esther, both an acerbic cynic and feminist who believes in the possibility of something better, soon becomes enchanted by Jean, a statuesque graduate student and close friend—an affection she finds at once unnerving and captivating.

Struck by Jean, Esther initially determines she must conceal her desire forever because “reality doesn’t allow it” and Jean could never feel the same (98); however, when Jean reciprocates, Esther’s “reality [tears] itself in two, from top to bottom” (99).

Consumed by her attraction to Jean, now reciprocated, Esther begins a brief, world-altering lesbian love affair. She casts aside her fears “because it was such a glorious opportunity to fail” (101).

Describing Esther’s initial sexual encounter with Jean, Russ’s prose is both lyrical: “She’s a vast amount of pinkness—fields and forests. . . My friend is snowfields and mountains. Another world” (104), and matter-of-fact: “I had trotted into the bedroom and brought out my vibrator, hiding it shyly between the couch cushions because it really is a gross little object, about eight inches long, made of white plastic and shaped like a spaceship” (103).

Russ also has an impressive ability to capture the tender yearning Esther feels with precision and desperation: “Waiting for Jean is fortunate: that she will come at all makes you feel blessed. Waiting for Jean is exacerbating: I can’t wait much longer” (110). She also highlights what it feels like to finally yield to something long repressed: “Jean put her arms around me and it felt so good that it made me stammer. Such astonishing softness and everything shaped just right, as if thirty years ago we had been interrupted and were only now resuming” (111); “I fulfilled a daydream of twenty years’ standing and nibbled along her hairline, under her temples and around her ears” (107). She describes the sensory nature of desire: “Her odor is a complicated key, one among millions” (104).

This viscerality of Esther’s character parallels Russ’s experience. For example, in “Not For Years But For Decades,” Russ describes feeling after her first lesbian experience that her “body was well-put-together, graceful, healthy, fine-feeling, and above all, female” (273), a sentiment Esther echoes.

Russ saturates the narrative with humor, philosophical musings, and sharp observations about the unrelenting nature of being a woman, such as an extended party scene where Esther flees an especially horrible assortment of men. Russ also often gravitates toward long sentence constructions that vividly stack up everything Esther is experiencing, allowing the reader to feel the increasing weight building on her shoulders, and decide whether or not they empathize.

While Russ spends ample time on Esther’s ability to turn the unthinkable into the possible, On Strike is not a coming-out narrative alone. It certainly depicts Esther’s and Jean’s short-lived romantic encounter and the aftermath, including Esther crying for two days straight, realizing the worst part of pain is its sheer boredom, and determining whether to confide in other friends. When Jean flees, Esther turns introspective, is riddled with self-doubt, and fears the worst—thrown back into the same homophobia-induced spiral that initially paralyzed her.

Jean’s return, however, ushers in the book’s second beginning. It confirms Esther’s lesbian identity, and equally important, the same is true for Jean. After an excursion shooting rifles in Jean’s backyard so Esther can learn to kill a man—initially where Russ thought of ending the book, which Hacker advised against due to its address to men, not women, as the archival material shows—the world, in all its collective potential and validation, opens once again for Esther. She goes to her first lesbian bar, has sex with another woman, and carries on living.

As a polemic thinker, Russ ends the text turning to the ‘we.’ Initially, that ‘we’ is a shared affirmation among Esther and Jean, despite their changed dynamic. Then, Russ turns to the reader, dropping the narrative into their lap with the invitation, “Let’s be reasonable. Let’s demand the impossible” (168). In doing so, Russ solidifies her ability to reconcile the inherent contradictions between disavowed identity and external affirmation, illuminating a path into the future, should one choose to follow it.

Bailey Hosfelt is a lesbian writer and freelance contributor to Sinister Wisdom. She graduated in 2024 with a master’s degree in gender and women’s studies from UW–Madison, where she wrote a thesis on Dyke TV and queer activist infrastructure. Previously, Bailey lived in Brooklyn, New York and worked as a journalist for local newspapers. Bailey lives in Chicago with her partner and their two cats, Hilma and Lieutenant Governor.

Thirst
Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary
Dutton, 2024, 256 pages
$28.00

Reviewed by Chloe Weber

Thirst is the first book of Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk to be published in the United States. It is set almost entirely in Buenos Aires and infused with the author’s love of her home country. This novel is divided into two parts: the first from the point of view of a centuries-old vampire who, after her journey across the Atlantic, watches Buenos Aires as it is built from the ground up into the bustling city we know today; the second from the point of view of a divorced mother in the present day trying to balance emotions about her mother’s declining health, work life, and caring for her five-year-old son.

Above all else, Thirst is a novel that deals heavily with the theme of death and what it means to each woman in a personal sense. In the grand city of Buenos Aires, the location that draws these women together is La Recoleta Cemetery, a real Buenos Aires cemetery that juxtaposes the horror of death with the beauty of its sculptures, much like the intense personality of Yuszczuk’s vampire, who loves carnage just as much as she loves art.

The vampire, who remains nameless, is characterized by a bloodlust that is often beastly and uncontrollable in nature. In order to survive on the streets of the city, she must tame her thirst by learning restraint and what it means to act human. She witnesses death at her own hands, the deaths of thousands of people from yellow fever, and finally the death of her desire to live when she has no one left for company, leading her to lock herself away in a coffin at the turn of the twentieth century.

As the vampire flickers in a fugue state in her coffin, our modern protagonist faces spiritual and personal death as she watches her mother fade away. One of the final messages the protagonist’s mother delivers to her daughter leads her to a key and a photograph, which she is instructed to do nothing with. Against her better judgment, this modern woman uses the key to open the vampire’s coffin, once again unleashing upon Buenos Aires a thirst that has been marinating for centuries.

When these two womens’ paths finally converge, they find themselves tied up in a mutual obsession that gives each a better understanding of what it means to live and die. With the vampire’s help, the modern woman is able to give her struggling mother the death she wishes for, freeing her daughter from the pain of a slow decline. The vampire provides this woman with an opportunity to escape with her, to accept death and face the centuries as they turn in a new light—an offer which she accepts, leaving the rest of her life behind.

Much like the title implies, Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk includes thirst of many kinds: the thirst for blood, the thirst for death, and how this thirst finally culminates in sexual and obsessive desire. Yuszczuk’s vivid descriptions of Buenos Aires make her passages about death all the more morbid, adding a tone and depth to the story that complements the characters in their differing views of a changing world. Thirst is an ambitious novel that hits the ground running with gore and chaos and transforms into a profound philosophical lamentation on grief. Yuszczuk’s readers will come away with a burning melancholy that inspires them to think differently about how death affects their lives.

Chloe Weber is from Montclair, New Jersey and was a Sinister Wisdom intern for the May 2024 season. She is attending her third semester at Macalester College as a student of English and Anthropology, always on the hunt to expand her literary knowledge.

Disembark: Stories
Jen Currin
House of Anansi, 2024, 264 pages
$17.99

Reviewed by Pelaya Arapakis

Jen Currin’s Disembark is a vibrant short story collection offering readers glimpses into the lives of queer characters as they navigate periods of transition and change. Drawing on the narrative modes of realism and magical realism, Currin showcases the breadth and depth of queer relationships—from platonic intimacies to romantic intimacies and the emotional territories in between—exploring the nuances of queer love against the backdrop of urban life.

The collection opens with a story that traces entangled queer relationships, aptly titled “The Golden Triangle.” We encounter a constellation of characters who meet, love, fuck, date each other’s exes, negotiate non-monogamy, and like a tide, drift in and out of each other’s lives. However, the heart of the story revolves around the narrator’s friendship with their gregarious and flirty friend, Del, and the attendant experiences of love, loneliness, grief, and liminal spaces of intimacy. Over the course of the narrative, we learn that the protagonist yearns for a romantic relationship with Del as they grapple with an intense desire for their friend that they attempt to suppress: “Sometimes my mind tried to veer to Del, to the night we’d spent together, her soft skin, the way her tongue had felt in my mouth—but I quickly shut these thoughts out before they could go too far” (10-11). After all, “[They] were just friends, and it would stay that way” (9).

With prose that is effortless, considered, and evocative, Currin embodies the lives of each of their characters with grace and complexity. In “Joey, When She Knew Him,” Currin tenderly explores a different kind of entanglement—the friendships between lesbians and gay men. A profound sense of loss and sorrow suffuses the pages of this story as Currin captures the acute emotional pain of dissolving friendships. The narrator, Sid, recalls how her once-best-friend, Joey, “used to tell her all the time that he loved her” (40). However, the insecure and bedraggled Joey ultimately finds a husband and starts going by a new name: “Joey goes by Richard now” (30). A gulf between Sid and Joey slowly sets in, widening over time, and Sid mourns for the person she once knew.

One of the more fantastical of these stories is the surreal yet witty “Banshee,” which follows the story of a banshee who takes up residency in a lesbian couple’s home. In the story, the narrator navigates a rocky marriage while the imminent threat of climate catastrophe haunts her. The banshee lurks along the fringes of the narrative as Currin charts the changing circumstances that brought about the couple’s marital difficulties. The banshee loiters around the apartment, humming, rocking, moaning, listening to Drake, or playing guitar. It appears she has arrived to perform last rites for the biosphere: she wails, “a thousand gorse fires on the island” (51) and caws, “The winds. . . Close your eyes. The dust the dust the dust” (52). But does the banshee also portend the literal death of the narrator? Or her wife, Matilde? Does she represent the figurative death of their relationship? Or could the banshee signify the death of old ways of relating and the birth of the new? This story leaves us with much to consider.

Across twelve compelling stories, Currin presents us with snapshots into the multifaceted nature of queer relationships and love. The theme of change unites this collection, affording us small moments into the lives of each character as they prepare for new beginnings and journeys of transformation.

Pelaya Arapakis (she/her) is a Sinister Wisdom intern based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is also a musician, cultural worker, and freelance writer.

Interview with Eleanor Medhurst on Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion

Georgie Marsh interviewed fashion historian Eleanor Medhurst at the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive in Edinburgh during her book tour for Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion. You can read Lavender Menace’s portion of the interview here, where our community co-ordinator Keava McMillan asks Eleanor about her experiences working with archives as a fashion historian and how it influenced her work. You can also read Darla Tejada’s WSLR review of Unsuitable here. My interview is more focussed on fashion and lesbian style, particularly femme fashion history.
Eleanor described the journey she’s been on with her career, which began with posts on social media, including Instagram and TikTok, and her blog Dressing Dykes. On these social media platforms, she posts accessible snippets of the research she shares on her blog. This began after she did an undergraduate degree in Fashion and Dress History and a Master’s in History of Design and Material Culture. Aware of the gaps in the research, Eleanor did a lot of work during her Master’s related to lesbian and queer fashion in history. She started the blog to share the research that she did during her studies, which included looking at clothes worn by historical lesbian Anne Lister and at lesbian slogan t-shirts. Describing herself now as very much an independent researcher, Eleanor’s studies led to the publication of her book, Unsuitable.

Georgie Marsh: Do you have a personal style icon?

Eleanor Medhurst: My personal style icon! Honestly, I don’t really know if I have any one particular style icon. I wear a lot of pink, as you can see, and that’s just something I’ve been doing for many, many years now. I notice that I do bring influences in from my research, and I do consciously try and incorporate things into my own wardrobe and my own outfits. Someone who I do admire and who appears in my book is Natalie Barney, who was a very wealthy lesbian. She was an heiress and a writer, and she dressed in whatever she wanted at any point, which I think is just so fun. One of the stories that appears in the book is her housekeeper talking about how she would wear these white couture Madeleine Vionnet dresses. She would host her literary salons and would exist in the centre of these very lesbian-centric spaces wearing these fabulous white dresses; always different, but always a white Vionnet dress.

Georgie: Do you consider yourself to be someone who dresses for the female gaze, as opposed to the male gaze?

Eleanor: Yeah, definitely, I’ve never dressed for men in my life. I think that a lot of the subtleties that many queer women in particular do with their clothes, especially when dressing in more feminine ways, are things that women in general might pick up on. For example, I think women are more likely to see a woman dressed completely in pink and wonder why they are doing that, whereas, obviously it’s a bit of a generalisation, but I don’t think many men would look at it in this way. They’re more likely to just think, “well, she clearly likes pink.” So, definitely, yes, I’m only ever dressing for women! I’m also reminded of a quote by Mabel Hampton when she talks about her partner Lilian Foster, who was a very feminine lesbian. There are two quotes that go together; one is, “she was a feminine type of woman, she loved to dress” and the other is, “she never cared for men,” and I think those go hand in hand.

Georgie: Was there a particular person you found the most fun to write about in your book?

Eleanor: Natalie Barney, who I mentioned, was so fascinating to write about and again, any of the stories told by Mabel Hampton, just because they had so much personality behind them. I really loved writing about Stormé DeLarverie—I’ve got a whole chapter on her. She had such a fascinating life and the clothes she wore illustrate her life, but at the same time, they aren’t at the centre of it, which I think is an interesting way to look at lesbian fashion. Gladis Bentley is another male impersonator I loved writing about.

Georgie: Do you have a favourite moment in femme fashion history?

Eleanor: A favourite moment in femme fashion history! I’m not sure, I do think that the typical femmes of the mid-century bar scene deserve some more recognition on their own. I’ve got a whole section in the middle of the book about butch and femme, but I do think that often you’re looking through the lens of butch and femme together. From a lesbian perspective, we often look at butches and butch fashion because those are the people who were dressing in ways that were different and that they were often socially persecuted for. For this reason, I think that that’s a really important area to look at, because these butches in the wider world don’t get that recognition, especially in fashion. But I think that the clothes that femmes were wearing during that period and the ways that they were very intentionally styling themselves as part of a lesbian community, again for female gaze, is really important. It wasn’t just dressing in a conventionally feminine way; in many cases it was dressing in a lesbian feminine way—there were often specific codes of feminine dress that were in use in particular contexts in particular bars. I think that’s a very important area of femme fashion history.

Georgie: I know last night [at your book launch event] you mentioned wanting to research more into colour symbolism, which I’m really interested in as well. I wondered if there were any other specific areas that you had in mind for research in the future?

Eleanor: As you said, I’m starting to do some research into queer colour in general and queer uses of colour just because colour comes up so much in queer visual culture and fashion. Something that I really would like to do going forward is to look at lesbian fashion from more of a global perspective, and look at the ways that lesbian—or ‘lesbian-adjacent,’ to use a term that I use in the book—identities have been styled in so many other contexts across the world. This is something that I really want to commit to researching going forward because it will take a lot more time. I need to know about the context of a particular time period in a particular country in a particular community and it takes a lot more background research. I also need to find out about what was going on for lesbians, or whatever kind of identity or label people might be using, and then what was going on in fashion in general, so there are many more steps, but it’s something that I want to commit to researching going forward and hopefully reaching out to other people who might be looking at similar areas and working with them.

Georgie: So, have you started working on your new book?

Eleanor: Yes, but not very much. I haven’t written anything yet; I’ve been doing some research and working on it. I’ve written a proposal for it but I haven’t written any of the book, but I had to put that out of my head when I started doing the book tour. I finished the proof edits for this book in January, so I had a little bit of time to do some more research and do some other things. Since then, I’ve been doing book events, and I can’t think about anything else currently as I don’t have any space in my head!

Georgie: Do you have any advice for people who want to experiment more with how they present themselves but are a bit less confident? Secondly, what advice would you give to queer women specifically who felt that they had to reject conventional femininity when they came out to feel queer enough (which I felt a little bit at first), but now they realize that they want to embrace their femininity a bit more?

Eleanor: My advice for anyone who wants to experiment with dressing in any way that they don’t necessarily feel super comfortable in is to dress that way in a space that you feel safe or secure in to start with. I think that’s also something that’s reflected in lesbian history as well, with people bringing their preferred outfits to a club or a party for example, when they didn’t feel safe wearing them on the street. I think that especially if you’re going somewhere you feel safe and there are people who you’re friends with in a particular space, they’re more likely to hype you up and say, “yeah, I love this look!” which helps to slowly build your confidence.

For queer women who maybe felt like they had to dress in less of a feminine way—that’s also something that appears time and time again in lesbian history. Anyone who’s feeling like that is very much not alone in it. I think that it’s important to feel comfortable in what you’re wearing and feel like you’re representing yourself in the way that you want to be represented. I think it’s just important to remember that femmes, feminine lesbians, and feminine queer women have always existed, have been really important members of the community, and have been appreciated for the ways that they have dressed and presented themselves. You’re just as queer as anyone else!

Georgie: Thank you so much! Is there anything you’d like to add or something you hope people will ask you?

Eleanor: I just enjoy talking to different people and hearing different questions that people have, because ultimately we all have to choose what we’re wearing—we all have to get dressed—and we all have such a personal relationship to the clothes that we wear, which is why I think it’s such an important lens to view social histories and marginalized histories with, because it says so much about the kind of people wearing the clothes. So it’s really nice to have discussions about clothes and fashion history and lesbian fashion history with different people whose questions are coming from different places!

Georgie Marsh conducted this interview on April 7, 2024.

Georgie Marsh is an English graduate and current MA student in Sexual Dissidence based in Brighton. In her spare time, she writes blogs for LGBT Health & Well-being and volunteers with the digital community archiving project Queer Heritage South. She loves animals, reading, Chappell Roan, and drag shows.

These Letters End in Tears
Musih Tedji Xaviere
Catapult, 2024, 240 pages
$27.00

Reviewed by Roberta Arnold

In a powerful debut, These Letters End in Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere is a coup de maître, a stroke of brilliance. Winner of the 2021 Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize before it was published, this beautifully written novel is a treatise on culture, politics, and caste wrapped in a love story. Xaviere parses connections between opposites in a way that startles the heart and challenges thought. The epistolary narrative creates an intricate picture of community being fleshed out while writing to the love of one’s life.

In Cameroon, being gay is a crime punishable by death. In spite of this harsh reality, the country is culturally rich–and awash in opposite dyads: Francophiles and Anglophiles, Muslims and Christians, the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the corrupt and the just. It is no surprise when masculine and feminine characteristics among lesbians are examined in the novel. Fatima is butch, and Bessem is femme. Butch mannish behaviors would target one more readily for being a lesbian, along with any woman she is seen with publicly, unlike two feminine women seen together walking arm in arm without risk. Bessem is from an Anglophile Christian family, raised with ample financial means. Fatima is a Muslim from a devoted religious family selling wares on the street. Fatima and Bessem meet at a soccer field where Fatima is playing soccer. When her ball runs close to Bessem’s feet, their attraction is unequivocal and being together is a natural extension of being themselves, as described by their later lovemaking: “… it felt like I was unfolding into you” (p. 17).

A hidden life together continues for three years and then they are separated. A surprise attack, orchestrated by Fatima’s brother, ends when the two lovers are carted away to jail with bruises and cuts. Rescued by her mother and father while Fatima remains behind in the jail cell, Bessem writes to Fatima: “I never saw you again” (p. 20).

The search for Fatima keeps the suspense humming. Although she never gives up searching for her lost love, Bessem goes on to achieve her educational dream of becoming a professor. At one point she tries explaining to her mother that a professorship is not to be confused with a doctorate. A professorship, bestowed by the Minister of Education and the University, has a higher standing in Cameroon, coming only after a doctorate. But when Bessem comes out to her mother, the recognition and honor become meaningless: the mother-daughter bond is divided; the heft of advanced degrees flutters to the ground like paper scraps. Despite the religious consensus that she was “eaten by a lesbian demon,” Bessem holds firm, refusing to marry a man to please her mother, refusing to adhere to dogma and law. She searches out another lesbian relationship with a Francophile named Audrey, trying to decide what it is she is looking for with her: will it be a “smash and dash,” the colloquial term for a short-term gay relationship, or her usual: “smash and stick around for the time being” (p. 114)?

Scenes from life in Cameroon roll forward with the well-oiled skills of a wordsmith. Gravitas is captured with immediacy like expelled poetic breath. “I hold hope in one hand and fear in the other, Fati” (p. 158). At times, I felt as though I were being taken by the hand and led through someone else’s dream, a dream deeply resonating with my own, despite being worlds apart. Their love story is a challenge to any society that tries to diminish others: “I don’t remember my vows word for word, but I recall promising her not to let the world come between us” (p. 193).

This book is for anyone who believes in love, community, and the defiant cry of resilience in survival: “Love is love and we can love whoever we want because love is our birthright” (p. 222).

Roberta Arnold I am a lop-sided lesbian elder living in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I am very close, physically and mentally, to my sister, my dog, and my cat–not one who belongs to me though I hold each one close to my heart. I walk and swim and read and write and find myself in awe of nature and animals. I was born in Houston, raised in New York City, and have done a fair bit of seeing the world. In my good fortune, I came from an unusual lesbian-feminist-author mother, June Arnold. I’ve published stories and book reviews in Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal. Back in the 1970s, I sat on a grassy lawn and wrote a short story for Ain’t I A Woman? Press in Iowa City, Iowa, when traveling across the country with a van full of radical dykes. This journey was outlined by me and my outlaw compadres in Sinister Wisdom 95, Reconciliations, 1971 Dyke Outlaw Roadtrip. With my sister, I wrote a tribute to my mother in Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later. More recently, I had a book review about Andrea Dworkin in Ms. Magazine. I volunteer and serve on the board at Sinister Wisdom and am a member of Dykewriters and OLOC.

Hotel Impala
Pat Spears
Twisted Road Publications, 2024, 392 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by Roberta Arnold

In this stunning, literary tour-de-force, Pat Spears once again brings us into the courageous humanity found among the dire, inexplicably brutal and intertwined human situations of poverty on a lesbian. The novel is defined by characters in chapter headings by name: Leah, the mother who wants to feel the creative reach of being without the drugs that quell the disease but leave her feeling mentally deadened; Grace, the budding teenager who tries to manage her mother whirling in and out of the throes of mental illness; Daniel, the gentle father who tries to keep his family together without sufficient means; the youngest, Zoe who is just barely allowed her child feelings; and the lesbian policewoman who comes to their aid. Other vivid characters remain in one’s memory well after they leap from the page with fast-moving action, defining the inner and outer reach of a community.

Complicated by a failed social system and the mother’s driving desire for creative inspiration, the family system breaks apart. The father and daughter and lesbian officer tenuously set about putting it back together again like a home of pick-up-sticks with a hurricane threatening on the horizon. What feels like a descent into an increasingly untenable situation with danger around every corner is buoyed by the writing flowing evenly in seamless chapters. Hope is found by defining the abiding truths: inherent in the carefully fleshed-out layers of each person is a force striving towards what is true within community and love. I was most struck by the character of Grace, the iconic lesbian child, somehow still blooming with desires despite the hard realities poverty creates. Like Dorothy Allison’s wise reminders, Spears’ novel teaches us how survival in an impossible system is a constant struggle of grace and grit. The quote at the front of the book opens the door to this kind of thought, almost as a caution light to stay vigilant and not take everything at face value as the quote implies: “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” (Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina).

This is the third book by Spears, and it is another lesbian classic. I recommend it for anyone who works in a shelter, social services, a mental health profession, or anyone who wants to imagine how someone being given the least amount of chances can survive–or not. I would pair this book with Phyllis Chesler’s famous treatise on bias towards women in the mental health profession, Women and Madness (1972), and Mab Segrest’s brilliant exposé, Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum. All three combine to create a stark gut-punch hit of awareness about what happens to women with mental health struggles. In Hotel Impala, Spears makes it impossible to turn a blind eye to the struggle of women’s mental health by bringing the point home to the caring daughter. The strong lesbian daughter character of Grace elicits hope that will be re-writing the endings.

Roberta Arnold I am a lop-sided lesbian elder living in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I am very close, physically and mentally, to my sister, my dog, and my cat–not one who belongs to me though I hold each one close to my heart. I walk and swim and read and write and find myself in awe of nature and animals. I was born in Houston, raised in New York City, and have done a fair bit of seeing the world. In my good fortune, I came from an unusual lesbian-feminist-author mother, June Arnold. I’ve published stories and book reviews in Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal. Back in the 1970s, I sat on a grassy lawn and wrote a short story for Ain’t I A Woman? Press in Iowa City, Iowa, when traveling across the country with a van full of radical dykes. This journey was outlined by me and my outlaw compadres in Sinister Wisdom 95, Reconciliations, 1971 Dyke Outlaw Roadtrip. With my sister, I wrote a tribute to my mother in Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later. More recently, I had a book review about Andrea Dworkin in Ms. Magazine. I volunteer and serve on the board at Sinister Wisdom and am a member of Dykewriters and OLOC.

Untethered
Shelley Thrasher
Bold Strokes Books, 2024, 240 pages
$18.95

Reviewed by Martha Miller

There aren’t a lot of books by and about older lesbians. I think May Sarton was the last senior writer who wrote and published books about life over seventy. So, I was drawn to this book for that reason. The protagonist, Helen, is eighty-one years old. Many younger readers can’t imagine being that old and still walking upright, but I can, and I think I am not alone. The Baby Boomers were the largest generation born since World War II. During our lifetimes, some things happened to lessen our numbers, including the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, AIDS, the War on Terror (Afghanistan and Iraq), and most recently, COVID-19. The first and last took the largest of our numbers. So many of us didn’t make it to our sixties, seventies, and eighties, but we are still a large population. Speaking for myself, I look for stories about older lesbians because I know there are still a lot of adventures and things left to settle this late in life.

Helen Rogers’ story is framed by a mystery about herself and her family that leaves me questioning some of my own experiences. We start when she has just survived cancer and experienced a divorce from a longtime lover. She finds herself constantly alone, often by choice, as she has a hard time talking to people. Even though she still feels a bit unsteady after these two big events, she thinks getting away will help. So, she reserves a trip for a relaxing cruise to Bali with two close friends, a couple whose names are Martha Jo and Amy. This trip with several other senior citizens is one where everything goes wrong, starting with the plane trip from Texas and ending with expensive extra weeks in Bali because she catches COVID-19.

Amid the shipboard chaos and excursions to seldom-visited Indonesian islands, Thrasher gives us rich descriptions of warm ocean breezes, clouds in an aquamarine sky, waves, and beaches. Gradually, Helen becomes mesmerized by a younger, unhappily married woman named Grace. While alone, she and Helen exchange life stories and enjoy pleasant company as they make their way to their destination. Helen describes two marriages to men and, lastly, a long relationship with a woman that has just ended. After these revelations, suddenly Grace starts to run hot and cold. She asks Helen to save her a seat at dinner, then shows up and sits with someone else. She is unavailable and then friendly again. Finally, with no explanation, Grace pulls away entirely.

Both Helen and her friend Amy become ill with COVID-19 and must stay in isolation, far, far from home. Alone in a beautiful room that she’s too sick to enjoy, with mouthwatering food that she can barely eat, Helen thinks about her life and is haunted by previous relationships, especially the last, where her refusal to work on their poor communication caused their divorce. Although Grace has quit their friendship, Helen can’t let go. By the time she’s well enough to travel, she’s raised several questions about herself and is determined to find the answers.

After a nightmarish flight home, several months of recovery and reflection, as well as some research, Helen realizes that most women in her family have a different makeup; they live on the autism spectrum and process life differently. This forever changes the way she sees herself and her possibility of love.

Helen’s trip and the possible relationship with Grace were interesting and well-written. The frame of Helen’s search and discovery was more difficult for me. Maybe I didn’t understand the extent of her difficult communication. Helen admits wouldn’t go to counseling for that reason, so she lost her longtime lover. Teaching college English for several years, I often encountered students on the spectrum. Most of them were quite focused and earned A’s. Now I’m thinking about them. Helen has told me what it was like for her. A lifetime of experiences, influencing major decisions. Now I’m wondering what it was like for them.

Martha Miller is a Midwestern author whose latest book, Torrid Summer by Sapphire Press, came out June 1, 2024.

Beaver Girl
Cassie Premo Steele
Anxiety/Outcast Press, 2023, 260 pages
$16.00

Reviewed by Sarah Parsons

I am often wondering where all the climate stories are. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and general ecological collapse are, after all, among the most existential issues we face, are they not? Perhaps these stories are too impersonal, I sometimes think, or too bogged down in scientific jargon to be accessible or appealing to the average reader. Yet in Beaver Girl, a digestible and compelling dystopian novel, Cassie Premo Steele makes it clear that climate fiction is more present and engaging than ever.

Beaver Girl exists in a world which hints at an eerie but possible future for us all–a world ravaged by climate disaster, viruses, and general collapse. Within this world, which has largely seen an end to familiar capitalist systems, people have had to invent new ways of living. This is challenging, given that resources are in short supply and human contact carries the risk of disease or death. Yet, in the absence of all that is familiar, Steele creates a story of reconnection and returning to the ecosystems that we exist within.

The story follows two protagonists: a nineteen-year-old girl named Livia and Chap, the patriarch of a small beaver family. When a wildfire descends upon Livia’s community, she finds herself seeking a new home beyond the human world. Joining a large and rich canon of queer stories about chosen family, Beaver Girl shows the perspective of seeking family and connection beyond human terrain, which is what I find to be so unique about the novel. What lessons can we learn from the animals and plants living among us? Through the split perspectives between Livia and Chap, Steele highlights the varied struggles the characters face and the ways in which they learn to live in proximity to one another. As Livia deals with the aftermath of grief and loss while growing into her adulthood, Chap deals with the fear of caring for his family as his home is under threat. Steele seamlessly weaves ecological knowledge throughout the text, helping the reader access a deeper understanding of the characters (particularly the non-human beings) that populate the story.

Readers of all ages who enjoy dystopian fiction will likely connect with this book, though I think it is particularly suited to YA readers and those with a developing curiosity about the world we live in and the ecology that connects us all. This will also appeal to those like myself who appreciate the intersection between queer narratives and climate stories. What I find perhaps most effective about Cassie Premo Steele’s Beaver Girl is the ultimate sense of hope or resilience the reader is left with, which is endlessly important in stories about our changing world.

Sarah Parsons is a Sinister Wisdom intern and writer based in Oregon whose work can be found online in Paperbark Magazine.

Interview with Penelope Starr on Desert Haven

Sandra Butler: What is it about landdykes that initially captured your curiosity/interest?

Penelope Starr: Perhaps it was a way to reflect the trajectory of my own life, if not in actual fact, then in spirit. My consciousness was raised by the political unrest of the 1960s, the second wave of feminism, and more visible lesbianism of the 1970s, and utopian ideals generated by authors like Marge Piercy and Starhawk. I’m inspired by women who attempt to construct new societies defined by liberation and freedom, so when I began researching women’s land and interviewing a broad range of landdykes, from extraordinary visionaries to wounded warriors to hippie dropouts, I felt a need to amplify their voices. The decision to write it as fiction gave me the freedom to explore my life experiences and imagine fictional characters who represented the wide range of women’s land dwellers.

Sandra: How did you shape the novel?

Penelope: There are 15 interlinked short stories, so each woman stars in her own story but shows up in other stories as the years progress. I conceived it as a family tale that spans years and generations, illuminating the joys and challenges that the women faced in their day-to-day living and relationships. I aimed to capture the fullness of the emotional truths of their lives.

Each woman reflects a different aspect of women’s experience and the overlapping bonds they have created in the community. Some came for a respite from the patriarchal “norm,” healed, and moved on. For others, it remained their home for decades.

Keeping track of fifteen women over four decades allowed me to reflect on the cultural shifts in women’s lives over the last forty years.

Sandra: What do you see as the values Desert Haven represented?

Penelope: There is a determined DIY ethos prevalent on women’s land. Women have the power and imagination to create anything they set their minds to. When they needed a hot shower—they found ways to make that happen; if digging trenches for water lines, they got it done. Desert Haven is about the challenges and successes of women bonding together to create a new paradigm with joy and fortitude.

Sandra: What do you take away from this years-long immersion into the lives of landdykes?

Penelope: I learned to appreciate how the women lived their lives fully, in their bodies, on the land, establishing a place committed to earth-based, sustainable traditions.

I respect their courage to create an alternative culture and to live it fully, both in comfortable collaboration as well as in discomfort and disagreement. They celebrated woman-ness every day by choosing to separate themselves from the patriarchy and aimed to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

Sandra: What has been the response to your readings?

Penelope: Many older women remember themselves in those early years, the risks they took, and the choices they made. Conversations often shift into personal memories of moments when they took their first steps away from patriarchal expectations and began to shape their own lives. Desert Haven is a book about a specific part of lesbian history but can be read more broadly. Lesbian or not, readers seem to respond to the longing for freedom, autonomy, and community the book illuminates.

Sandra: What hopes do you have for the book?

Penelope: I believe it is essential to know our past in order to build the future—and while the challenges today are not what we faced in years past, the work is far from over. I think Desert Haven would be an important read for a women’s studies class, and I would love to hear from young queer people who have read it.

Besides being a part of our history, women’s land is still very much in the present. There are viable communities in varying states of organization and occupancy across the country looking for new energy and vision. Maybe this book will inspire cohesive connections to strive for that lesbian utopia. Or, at the very least, a better future for all of us.

Sandra Butler conducted this interview on August 19, 2024.

See Sandra’s review of Desert Haven here.

Sandra Butler is a writer and an 86-year-old life-long outside agitator. The Kitchen is Closed: And Other Benefits of Being Old is currently available, and Leaving Home at 83 will be published in October of 2024. Butler is Old, Jewish, and Queer, and looking forward to opportunities for future agitation—whenever necessary.

Penelope Starr is a gatherer of stories. Founder of Odyssey Storytelling, a community storytelling event now celebrating its twentieth year, she understands how our stories illuminate the commonalities of our lesbian lives while leaving lots of room for the unique and distinct way each woman makes and lives her choices. Her latest book Desert Haven is available for purchase now.

Nest of Matches
Amie Whittemore
Autumn House Press, 2024, 80 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Kelsey McGarry

In Nest of Matches, Whittemore skillfully blends longing, queerness, eroticism, love, loss, and grief with the natural world. This beautiful poetry collection is an exploration and meditation on cycles; the life cycles of humans and animals, the moon cycle, astrological and zodiac cycles, the life and blooming of flowers, relationships, queer identity, and more.

The book is embedded with the contradictions of being alive, especially the dichotomies that can feel innate to queer identity. A series of poems titled “Another Queer Love Poem that Fails” mourns works of art and expression that fall short. In several poems, Whittemore celebrates the possibilities of transfiguration within queerness and recognizes the connections and resilience that queerness often brings.

In “Blue Moon,” Whittemore incorporates phrases from the namesake song by The Marcels, finding renewed meaning in the song’s lyrics while providing another tender addition to the series of poems on the moon cycle. In “Butterfly Bandage,” she remembers her caretaker grandparents and finds comfort in the tending that caretakers can provide long after they are gone, through their memories and the relics they leave behind. In “Libra Questionnaire,” she answers hard-hitting questions about patterns of those born under a Libra sky, using Google’s suggested searches. She answers these astrological questions with authority, consistently giving sincere thought and reverence to every subject.

Each poem is personal and relevant to the aim of loving oneself and the world; Whittemore explicitly reflects on the struggle of self-love for queer people. She describes the beauty in all of earth’s creatures, finding hope in each and every living thing–from her ancestors, to foxes, to the moon.

From walks in poppy fields to observing the full bloom of a peony, the collection reads like a sweet walk through both earthly and astral meadows. She creates a natural world so appealing that it feels like a dreamworld, while expertly reminding us that the most beautiful visions of all are found in our everyday surroundings, like the flowers we see, the moon that guides our evenings, the waves, and the presence of our ancestors in the natural world.

This collection of poems feels like an aching love letter to desire in the queer body. There is at once a wisdom and a deep vulnerability in each poem, which does not seem accidental; this mixture is an intentional, calculated balance. The collection inspires the reader to appreciate the holiness in both stillness and the natural elements that move all too quickly.

Kelsey McGarry is a Sinister Wisdom intern and volunteer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is interested in queer history and archiving, scheming, and being outside.