Ooops…I Just Catharted! Fifty Years of Cathartic Comics
Rupert Kinnard
Stacked Deck Press, 2025, 278 pages
$34.95

Reviewed by Julia M. Allen

Allow me to introduce to you Professor I. B. Gittendowne, otherwise known as Rupert Kinnard, the creator of the first Black gay and lesbian comic strip. The strip ran for over twenty years in a variety of alternative and queer periodicals, and now, Kinnard has collected these pointedly hilarious gems into a beautifully designed and produced 11 ¾” by 9 ¼” hardcover volume: Ooops…I Just Catharted! Fifty Years of Cathartic Comics. Beginning with his first cartoon character, the Brown Bomber, Professor I. B. Gittendowne deploys the most effective and universally available persuasive tool—humor—to topple racist, sexist, and homophobic absurdities. The four-panel strip grew to feature two inimitable main characters: the Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé. Perpetually nineteen years old, the Brown Bomber (named after boxing champ Joe Louis) is an endearingly innocent, buff, single-gloved, non-violent gay superhero; his side-kick, Diva, is a Ph.D.-holding lesbian educator—honoring, Kinnard tells us, the many strong, intelligent women in his life. Together, the two create a depth of social analysis and action that could not have been achieved by a single character.

In 278 lavishly-illustrated pages, Kinnard tells the story of how he developed the strip over the years. A native of Chicago, Kinnard began his artistic career as a student at Cornell College, a small liberal arts school in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. At first, the strip’s only regular character was the Brown Bomber (B.B.), who appeared in the weekly student newspaper, addressing various institutional problems. B.B. was joined at times by the Vanilla Cremepuff, a barely disguised college president, viewed askance for clueless inaction on racial issues. After three and a half years—and wildly-successful campus Brown Bomber T-shirt sales—the Brown Bomber came out as gay.

After graduating in 1979 and moving to Portland, Oregon, Kinnard began publishing Brown Bomber strips in a short-lived local gay and lesbian newspaper, the NW Fountain. A few years later, the Brown Bomber began gracing the pages of a new queer publication, Just Out, where he was soon joined by Diva Touché Flambé, who offered transformative visions and actions to assuage the Brown Bomber’s dismay at the irrationality he often encountered. In addition to occasionally displaying certain mystical powers when nothing else would suffice—e.g., turning an unrepentant LA police officer into a pig—Diva introduces a therapeutic device called slapthology, promoting clear thinking in the recalcitrant with a slap upside the head. “Wow!” says a character, post-slap, “My mind feels as fresh as a breath mint! I guess most written history has centered around the accomplishments of white people!” Kinnard reflects, “I saw myself as being part Diva and part Bomber.”

A job loss in Portland led Kinnard to move to the Bay Area, where Cathartic Comics flourished in the SF Weekly, an alternative paper, for seven years. During this time, Kinnard reinvented his author persona as Prof. I. B. Gittendowne. When the SF Weekly changed hands, ending that paper’s run of Cathartic Comics, Kinnard returned to Portland. Kinnard’s involvement in a life-changing car accident brought the weekly strip to a close, but did not alter the enthusiasm of his fan base or change Kinnard’s dedication to the persuasive use of art and humor as an avenue to social justice. We can only be grateful that he has spent his recent years compiling and designing this celebration of B.B. and the Diva.

Ooops…I Just Catharted! features hundreds of Cathartic Comics strips which otherwise would have vanished along with the newsprint on which they appeared. The artistry is superb, every panel full of energy as characters interact with each other and react to their world’s latest outrages. The Brown Bomber almost always looks the same—wearing the same tennis shoes and over-sized athletic socks, the same shorts, same cape, same boxing glove on his right hand, same scarf tied on his head. The elegant Diva, however, rarely wears the same outfit twice.

In the text accompanying the strips and other illustrations, Kinnard describes both his choices of drawing tools and his artistic and graphic design education. He narrates the development of Cathartic Comics from his childhood to 2025, providing explanatory detail for strips that comment on events with which some readers may not be familiar, such as Ronald Reagan’s gaffe during the 1988 Republican National Convention when he tried to say, “facts are stubborn things,” but actually said, “facts are stupid things.”

Occasionally, I found myself losing the thread of the narrative text as I immersed myself in strip after strip from a given era. Later, I discovered two compact chronologies near the end of the book. I’d suggest that readers look at these first for an overview, then read from the beginning. I should also add that some typos, misspellings, and punctuation errors have crept into the text, but, while unfortunate, they do not lead to misreadings.

Ooops…I Just Catharted! offers hours of joyful reading, just when we need it.

Julia M. Allen is Professor Emerita, English, Sonoma State University. She is the author of Passionate Commitments: The Lives of Anna Rochester and Grace Hutchins, SUNY Press, 2013 and co-author with Jocelyn H. Cohen of Women Making History: The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press, Lever Press, 2023.

Lesbian Styles in Cinema
Vicki Karaminas and Judith Beyer
Edinburgh University Press, 2025, 192 pages
$120.00

Reviewed by Atlanta Tsiaoukkas

Looking at the countless publications on queer cinema and costume, it is surprising that until this year a comprehensive survey of the lesbian aesthetic in cinema had not manifested, and, as such, Vicki Karaminas’ and Judith Beyer’s Lesbian Styles in Cinema offers a timely investigation of lesbian cinema and queer fashion history. Working across a vast array of films from the 1929 German silent Pandora’s Box (Pabst) to last year’s Love Lies Bleeding (Glass), Karaminas and Beyer examine style on screen as a gateway through which to explore expressions of ‘lesbian subjectivity,’ ultimately concluding that contemporary cinema, with its loosened grip on gender binaries, increasingly troubles the established conventions of lesbian style.

Moving through lesbian film history, the sheer number of films included in this relatively short volume is both impressive and perhaps overambitious—some films receive a level of passing attention that may disappoint, and few receive the extensive critical analysis that, when executed, offers the work’s most exciting insights. Lesbian Styles in Cinema begins with coming-of-age narratives, particularly examining masculinity and femininity in lesbian cinema. Chapter two moves on to stories of seduction, continuing the theme of masculinity as a distinctly visible expression of lesbian style. Chapters three and four turn to biopics and period dramas, though the line between these is a fine one that is not drawn out sufficiently to justify separating the chapters into two. The subsequent chapter on crime thrillers is undoubtedly the most expansive, especially where the styling of queer femme fatales speaks to a lesbian visual pleasure. Chapter six focuses on the central implication of Karaminas’ and Beyer’s argument, that contemporary lesbian cinema, such as Bottoms (Seligman) and Drive-Away Dolls (Coen), disintegrates the butch-femme dichotomy in favour of androgyny.

The generic approach taken in Lesbian Styles in Cinema limits the efficaciousness of Karaminas’ and Beyer’s narratives, obscuring their most stimulating observations. The sporadic discussions of colour, for example, across films such as Blue is the Warmest Colour (Kechiche), Blue Jean (Oakley) and Vita & Virginia (Button), suggest a pattern that would have benefited from extended thematic analysis rather than passing references across various chapters. The same could be said of discussions on school uniform, where the analysis of Collete’s uniform in both reality and the biopic would have made most sense alongside the first chapter’s exploration of Olivia (Audry) and Mädchen in Uniform (Sagan)—a missed opportunity to compare and contrast the uniform as a lesbian style symbol. My hope is that scholars notice the patterns laid out by Karaminas and Beyer and take the initiative to explore them further.

The ostensible aim of Lesbian Styles in Cinema is to demonstrate how “film uses lesbian style to construct characters that appeal to lesbian, queer and mainstream audiences in studio films and independent cinema” (5). Such a distinction would have benefited from greater extrapolation, as would Karaminas’ and Beyer’s preference for lesbian over other more inclusive terms such as sapphic or queer, in light of the fact that many of the characters featured in the text’s ‘lesbian cinema’ do not explicitly identify as such. Similarly, the project of lesbian style in cinema would have been bolstered by a more comprehensive understanding of the oft-repeated descriptor, androgynous, which is applied broadly and unevenly throughout the analysis. Whilst definitional disputes and gender spectrum discourse may be tedious at times in academic literature, a greater level of specificity when discussing concepts such as ‘lesbian’ and ‘androgynous’ may have brought more nuance into the discussion of lesbian cinema and style.

While Lesbian Styles in Cinema would have benefited from a narrower focus that attended more closely to the theoretical issues of gender expression and lesbian identities, this timely intervention is undoubtedly a boon for the study of lesbian and sapphic identity and style in cinema. Karaminas and Beyer have effectively demonstrated the richness of lesbian cinema and its scope ripe for further investigation of the nebulous yet distinctive lesbian style.

Atlanta Tsiaoukkas is a UK-based writer and researcher currently working towards a PhD on queer Victorian schoolgirls and their homoerotic friendships. Find her on Instagram @aatlanta_aa

Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia
Edited by Davis Shoulders
University Press of Kentucky, 2025, 168 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by Allison Quinlan

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him” (James Baldwin, 1962).

From the start, this collection makes clear a shared experience of being harmed by the people we love the most, in the name of God and love, and the complications that arise when you continue to love the people who seem to swing between loving you and hating you. Each work in the compilation wrestles with what it means to have faith, both in God and the people around us, beginning with, “effectively all rural queer Appalachians and Southerners have loved people who hated them—or at least parts of them, parts that can’t be divided out” (x). While Queer Communion leans more into a positive connection with faith, it doesn’t shy away from harm either; it just shows ways in which people have re-shaped or found a different way of worship, which I appreciated.

The collection reiterates the idea of making one’s religion in nearly every segment, piecing together queerness with Appalachian identity, religious views (from Catholicism to strict protestant evangelicalism), and how this “holiness” exists apart from exclusionary beliefs. Davis Shoulders writes, “I attend a church of my own making. At any place where a sense of knowing is felt” (128). And Jarred Johnson says, “Faith seems like it should be life-transforming, not a set of strictures by which to abide” (118). Savannah Sipple defines love and holiness well, writing:

There are moments in our lives when we know we’re confident in the person we are, in the things we know to be true about ourselves. . . What would my grandmother say about this granddaughter of hers who now has a wife, who now has a love whose arms open wide enough to call me home? I’d like to think she’d call that holy (13).

I agree that faith is about finding a place of honesty, where one can be fully themselves. Julie Rae Powers calls queerness “spiritual in its own right” (21). The theme of queer acceptance is constant in the collection; for example, John Golden’s piece begins by discussing baptism as a moment of queer acceptance, which I appreciated for its beautiful symbolism.

Golden’s work took an interesting turn, though, when they told a story about arguing with a right-wing man, and in a moment of anger, told him he’s removed from the grace of God. Later, they expressed regret, and I was a bit conflicted. Hateful people tell queer folks all the time that God condemns them. Why should this hateful guy get mercy? I suppose it’s complicated. Golden’s piece forces you to sit with the question of whether anyone gets to say who’s beyond redemption.

Conflict is part of what makes the collection so wonderful, though, because it’s honest and, in many cases, doesn’t tie everything up neatly. It recognises the pain of religion, deep and complicated that it is. Some of the essays lean into faith and find peace in it, while others walk away from it entirely. The collection makes space for both. Mack Rogers’ piece offers insight into how a faith that emphasises control and worship, conditional love, and operates as a tool for manipulation can impact us. Then, it compares this religious control with defining one’s own joy. Emma Cieslik sums up the conflict well, writing, “many queer people like myself feel the same urgency of ‘choice’ or being pushed to ‘decide’ between living as their authentic selves and drinking the Kool-Aid of the church” (45).

I finished the work with the takeaway that each author had built something sacred for themselves, even in spaces where they were told they didn’t belong. Shoulders describes the struggle of situating Appalachian identity given others’ exclusionary beliefs, saying, “They’ve imagined it to be a place where a person like me shouldn’t belong” (132). And yet every author has dispelled aspects of those imaginings. Appalachia is and always has been a space where everyone belongs; the people who hate don’t get to define God, the land, and who is welcome, no matter how hard they might try.

Allison Quinlan is a nonprofit manager in Scotland, originally from the rural southern United States.

Loving Corrections
adrienne maree brown
AK Press, 2024, 200 pages
$18.00

Reviewed by Courtney Heidorn

Loving Corrections is adrienne maree brown’s most relational book yet, exploring how communities can get “specific, and deeper, when we have accumulated the wisdom to challenge harmful norms of privilege and power” (4). brown wants us all to retain a curious posture in the face of diverse people and problems. Readers are invited to confront uncomfortable truths about their own biases—and how to confront others’—in the name of a love for our collective future.

brown did not write Loving Corrections to police activists, reprimanding them for not believing the right things or living out their solidarity in a specific way—in fact, brown’s essays rarely contain explicit political positions that may divide her audience. Instead, there is an entire chapter titled, “Righting Solidarity: Flocking Together.” She wisely shares that “confusion is a colonial tactic,” meaning that a lack of community between oppressed groups creates dissociation from intersectional issues that could be reconciled with a robust solidarity (85). Relationships come first in activism, brown believes, and it is the work of the activist to flock “with the people,” not to be in a position of power that confuses or fractures groups (92, italics brown’s).

In the chapter “Love Looks Like Accountability,” brown dives deep into how our personal relationships can have a ripple effect on how our society functions. In a digital world where “therapy speak” is often used incorrectly or in harmful ways, this chapter is a wonderful refresher on how we can love ourselves and others through the right ways of engaging in relationships. brown quotes Prentis Hemphill: “boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously” (153). brown writes about how we must be responsible for our internal state and how it might impact others, how we must apologize and receive apologies, and how to know when it is best to let a relationship go. These feel like simple emotional teachings we learn in elementary school, but later in life, our capitalist system does not reward this loving behavior. Starting small with improving love in everyday relationships will create a more accountable and loving society.

In the conclusion to Loving Corrections, brown reveals that this is the last time she will write specifically for those “active in movements for social and environmental change” (189). This does not mean her work, nor ours, is close to finished. Loving Corrections is the sixth book that brown has written in the Emergent Strategy Series—which contains thirteen books in total—and oh boy, what a comprehensive and necessary series it is. These books are gentle yet mighty tools for activists and their communities. Loving Corrections affirms that, always, “there is love at the center” (7).

Courtney Heidorn (she/they) is an Assistant Editor for Chestnut Review and holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Azusa Pacific University. You can see more of their work in their chapbook, Palimpsest, from Bottlecap Press and in CURIOUS Magazine and Pearl Press. Find them on Instagram and Substack @palimpsestpoems.

To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers
Edited by Rae Garringer
The University Press of Kentucky, 2025, 112 pages
$27.95

Reviewed by Allison Quinlan

Home is a complicated thing. For many queer folks from Appalachia, home is too often a place longed for, but which we know will never quite fully have us. This collection captures that tension well, and importantly amplifies the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other marginalised peoples in the collection of essays and poetry. Living in spaces that don’t always love you back means that too many queer people move through the world braced for violence.

The collection gets right into the gut punch of what survival looks like with “What You Should Know Before You Kill Me” by Brandon Sun Eagle Jent (2-3). Jent writes, “This body is but a wave in the ocean of me,” (2) an assertion that queer existence is something larger than the physical body, and not easily erased. Rayna Momen’s “They Say All Kinds Are Welcome Here” lays bare the reality for so many, particularly people of colour in these spaces: “yet these [country] roads to prosperity / are full of [shit] potholes and bigotry” (4). The collection definitely doesn’t ease you in—you understand the nuances of the author’s lived experience before you finish the first essay.

Lucien Darjeun Meadows continues the conversation, “And I can never ‘go home,’ not really, not completely, ever again” (12). So, the work presents a question to the reader: Where exactly do you go and what do you do when home is both a longing and a loss? What I left with is that it’s up to us to carve out a space and fight for a place to be. I understand that this should inspire in some ways, but reading this during the current political climate in the United States left me feeling a little disheartened at the reality that we’ll seemingly always have to fight just to be.

Every piece in the collection speaks to those questions of longing and belonging. hermelinda cortés writes about being Mexican-American in a space that doesn’t “claim” her and her choice to stay, rooted by something deeper than belonging in a traditional sense. Likewise, Momen’s “Growing up Black in Appalachia / made me want to fight and to flee / left me internalized and empowered / to live a double life / like Affrilachians learn to do” (26) echoes the complexity of existence as a marginalized person in Appalachia. Garringer also acknowledges the difficulty in addressing these questions of identity and belonging: “This, too, is a part of the place I call home. And not talking about these horrific truths is a way of protecting them, condoning them, even” (46).

It’s hard not to feel sad reading the collection, but there are also lovely moments of love and hope—not naive hope—but the kind that we struggle for and progress towards, even if it still feels disheartening to fight for it constantly. Rosenthal’s segment, “A Queer Place Called Home” (63-70) was the most comforting read in the work. It offered a glimpse of a future for queer life and love in Appalachia. I suppose the collection answers the questions the authors raise by showing that home might not necessarily be someplace to return to, but instead something to create. D. Stump writes, “We find meaning in all the places meaning calls to us. We find home in all the places that invite us to sit at the table and eat” (82).

In the final pages, Jent returns, telling readers that “this world loves me too” (83-84). I finished To Belong Here feeling exhausted and a little sad, but mostly grateful for the book and the voices it holds—an undeniable proof that we’re here, creating and continuing.

Allison Quinlan now feels more conflicted about missing home. They are a nonprofit manager and teacher currently living in Scotland (originally from rural Georgia, United States).

Swagger: A Celebration of the Butch Experience
Curated by Rae Theodore and edited by Nat Burns
Flashpoint Publications, 2024, 174 pages
$16.95

“And think about / How much I love / Butches / And the people / Who love them”

(“Butch 4 Butch,” Beck Guerra Carter, 72).

Reviewed by Allison Quinlan

Swagger is a celebration and an exploration of the identity, history, and community of butch lesbians. Whether you identify as butch or simply want to understand butchness in its multifaceted glory, this work offers great insight and connection. The work begins with artwork such as “Gender” by Ash, and unfolds into retellings and stories from elder butches and poetry that captures the spirit of butch existence. One of the earlier sections written by Merril Mushroom—a name familiar to many Sinister Wisdom readers—announces the book’s intention to define, complicate, and joyfully celebrate butchness, beginning with a non-rigid definition of ‘butch.’ Her words set the tone for the rest of the compilation of voices adding to the conversation on being butch, and reminding readers that defining butchness can be both simple and complex.

The book continually grapples with key questions: What does it mean to be butch? How do we see, define, or know it within ourselves? The explorations in Swagger are as varied as the individuals writing them, but every work has some exploration of these questions, and many presented answers! Georgie Orion lets us know that butches can be anyone—“Lesbians from Girl Scouts. Lesbians from camp. Lesbians from church. Lesbians from school. Basically every grown-up lesbian I had ever met. And they all showed up” (21). Understandings of the intersection between community and the celebration of a shared, comfortable, normalized identity were present all through the work. In addition to descriptions of building a shared community, the topic of self-creation features in several pieces.

The question of masculinity and the boundaries of emulation versus reclamation, which I have always considered a distinctly butch expression, is a recurrent theme. Virginia Black writes,

“While I have emulated men and masculine presentation, I have never wanted to be one, nor felt the need to defend my space as a lesbian against a man…unless he was trying to manspread on public transportation, so I did it first to prove a point. How straight men perceive me doesn’t shape my self-definition” (26).

Cindy Rizzo’s “City Butch” grapples with the insecurities that accompany socially constructed butch stereotypes and reaffirms the confidence to define oneself. She writes, “How far could I stray from a stereotype so I could be true to myself?. . . I knew in spite of everything that I was a butch” (28). The answer to the questions of identity definition and constructed lines aren’t explicit, but several pieces set out that identity can be self-determined and fluid. Virginia Black closes their work by noting the possibility inherent to her self-determination of butchness. How should she define herself and her butchness? They write, “Exhale. / However I want” (27).

Swagger honors the vibrant past of butchness while embracing the ever-evolving diversity of butch identity (and ever-evolving understanding of butch identity). Several authors in the collection touch on trans identity and butchness, which is important in a collection like Swagger. As Audre Lorde writes, “there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives” (Sister Outsider, 138). Transphobic rhetoric persists, even in queer communities, erasing the contributions of the people at the forefront of the fight for liberation. Transness is celebrated in this work, too. Swagger sets up a conversation to challenge misconceptions that masculine presentation determines gender or that gender identity and gender performance are inherently the same. The collection also makes it clear that socially drawn lines can become tools of resistance and experimentation.

Finally, I loved reading the authors’ biographies at the end of the work, not only because it gave me insight into the identities of the people creating but also because it provided information on connecting. If you couldn’t tell from my earlier havering on community and connection, I consider it a vital aspect of the queer community, so it was lovely to find these incredible people compiled at the end of the work. Swagger embodies queer community and connection in a really beautiful way. Every butch joyfully existing is evidence of a queer future, so I’ll leave you with Victoria Anne Darling’s rallying words, “Don’t, don’t, don’t / Tone it down” (33).

Allison Quinlan (they/she) volunteers as a copyeditor for Sinister Wisdom and manages a non-profit in the UK that supports survivors of abuse. They’re exceptionally bad at keeping lavender plants alive. . . one could say they’ve become a lavender menace.

The Weird Sister Collection: Writing at the Intersections of Feminism, Literature, and Pop Culture
Edited by Marisa Crawford
Feminist Press, 2024, 264 pages
$26.95

Reviewed by Gabe Tejada

With the resurgence of books, largely due to readers on social media, an integral part of the literary ecosystem seems to have been neglected: the literary magazine. The Weird Sister Collection—a book edited by Marisa Crawford—is a timely homage to that particular species of the literary and art magazine: the blog.

The collection begins with a foreword by Michelle Tea, dyke queen of the countercultural 1990s lesbian literary scene. Tea writes, “Something that had felt so private and obscure to me had also been found and claimed by others” (xii), a feeling I’m sure was shared by each one of us upon discovering Sinister Wisdom, whether in its inception back in 1976 or doom-stumbling onto its Instagram account in 2024. Here, as in the Weird Sister book and blog, we write about “(our) feminist history, (our) places in the past, and the feminism we’re all making right now” (xii). Lovers of literary magazines will feel at home in the eclectic—yet cohesive—mix of art critique, politically engaged personal (or personally engaged political) narratives, and cultural commentary found in this collection. Though divided into seven thematic categories, including “Talking Back to the Canon,” “Double, Double Pop Culture Trouble,” and “Performance, Identity, and Public Space,” each piece fuses high and low art as well as popular and obscure cultural references to capture the feminist millennial milieu of its writers.

Sam Cohen’s “I am Jenny Schecter, Please Love Me” was a vindication, not just for Jenny, but for all the LAGs (lesbians after graduation) like her. How after a certain age, the certainty of one’s queer identity is expected, with those still dis/uncovering their queerness seen to be lagging behind. “We Were There: Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter at the New Museum” by Hossannah Asuncion was an institutional critique through “the care of the (Black woman’s) body” (200). In naming all of the artists involved, through their text Asuncion extends the reclamation of cultural space that is often denied Black women artists—a continuation of the care underpinning the collective’s actions. Similarly, Megan Milks’ piece on Barbara Grier’s pseudonyms also contends with (literary) space. At the same time that they acknowledge Grier’s contributions to lesbian literature, Milks points out how Grier’s plethora of pseudonyms led to her monopolization of lesbian/queer space. On the other hand, Soleil Ho’s piece—also involving a nom de plume—is a searing reminder of the pitfalls of tokenistic diversity and inclusion. The title, “Yi-Fen Chou and the Man Who Wore Her,” shows how easily our marginalizations can be appropriated and weaponized against us, echoing the long history of the white man’s abuse of our bodies.

The Weird Sister Collection is an eclectic concoction of essays and narratives. Inside its pages, feminist and queer readers and activists will find writing that will both comfort and challenge them.

Gabe Tejada is an emerging arts writer and student based in Naarm.

El Círculo Sáfico: Lesbianismo y bisexualidad en el Madrid de principios del siglo XX
Paula Villanueva
Levanta Fuego, 2024, 288 pages
18,00 €

Reseñado por Angela Acosta

Read this review in English

Las mujeres sáficas que vivían a caballo de los siglos XIX y XX formaban un núcleo de escritoras y artistas vanguardistas en España y, tras una dictadura y varios métodos de censura y silenciamiento, por fin las podemos nombrar y conocer en pleno siglo XXI. El Círculo Sáfico es el primer libro de carácter didáctico escrito para lectores que aún no conozcan las historias de las lesbianas y mujeres bisexuales que fueron llamadas “invertidas” en aquel entonces. Así es, el tercer volumen de las memorias de la dramaturga lesbiana Victorina Durán, y las investigaciones de Vicente Carretón y Eva Moreno Lago sobre dicho Círculo Sáfico madrileño y el que existió en el exilio bonaerense sirven como los puntos de partida del presente volumen sobre las redes epistolares, románticas y de amistad entre escritoras y artistas sáficas.

Paula Villanueva reivindica la presencia de nombres y textos sáficos, algunos ya aparecidos en los documentales de Las Sinsombrero de Tània Balló (2015, 2019, 2021), a través de una exploración de los espacios de encuentro y el “quién es quién de las bisexuales y las lesbianas” (119) que comprende la mayoría del libro, nombrando a la Condesa Gloria Laguna, Ángeles Vicente, Elena Fortún, Victoria Kent, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Rosa Chacel, Victorina Durán, Carmen Conde y las parejas de estas. Estas mujeres sáficas se integraban en el ámbito cultural modernista junto con Federico García Lorca y Luis Cernuda, los intelectuales queer más célebres de su generación, pero todavía resulta difícil encontrar evidencia de ellas en los archivos y los manuales de literatura sobre la llamada “Generación del 27” y la “Edad de Plata” de la literatura española.

Si bien es cierto que todas estas mujeres eran blancas y la mayoría provenían de familias acomodadas, las mujeres destacadas en este ensayo representan un abanico de experiencias y expresiones de género y sexualidades de tal modo que Villanueva hace hincapié en la importancia del asociacionismo femenino en su capítulo sobre el Lyceum Club Femenino y la Residencia de Señoritas. Estas instituciones brindaban educación y amistades que apoyarían a estas mujeres por vida, a pesar de que cerrarían después de la guerra civil.

“A mi juicio, esta asiduidad o costumbre es lo que crea el Círculo y no la previa consideración del Círculo Sáfico como una asociación fundada, registrada o semi-institucionalizada. Que las mujeres sáficas se han necesitado y buscado a lo largo de la historia es una obviedad—igual que los hombres gais o bisexuales—, y por ello considero que es aquí donde debemos poner el foco” (88).

El Círculo Sáfico recapitula los frutos de las investigaciones contemporáneas sobre las mujeres modernas de forma accesible, tanto en términos del lenguaje como en la presentación del marco histórico y cultural. Los capítulos preliminares sirven como una introducción a la mujer moderna y el asociacionismo femenino, contextualizando a estas mujeres vanguardistas que “atentaba directamente contra las visiones dicotómicas y binarias del mundo” (43) dentro de las conversaciones sobre la patologización de la sexualidad en el contexto occidental y la modernidad sáfica en el mundo angloparlante con Gertrude Stein y El pozo de la soledad de Radclyffe Hall.

El libro no es una mera reseña bibliográfica, sino un estudio pormenorizado sobre los desafíos personales y profesionales a los que se enfrentaron las mujeres lesbianas y bisexuales (incluso cuando los propios familiares negaban las relaciones que tuvieron con otras mujeres) que al mismo tiempo cuestiona por qué no se ha considerado la sexualidad en algunas investigaciones sobre ellas. Los apartados reúnen a nombres ya reconocidos como Victorina Durán y Elena Fortún junto con nombres de mujeres poco mencionadas aun en el ámbito académico, como la Condesa Gloria Laguna cuyo “lesbianismo, fue una íntima amiga suya” (125). Estos perfiles de mujeres sáficas logran un buen equilibrio entre la discusión de textos sáficos como Zezé (1909) de Ángeles Vicente y Oculto sendero (escrito entre 1939 y 1948) de Elena Fortún y cómo estos textos fueron inspirados por las tertulias y las relaciones epistolares que nutrían las vidas de escritoras y artistas sáficas.

La voz de la autora está presente de principio al fin, guiándonos por el Madrid de los años 20 y 30 y el Círculo Sáfico de Buenos Aires establecido por Durán durante su exilio bonaerense. Sobre todo, agradezco el cuidado con el que Villanueva cuenta las historias de amor en tiempos de guerra, de esposos celosos como Antonio Oliver quien destruyó varios poemas de Carmen Conde y de “la bisexualidad no declarada y conflictiva” (239) de la actriz Margarita Xirgu.

“Todas necesitamos olvidarnos, al menos durante unas horas, de las violencias del mundo; del mismo modo que necesitamos habitar una burbuja en la que nuestras vidas pueden ser plenas, junto a amigas y amores con las que compartir luchas, construirnos políticamente y cuidarnos” (238).

Me conmueve mucho cómo el libro resalta la solidaridad y la hermandad entre las mujeres queer: desde los compromisos políticos de la abogada Victoria Kent y la poeta Lucía Sánchez Saornil hasta la valentía con la que Victorina Durán, Rosa Chacel y Elena Fortún escribieron sobre las redes sáficas de su generación. Espero que estas mujeres modernas nos inspiren a sumar más nombres y voces diversas a estos “antecedentes tribadistas” (89) mientras les rendimos homenaje en nuestras investigaciones y versos.

Dra. Angela Acosta es profesora asistente de español en la Universidad de Carolina del Sur. Sus poemas han aparecido en Yellow Arrow Publishing, Heartlines Spec y Apparition Lit. Es coeditora con la Dra. Rebecca Haidt del número especial de Feminist Modernist Studies sobre la modernidad sáfica española (vol. 7, no. 3).

The Sapphic Circle: Lesbianism and Bisexuality in Madrid at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
Paula Villanueva
Levanta Fuego, 2024, 288 pages
$19.60

Reviewed by Angela Acosta

Lea esta reseña en español

Sapphic women in Spain who lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries formed a core group of avant-garde writers and artists, and after a dictatorship and various methods of censorship and erasure, we can finally name and get to know them in the twenty-first century. The Sapphic Circle is the first educational book written for a general readership who don’t yet know the histories of lesbian and bisexual women at the beginning of the twentieth century, then called “inverts.” The points of departure for this volume on the networks of epistolary correspondence, romance, and friendship among sapphic writers and artists are lesbian playwright Victorina Durán’s Así es (That Way), the third volume of her memoirs, and Vicente Carretón’s and Eva Moreno Lago’s research on the Sapphic Circle of Madrid and the circle that existed among women exiled in Buenos Aires.

Paula Villanueva recovers sapphic women’s names and texts—some of which already appear in Tània Balló’s Las Sinsombrero (The Hatless Women) documentaries (2015, 2019, 2021)—through an exploration of female gathering spaces and a “who’s who of bisexuals and lesbians” that comprises most of the work (119; All translations in this review are my own). These names include Countess Gloria Laguna, Ángeles Vicente, Elena Fortún, Victoria Kent, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Rosa Chacel, Victorina Durán, Carmen Conde, and their partners. These sapphic women were vital contributors to the Spanish modernist milieu along with Federico García Lorca and Luis Cernuda, the most famous queer male intellectuals of their generation. But it remains difficult to find evidence of these women in archives and textbooks about the “Generation of 1927” and “Silver Age” of Spanish literature.

While all of these women were white and the majority came from well-off families, the women discussed in this book represent a diverse range of experiences and expressions of gender and sexuality. To this end, Villanueva emphasizes the importance of social institutions in her chapter on the Female Lyceum Club and the Unmarried Women’s Residence in Madrid. These institutions provided education and friendships that would support their members for life, despite later closing due to the Spanish Civil War.

“In my opinion, diligence or custom is what created the Circle, rather than the previous view of the Sapphic Circle as an association that was [formally] founded, registered, or semi-institutionalized. The fact that sapphic women have needed and sought each other throughout history is obvious—just like gay or bisexual men [have done]—, and for this reason I consider that this [unstructured creation of the Circle by upper-class women seeking community] is where we need to focus” (88).

The Sapphic Circle brings together the fruits of contemporary scholarship on modern women in an accessible way, both in terms of language and in the presentation of the historical and cultural background. The preliminary chapters serve as an introduction to the concept of the modern woman and women’s groups. Villanueva contextualizes these avant-garde women who “directly challenged dichotomous and binary worldviews” (43) within conversations about the Western pathologization of sexuality, while also considering sapphic modernity in the English-speaking world as represented by works by Gertrude Stein and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

The book is not merely a literature review, but a detailed study of the personal and professional challenges faced by lesbian and bisexual women (including when their own relatives denied the relationships they had with other women), that at the same time questions why their sexuality remains unmentioned in some research studies. The book’s sections bring together already well-known names like Victorina Durán and Elena Fortún with women hardly mentioned even in academic conversations, such as Countess Gloria Laguna, for whom “lesbianism was a close friend” (125). These profiles of sapphic women strike a good balance between discussing sapphic texts—like Ángeles Vicente’s eponymous Zezé (1909) and Elena Fortún’s Oculto sendero (Hidden Path), (written between 1939 and 1948)—and discussing how these texts were inspired by the tertulias (social gatherings) and epistolary relationships that nurtured the lives of sapphic writers and artists.

The author’s voice is consistently present, guiding us through Madrid of the 1920s and 1930s and the Sapphic Circle of Buenos Aires that Victorina Durán established during her exile. Above all, I appreciate the care with which Villanueva tells love stories in times of war, describing jealous husbands like Antonio Oliver who destroyed some of Carmen Conde’s poems, as well as the “undeclared and conflicted bisexuality” (239) of actress Margarita Xirgu.

“We all need to forget, at least for a few hours, the violence of the world; in the same way that we need to inhabit a bubble in which our lives can be full, alongside friends and loves with whom we can share struggles, construct ourselves politically, and care for one another” (238).

I am deeply moved by the resounding solidarity and sisterhood among queer women on display in this book: from the political commitments of lawyer Victoria Kent and poet Lucía Sánchez Saornil to the courage with which Victorina Durán, Rosa Chacel, and Elena Fortún wrote about the sapphic networks of their generation. I hope that these modern women will inspire us to add more names and diverse voices to those of our “tribadic predecessors” (89) as we pay tribute to them in our research and poetry.

Angela Acosta, Ph.D. (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of South Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Yellow Arrow Publishing, Heartlines Spec, and Apparition Lit. She is co-editor with Dr. Rebecca Haidt of the Spanish Sapphic Modernity special issue of Feminist Modernist Studies (vol. 7, issue 3).

The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art
Eileen Myles
Semiotext(e), 2009, 368 pages
$18.95

Reviewed by Pippin Lapish

My Date with Eileen Myles

My girlfriend Sascha and I are in Brooklyn. Our night out begins at a tattoo parlor offering fifty dollar flash designs. I think Sascha wants a cross on the back of her neck, or maybe a smattering of stars on her hip descending into the delta of her crotch, or “mom” written inside a
pierced heart on her shoulder. I’m not sure, but all of her ideas translate tradition into the language of youth.

We walk into the shop and the poseur vibe is suffocating. The music is bad and too loud, the lights are too bright. It’s a bad idea to get tattooed somewhere so transparently and terminally uncool. So we leave. We both operate via reflexive aesthetic judgements.

On our way out, we pass a bookstore. I duck in automatically and wordlessly. It became a game for me to sniff out the good titles, to trim my vision into the pattern of spines. And then I won the game: I found a book I’ve been looking for. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art by Eileen Myles.

The title is nonsensical. When you’re Eileen Myles, the title of your book doesn’t have to make sense, because you’re a hotshot. The book is a collection of previously unpublished essays, interviews, and blog posts, the dregs of a career. It’s a little hard to find, which is why I hadn’t already read it. Iceland lived in my saved for later list on Amazon, but buying from Amazon always feels desperate and cheap, like winning by default. Finding it in the wild, especially by accident, was triumphant. I had made the Big Catch, the winning kill. The book isn’t one of Myles’ pithy, slimmer volumes either. It looks like a textbook, thick and turquoise, with a photograph of an iceberg on the cover. The title is in all caps, and the Semiotext(e) logo announces the book’s verbose obscurity. It’s not bestseller or cult-classic material: it’s for the serious, rabid fans of Myles, those pitiful fanatics who lap up their every word.

GOD HATES BAGS, at least in New York, so I was stuck carrying the book around all night. It became a third wheel. Sascha had mapped our night out:

1. Get a tattoo
2. Get sushi
3. Ride back to Manhattan for a haunted house
4. Go to sex shop for a new cock

Our first order of business was an unceremonious yet total failure. The bookstore was shoved right between items one and two, imperceptibly inserted by me. It was a pound where I picked up a new pet, so Sascha was rightfully endeared and a little annoyed at my impulsivity. Iceland was a parrot occasionally chiming in. A newfound object of my attention and affections.

At the sushi restaurant, the book occupied its own little corner of the table, except for the moments I picked it up and dragged my finger along the pages. A few times, I committed a grave vulgarity: I cracked the book open and read a few lines at the table. Sascha stared at me as my head lowered and I squinted in the dim light. My attention was caught by a line: “. . .you are breaking the code of the working class by aiming to be a big cheese” (14). “Ha, Sascha, listen to this!” But then I saw her stony expression and. . . nevermind.

Reading Eileen Myles is the experience of discovering language. Like, “Oh what does this button do” and then you find out. Myles handles words with both reverence and a deeply personal sense of play. Puttering around in language but then holding specimens up to the light.

Sometimes I decide that text by Eileen Myles is my property. I just think “Yeah, you’re coming home with me,” and then it doesn’t go away. Eileen Myles’ prose is loyal. They write a lot about dogs and their writing seems to have a canine sort of personality. Meaty, heaving and drooling.

Eileen Myles treats all subject matter with the same weight. Every observation, object, or feeling is described with Myles’ signature certainty, so it all gets blown up onto this cosmic emotional scale. Everything, from the pain of losing their father to the creak of a wooden bed frame, is handled with the same odd mixture of intensity and flippancy. In Iceland, there’s an essay about working class speech. Myles says: “I think the part of working class speech that I’m aiming at today. . . is this willingness to throw the words away, to let the situation speak” (17-18). Myles really gives objects a chance, and a voice. Reading Eileen Myles has the mythic futility of emptying and filling a lake in equal parts. I am talking about Myles’ measuredness, their evenness, or their fairness. It’s all nice and balanced in Myles’ work. Not flat nor mathematical, just outstretched, like a palm or a clearing. Real open. You can step right inside.

After the sushi we were back on the L train, returning to Manhattan for the climax of the night, the haunted house.

When Sascha tells me stories about Los Angeles I have to manually paste the idea of heat on top of the scene. Heat and fame are two elements of Los Angeles that one grows immune to. The Midwest breeds loners, but she always felt like one part of something bigger, a conduit to a world that’s always churning and producing. She’s four foot eleven and beautiful in an untroubled way, which means she fits in everywhere. She’s a letter shook loose from the morning paper, always ready to burst into a headline. She’s kinetic—a live wire, a turning point. Iceland says “. . .it’s so American to think you can figure it out alone. With a little help from your famous friend” (160).

At a certain point in the haunted house, an actress dressed in a white slip with black hair over her eyes started breathing in my ear. In my terror, I shoved Iceland over my face, like a child with his blanket. I started thinking of the book as my exit out of the constructed nightmare, a little self-contained cell of the outside world. It was funny to see Eileen Myles’ name in a sudden red glint, bringing me, momentarily, out of the illusion. Fitting, somehow. Like Iceland is a break room in hell where the demons can go drink coffee out of styrofoam cups before heading back to work. Iceland says it’s like “. . .hand painted Goth, I mean S-C-A-R-Y, everything is ‘kid,’ and for one cool weird moment (well, nine minutes) we are all totally free” (311). That’s the great thing about haunted houses. Sort of like in a book, you’re not responsible for your actions inside a haunted house. You can scream and piss and fall on the floor and no one’s allowed to fault you. Iceland and haunted houses exist in this identical, egalitarian emotional sense, like you can get away with anything so you try everything.

One thing about Eileen Myles is that they never explain anything. There are no extended metaphors in Myles’ work. Everything is up front, bare, and laid out. They’re a real take it or leave it kind of author. Author is derived from the Latin augere, meaning to originate, which is where we get authority. So Myles is well within their etymological right to make no sense. In their book Afterglow they say, “The English language is extremely boaty.” And that totally deranged thought strikes me as incredibly correct. Because Myles doesn’t dither or wring their hands or worry, for an instant, about being understood. Their writing is governed by their intrinsic and inalienable authority, the writer’s birthright. They’re unreliable. Their writing is shaped like the slump of a shrugging shoulder or the contours of a dismissive hand. In Iceland they say, “Camera means room in Italian. No stanza does. Maybe it’s Spanish. Anyhow, I feel like a camera which is not” (320). Overall, Myles doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They just put it out there and middlemen, sifters, and interventionists like me handle the rest. They throw the meaning outside the parameters of the page, like the words are in the book, but the message is elsewhere.

Myles’ writing is a lot like a tin roof. Rippled shelter. Either hot to the touch or cool. Flimsy, but who would fuck with a tin roof? Even nature seems to spare it out of pity. There’s something scrappy and twee about it. Always an A for effort.

Myles flits between personas. Sometimes they’re a refined art critic and sometimes they’re shaking their fist at a cloud. They’re flighty and gimcrack. They mostly punch up. They’re assured and aloof but grubby, somehow both hardworking and bohemian. I picture their books coming together like a barn raising, but a barn raising that happens in a dream, so no one really breaks a sweat.

After the haunted house, we keep moving, still working off the adrenaline. Iceland says “You don’t want to be scared. You want to be excited, ennobled, teased alive.” “Heh, Sascha, listen to”—two eyes, recently recovered from terror and newly adjusted to the dark, shoot toward me—“nevermind.”

We walk to our favorite sex shop. Five inches is no longer cutting it. It’s an easy fix. It’s weird to browse for a prosthesis, but it’s funny to think that I can upgrade an organ. Is it a humiliation or a privilege? It’s just funny. Iceland says, “I see the pussy on the tip of a dick. A fat little smiley face” (304). A dildo’s pronouns would be ha/ha.

I pick out the strap. I walk over to Sascha, who’s flipping through the porno magazines. We pick out two issues from 2007. Later that night, we go through them and rip out the ugly girls.

The new strap is sixty dollars. I try not to imagine fucking her with sixty dollars. Iceland says “It seemed to me to be on the order of a lesbian ripple or chip.” Right: like a crinkly fistful of bills. I think about Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism as it pertains to my cock—oh, sorry. Sascha hates that word. Instead, she calls it a “worthy investment,” which makes me imagine it increasing in value, like my boner is a graph of an improving economy.

With my girlfriend, my newly buzzed hair, my leather jacket, a book by Eileen Myles, two porno magazines, and strap in a black plastic bag, I could feel my gayness literally hanging off of me. Iceland talks about “little girls hawking lesbianism. . . on a 40s street corner like they knew they had something cooler than lemonade” (66). I felt like the biggest dyke in the world, which is to say, a king. There’s not a more kingly feeling than your girlfriend being a little bit mad at you.

Sometimes I have these thoughts or experiences where I think to myself, “That’s an Eileen Myles moment.” Like when Sascha said to me, “They just don’t make tour buses like they used to.” And that statement feels like a joke, but there’s a vaguely sad plea for reflection buried right in there. That’s Eileen Myles’ formula: an acute yet superfluous observation with a twist of painful honesty.

Laying in bed that night, when Iceland’s been put away and the cock proved its worth, I tell Sascha why I like Eileen Myles so much. I told her about this one time, when I was reading Inferno, and they described the clit as a ‘spud.’ That’s the exact moment I realized just what you could do with language. Sascha cringed and said, “Eileen Myles should be tried for their crimes against my imagination.” I replied, “Be careful what you say; it’s gonna end up in the essay.”

Pippin Lapish is a writer from Michigan. Her work has previously appeared in Denver Quarterly, Gryllus Magazine, 11½ Journal, and Narrative Magazine. Her first poetry book, The Contrarian, is forthcoming from Hobby Horse Press. She lives in New York City.